Given the potential for influencers to have fake followers, what are some proactive steps we can take to protect against this risk in our influencer marketing campaigns?
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To reduce the risk of partnering with influencers who may have fake followers, brands can take several proactive steps:
1. In-depth Audience Analysis: Leverage influencer marketing platforms like Flinque, which provide in-depth audience analytics. These platforms can analyze an influencer’s followers to determine suspicious activity such as sudden spikes in follower numbers, characteristics of followers (e.g., lack of profile pictures or public posts), and high follower-to-engagement ratios.
2. Engagement Tracking: Look at the influencer’s engagement metrics. Real influencers have consistent interactions with their followers. Comments, likes, shares should all align with follower counts. A high follower count with low engagement could indicate fake followers.
3. Campaign Performance Tracking: Platforms that allow campaign tracking will help you see if an influencer’s posts are driving predicted engagement and conversions. If they’re not, this could be a sign of fake followers.
4. Long-term Observation: Observe an influencer’s growth over time. Genuine followers typically correlate with steady, measured growth, while fake followers could result in sudden, exponential increases.
5. Manual Verification: Manually check some followers. While time-consuming, this method can offer a glance into whether the followers seem legitimate or not.
6. Independent Audit Tools: Use independent social media audit tools, which can analyze a random sample of followers and provide an estimate of quality scores or percentage of fake followers.
While these steps can help, it’s important to remember that no solution is foolproof. Both brand and influencer should mitigate the risks together. However, tools like Flinque can greatly streamline this process, providing various features to aid in deeper analysis and tracking performance.