Influencer Fraud: These are the three areas brands should pay special attention to

Influencer marketing is a booming industry. Statista estimates that the global influencer market will be worth 2.38 billion US dollars in the coming year. The number of influencers has also long been huge, which is why choosing the right ones is not easy. One problem here is people who only pretend to be influencers in order to get paid by brands and companies. One challenge is therefore to distinguish real profiles from fake accounts. Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO of Socialbakers, explains what brands should pay particular attention to in order to prevent influencer fraud.

In principle Three types of influencer fraud known:

In order to recognize false profiles or fraud, brands should take a close look at the three areas of followers, engagement and interests of influencers:

1. follower fraud

When an account uses special services that automate the process of gaining followers, this is known as follower fraud. However, most of the follower profiles obtained in this way are also fake. The use of such tools can create a fake account with many followers practically overnight. It is therefore important to look at the development of a profile's followers. If, for example, there are noticeable spikes in the increase in followers that cannot be attributed to posts or other content, skepticism should be exercised.

2. engagement fraud

Here, the prospective influencers buy engagement for their posts, for example comments, despite their profile and following. This can also be done using software that automatically comments on or likes posts. A clue for such fake comments is that they usually use an emoji or a short sentence that is often repeated.

3. fake interest

In the case of fake interest, an influencer posts something on a specific topic without there being any other conversation with followers about this content. For example, an influencer posts about dogs online, but the conversation with followers is actually only about gaming. However, a brand believes that the influencer has many fans and a lot of engagement with dog content. If the influencer now posts something about dogs as part of a collaboration, this results in poor performance for the brand.

However, the responsibility to combat influencer marketing fraud lies not only with the brands, but also with the platforms and users. While influencer fraud will not be eradicated overnight, the key is to ensure that all parties work together and use technology to keep platforms and influencer marketing clean.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak explains: "Brands that fall victim to fraud, whether intended by the influencer or not, are not only wasting time and money. It can be even worse for them, as the influencer can also damage the brand's reputation. But it shouldn't even come to that. Brands need to learn from their mistakes and finally start vetting influencers carefully enough. With the technologies available today, this can be done quickly and efficiently. So there can no longer be any excuses for not doing this."

Socialbakers offers an AI-driven social media marketing suite. The platform has been an official Facebook Marketing Partner since 2011, Pinterest Marketing Partner since 2017 and LinkedIn Marketing Partner.