Not that I want to hate on Instagram, I wouldn't dare. I love it . And you won't hear me complain when someone convincingly fakes with good intentions. Last year there was Nykkie van Zessen , an influencer from the brain of six HvA students, who was created to point out to young people how easily social media can paint a distorted picture. A year before that there was Louise Delage , who after 150 posts and 65,000 followers turned out to be a stunt to generate awareness for alcoholism. And then a few weeks ago I expressed admiration for animated influencers like Miquela Sousa , who may well be the future of influencer marketing.
The Truth About Instagram
But there are also many influencers who add a Dotantje. Shrews who are so eager for success, fame and money that they buy likes and fans. Last year, we at SOCIAL.INC collaborated on ' The Truth About: How Fake Is Instagram? ' In this online video series, NOS Mashup delved into the world of (fake) Insta-influencers, and investigated the bizarre ways in which Instagrammers compete to become as popular as possible.
In three videos, Mashup and influencers explain how to buy fake followers, use likebots and how influencers help each other with smart tricks to beat the algorithm. And of course, not everyone on Instagram does this, but it happens a lot.
On the one hand, this is understandable, because Instagram's algorithm determines which posts you see based on the number of likes and comments. Well-known influencers only reach a third to half of their followers, and then clever tricks to generate more reach are of course attractive. They earn money with their reach. The fact that money can be made with it is also the reason that many new Instagrammers buy followers and likes. Because from 10,000 followers you can already earn good money with sponsored content.
How do you recognize a faker?
But how do you, as an advertiser or brand, recognize an influencer with fake followers? The last thing you want is for your beautiful message to only be seen by bots. This is how you recognize fakefluencers :
Check the engagement rate: does an influencer have a hundred thousand followers and only dozens of likes? Then the followers are probably bought.
Check the followers themselves: do you see a lot of followers with strange names, or without profile pictures? Then the followers are probably bought.
Check the growth of the account: does the number of followers increase or decrease by large numbers in a short period of time? Followers have probably been bought.
Editor's tip: a tool like Social Blade can help you with this. Do you have any tooltips for this? Share them in the comments below and we'll add them.
Comment pods
In addition, it is always wise to check the comments. Do you only see comments with emoji or only two or three words? Then the comments are probably bought, or a result of comment pods . Comment pods are groups of influencers who respond briefly to each other daily to beat the Instagram algorithm. The pods come in all shapes and sizes. And although the accounts that participate in this are real, it is still not authentic, and it does nothing qualitative for your brand or campaign.
Cheaters are out!
Fortunately, we’re increasingly aware of the signs of fakery on the web. And with Facebook’s credibility now in question, it won’t be long before Instagram comes under scrutiny. Hopefully, the platform will take a harder look at the ways in which users game the system, and punish the cheaters. After all, that’s what Google does.
Influencers will have it harder, but in the end it russian phone number list will only contribute to Instagram as the place to be . Because all that fakeness, everyone has a brother Dotan.
Content. We are inundated with it. How do we keep up with it all? No. The same goes for the target group you create content for: they can no longer keep up. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to capture and retain their attention: there is simply too much content (which also looks too much alike). If we do not change our way of thinking about content creation, we will continue to create average content. Not exactly conducive to a distinctive position within the market. How do you tackle this challenge?
To give you an example : in just one minute, Giphy publishes some 694,444 gifs, more than 4 million videos are watched on YouTube and 456,000 tweets appear on Twitter. Let alone how many articles are published daily on Frankwatching, Marketingfacts or Emerce. How do you make sure that your content is worth reading? And how do you make sure that you create something different from the rest.