In recent years the amount of spam and fake followers on Instagram has gone up significantly. When working in influencer marketing it is important to screen an account’s legitimacy and understand if their followers are actually real, genuine people. Having a large number of fake followers can damage an influencer’s reputation and be harmful to brands that choose to work with those influencers. It’s easier than ever for people to buy hundreds and thousands of followers and likes to come across as a bigger account. Despite what the numbers on an account may initially say, it can be fairly easy to spot fake Instagram followers. Read below to learn some quick tips on spotting a fake follower.

Limited Profile Information

While not everyone chooses to have a profile picture on Instagram, lacking a profile picture or having a poor-quality photo can be a tip-off. Fake accounts often don’t use pictures of real people in their profile picture, or if there is a photo of a person it’s been taken from elsewhere. You can perform a simple Google image search. Once you get to a profile, if you see limited information or no bio at all, this can all be signs of a spam account.

Little To No Posts

Once you’ve been tipped off by no profile picture and bio, do a quick skim of the account’s content. If they have no posts at all, this will likely be a fake account. If they have a handful of posts but the posts are poor quality, random, or strictly promotional deals, the odds of the account belonging to a real person are pretty low.

Extremely High or Low Engagement

If an account has a handful of posts, check out the engagement on each post. If each post has zero likes, this can be a strong indication that the account is fake. On the other hand, if the account has a low amount of followers yet a high amount of likes on each post, they likely bought the likes and/or are a fake account as well. Their engagement tends to be inconsistent overall, where one post may have hundreds of likes, and another post may get just a handful of likes.

Unbalanced Ratio

Not everyone can be expected to have more followers than the number of people they’re following, but a significant unbalanced ratio can be a red flag. If an account has few followers but is following thousands of accounts, this oftentimes means they could be a fake account and is being used to follow accounts that have bought followers.

Comments Generic or Spam Like Comments

The last easy way you can spot spam followers is through their comments on other people’s posts. If they comment generic comments on your post, consistently say the same thing, or comment on promotional content, they’re likely a bot or spam account. While engagement groups are popular and many accounts posts simple, generic comments on one another, those accounts are still real people. Fake follower comments are more often than not shallow and offer no real value.

We hope these help you screen out fake Instagram accounts!

Planted Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency created for small to mid-size businesses. If you’re ready to take your social media strategy to the next level, send us a message to learn more about how we can help – info@plantedmarketing.com. Talk soon!