In addition to artificially increasing their follower number, they will also purchase engagement in the same way. Trading likes and comments with the influencer pod community or using bots that leave likes and generic comments.

Opportunistic Scammers

It’s easy to see why they do it; being an influencer can be a lucrative opportunity but building a substantial following takes time and hard work. However, the influencers that practice this type of fraudulent behavior are effectively scamming the brands who work with them.

A brand will partner with an influencer to expand its own audience, and attract interest in its products or services. A brand is just wasting time and money if it’s paying inflated prices to collab based on fake follower numbers.

Awareness Will Save You From Fraud

Instagram has tried to combat this issue in several ways. However, those who still insist on carrying out this type of fraud always find a way around the measures put in place. This is why it’s important to be able to recognize influencer fraud so that you can avoid it.

One of the most obvious signs an influencer is artificially inflating their audience numbers by buying their followers is sudden spikes in the number of followers they have. It’s very unlikely that someone’s Instagram following can go from 2K to 5K overnight. Before starting to work with an influencer spend some time tracking the growth of their following. Make sure it is rising organically.

Know Their Followers

Another important sign of influencer fraud is a suspicious ratio of comments and likes when you compare it to their followers. An account with a low follower count but very high levels of comments and likes is likely to purchase auto-generated comments. Many of the comments will be irrelevant to the content, with extremely generic phrases or strings of emojis. These types of comments are one of the surest signs that they came from bots rather than actual people.

The best way to make sure that the influencers you’re working with are genuine is to look beyond the standard engagement rates one would use to gauge the effectiveness that a certain influencer will have. Instead, take into consideration other metrics. Such as story views, affiliate codes, or sticker taps. These will help paint a more realistic picture of the type of exposure and engagement your campaign can achieve.

If you take care to recognize and avoid influencer fraud your brand will be able to use its influencer marketing budget on forming partnerships that will build brand awareness, drive traffic and establish a relationship with your customers that is built on trust.

The post How to Recognize and Avoid Influencer Fraud appeared first on AFLUENCER.

It’s almost like a rule in the business world that wherever money starts flowing, crackpots show up who try to pass themselves off as experts when they really don’t know anything at all.

It’s the same case with the social media influencer industry. Every day red flags go up and people come up to us saying that they signed up with a fake influencer. And now they want us to fix the mess. While digital marketing and digital business promotion are incredibly successful, it’s still nascent with respect to regulatory intervention that can prevent fraud.

It’s also one of the reasons why the demand for fake Instagram followers continues to rise over the years.

For these reasons, it’s better if you keep a lookout for yourself before someone scams you out of a fair bit of money without any results to show for it. Considering the growing importance and the sums of money flowing into the industry, it’s probably safe to assume that there are at least a few thousand dollars of yours tied into your marketing budget.

Before you hand out this money to someone, look out for these red flags of potential influencer fraudsters.

Shady Engagement Rates

The typical Instagram influencer has a likes to followers ratio of 1:3, i.e. one for every three followers. Some influencers have higher ratios but that’s because they have relatively fewer followers—it’s more of a mathematical difference than an actual indicator of the demand for their content.

It’s a red flag for sure if your influencer has insanely high engagement rates. They make you think that their content is brilliant. But it’s just because they’ve bought the following rather than generating it organically.

Go through your influencer’s feeds to see what their engagement rates look like—if they’re consistently high, then either they’re the Messiahs of social media or they’re faking it.

They Don’t Have Enough Content

Another big red flag is if you find Instagram or Facebook influencer accounts that have a huge following but very little content. That’s a fake account straight off the bat. How can someone generate this large a following but have nothing for these followers to engage with?

Check What Kind of Engagement They’re Getting

If you find influencer accounts with really weird comments on their posts that make no sense, this is a clear red flag. They’re more than likely working with fake followers. These comments are actually bots posting these comments to boost their engagement figures. Whenever you approach an influencer for your marketing, make sure to give their posts a cursory glance. Check to see if the interactions look genuine or not.

Find Authentic Social Media Influencers at Afluencer!

No influencer red flags here! Afluencer is an online platform that helps businesses find some of the best social media influencers to improve marketing outcomes. We serve as a midway between influencers and businesses to connect and collaborate for mutually beneficial business agreements.

Get in touch with us today for more information on our services.

The post Major Red Flags that the Influencer you’re working with is a Quack appeared first on AFLUENCER.

If we’ve learned anything from Millie Bobbie Brown’s fake skincare routine and the backlash that followed, it’s this: your followers might love you, but they won’t take balderdash from you. Anything that smells “fake” to them will be called out, and in the aftermath, you’ll find your brand, business, or future in jeopardy.

Knowing this, are you sure you haven’t partnered with the wrong social media influencer? Are they fake news? Because people can always tell—and this is how they do it.

Robot Followers Are So Fake

If Google’s constant “Are You a Robot?” question hasn’t been warning enough, you need to hear this: bots are unattractive. And a great turnoff for people. We know it might sound like a great idea to somehow have 320975068955625690736903 followers without doing a lot, but it’s actually a really bad idea.

