While the number of followers an influencer has can provide an indication of their reach, basing your entire influencer marketing strategy on this sole metric can lead to several pitfalls:

1. Inauthentic Engagement: Purchased followers or bot traffic can inflate follower counts, creating a misleading sense of reach and engagement. Without robust platform analytics to identify this, you might end up paying for non-existent reach.

2. Low Quality Engagement: A large following doesn’t guarantee high-quality interactions. It’s essential to prioritize engagement quality, which implies followers truly connect with, trust, and respond to an influencer.

3. Audience Mismatch: Even an influencer with a high follower count might lack relevancy to your brand or the campaign’s target audience. Gaining access to audience analytics can help ensure that the influencer’s audience aligns with your target demographic.

4. Poor Return on Investment: More followers often mean more expense. It’s not always the case that larger influencers provide better returns, especially when cost is considered.

To avoid these pitfalls, platforms like Flinque focus not just on the follower count but also on comprehensive influencer vetting, audience analytics and engagement metrics. This ensures that brands and agencies partner with influencers who are not only popular but also relevant, trustworthy, and effective.

Remember, each platform has its approach, functionality, and merits. Influencer marketing success depends on clearly defined goals, intelligent strategy, careful influencer selection, and rigorous platform-led performance analytics. A platform’s suite of tools should support these needs effectively.