Social Media Influencers -The Hidden Secret
Homeowners and business rely on social media influencers that provide information or advertise goods. We see it everywhere. According to Insider Intelligence Influencer Marketing , this market will exceed $15 Billion this year.
How does this affect you? You might be someone looking to fix something, and you jump on YouTube and grab a solution because “Wow this person has a million followers and they must know what they are talking about” and they try the solution. A company hires an “influencer” to share the product to their tribe in hopes of increases sales or social media following.
One of the largest issues with some social media influencers today is that for just $370 you can jump on a website like https://www.instafollowers.co/buy-instagram-followers and purchase 50,000 Instagram Premium Followers or more and now you are an “influencer” . According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2021 Report, only 55% of the followers in Instagram are real people. What do you get after those “followers” have been purchased? You have bots…. robots that are there, but not active. They don’t comment, they don’t like, they don’t react to your posts. This is how you can go on Facebook and see a page with 110,000 followers and see three thumbs up on a big and relevant Facebook post. So, if you know what you are looking for you can find it. If that is happening, for me ,it is one big red flag on if those followers are real.
The other type is the followers that are paid to comment on influencers post to make the audience look more engaged than they are. Sometimes there are even groups of people that create “pods” that are groups that cross comment so that they all gain the comments and followers and increase engagement.
Entrepreneur Magazine reports that there are statistics that illustrate this problem:
- Almost 40% of all social media influencers have inflated followings, according to Invesp.
- An average of 55.39% of influencers engaged in fraudulent activities, according to data shared by Statista Research Department.
- According to Digiday’s cheat sheet on what you need to know about influencer fraud, at least 50% of influencer engagements are fake.
Over the years I have also seen these ” fake followers” be weaponized where competitors will buy “followers” for their competitors in YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook accounts so that they can try to set off a trigger by those platforms to get them shut down or taken off the platform.
You also must consider that lower engagement rates do not automatically point to fake accounts. The quality of the comments and the real people engaged will tell a bigger story. If you are a company that is hiring influencers or in my case a homeowner looking for information you might dig a little deeper into who you are following.
Elon Musk, even if you don’t like him, had a point in asking Twitter about how many fake accounts are on the platform. Twitter has publicly said that only 5% of its online accounts are fake but looking at statistics and studies it looks to me something completely different than that.
There is a great article on PLI Plusthat goes into the details of the Federal Trade Commission looking into Influencer marketing and they are holding these influencers to the same standards as the brands themselves. In October 2021 the FTC sent more than 700 Notice of Penalty Offense letters to companies that their influencers had made deceptive endorsements or testimonials.
In my nearly 30 years in this industry, I have shared the stage, the airwaves, and on podcasts with some stunning professionals that know what they are talking about and “walk the walk” of success. Some of them can read or write a good story, but have no idea what they are talking about when you ask them questions. I have also shared those same spaces with people that lacked knowledge and professionalism and were only there because of the social media followers and not their lack of information in their trade.
Until Social Media Companies decide to tie accounts to real people and not email accounts, this issue of REAL people as followers, and imposters, will continue to be a problem for anyone marketing digitally and on social media.