Because people will always be able to tell

Your engagement rate is the first clue. If you have a massive following and a poor engagement rate, that’s a sure sign of fake bot followers. Buying followers is easy, engaging with them, however, can often be impossible.

On the other hand, identical engagement also sends odd signals to people. Additionally, tools like Influencer Fee are available for users to check their average engagement rate. Simply put, your bot mission is better off as an abort mission.

Bogus Engagement

Sometimes, people think they can get around the engagement problem with fake followers. And true, there is a way to fake engagement, but it’s not like people can’t tell fake engagement from real engagement.

If your post is getting a considerable number of genuine-looking comments, people can rest assured that your followers are (a) real, (b) following you of their own accord, and (c) are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

On the other hand, if your post has comments that say “great pic”, “hi”, “call me”, or random emojis, then it’s pretty evident that something’s afoot. Fake engagement also incudes irrelevant comments—and people can always tell.

The biggest mistake a business or their influencer partner can make is thinking that their audience is naive.

Weird Followers

Another trick that people use to check if the “influencer” they’re looking at is genuine or not is to see who, and not how many follow this person.

Tools like IG Audit allow people to perform audits for Instagram accounts easily. In a jiffy, people can tell how much of your following is real and how much of it is bogus. A great number of fake followers should raise red flags as it means you may have a fake influencer on your hands.

Want to Avoid Partnerships with Fake Influencers?

We understand how important it is to partner with the right social media influencer. Not only are fake influencers useless in terms of increasing your following and promoting your brand, but they can also cause more harm than good. Since they perpetuate a general image of your business to your potential customers, they can make people think your business is just as shady.

While you can use the tools that we have quoted to check if the influencers that you have in mind are genuine or not, there are other ways. One way is to sign up for Afluencer, a platform that introduces serious businesses to some of the top social media influencers around.

You can also browse news about the influencer world here and surf more about social media marketing in general here.

The post If You’re Doing These Things, Your Followers Might Think You’re Fake appeared first on AFLUENCER.

So, what exactly are influencer pods?

An influencer pod is at its most basic a forum that can be either private or public. And is found mainly on platforms such as Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp. On this forum, individuals work together to increase their social media following and engagement by exchanging likes, comments and follows. There are pods for many different groups and niches such as beauty, fashion, travel, and fitness; or they may be a mix of several different types of people.

Rules and Guidelines

Since the pods target individuals who are looking to increase their social media following, every pod comes with its own set of guidelines and rules. And all members must follow them. Failure to follow the rules will result in a ban.

These rules can vary among influencer pods, but they’re all usually based on the same ideas. This can be something like regulating the exchange of likes, comments, and follows by setting rules for the number of daily likes, a follow-for-follow rule, or various content limitations.

In most groups, there will be a daily thread focusing on likes, follows, or comments. The thread will be active for several hours and all members of the group can participate until the thread closes.

All threads have their own guidelines. Created either by individuals within the group. Those asking for likes or follows while promising to return the favor to anyone who participates. Or created by the group admins as a place for all members to promote their own pages. Where they ask for likes or comments and let others know what they can expect in return.

Since we started talking about threads, you may want to go explore our detailed Influencer’s Guide to Threads. You know, Twitter’s rival app.

Telegram Pods

Most Facebook influencer pods are public, so those who want to keep their participation in pods more private choose to use Telegram pods, as Telegram offers its users the ability to send messages on a heavily encrypted cloud-based server. They will often announce a new Telegram pod on Facebook or WhatsApp. And the members get instructions on how to join the new pod.

The new groups formed within Telegram pods have their own guidelines that all members are expected to follow. A common requirement for entry into a Telegram pod is for all members to follow the social media accounts of all admins. Additionally, most of these pods focus on making fake engagement look real. So they will have rules requiring comments to be a certain length and relevant to the post. This is because generic, one-word comments are a dead giveaway that an influencer is bartering or buying likes and comments. There are many rules set in place in influencer pods designed to hide the evidence of dishonest activity.

The Harm of Influencer Pods

Influencer pods, although dishonest, may not seem so bad until you take into consideration that they’re in fact very similar to ad fraud. The biggest victims of pods are brands and companies that are paying a large amount to someone who they think will help them reach their target audience. Many companies are willing to pay significant amounts of money to an influencer they think will have an impact, and this impact is often based on the follower number and engagement rate that influencer has. If the engagement rate and follower count are fake, then the company is essentially being scammed.

Alternative to Influencer Pods

So you’re maybe you’re concerned about the implications of using influencer pods. Well, we have an alternative method of growing your social space and becoming a more recognized influencer.

Genuine exposure and engagement.

We can help you get started. After all, we are Afluencer – the gurus of influencer marketing.

We also release ongoing influencer guides through our blog to help get you started and also to offer ongoing support. Just like this one:

5 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Performance

So what are you waiting for? Come join the Afluencer crew and watch your following grow!

The post Influencer Pods: What Are They? appeared first on AFLUENCER.