Day by day, social media is becoming more of a marketing platform and a perfect medium for businesses to grow. Especially when it comes to Instagram it is no longer an ordinary social media communicating app that was launched in 2010. Nowadays Instagram is grabbing everyone’s attention from social media users to businesses who are looking to reach a target audience. This is why influencer marketing came into existence. Instagram users were happy because they were getting paid for a good number of followers and engagement rate. Businesses also had this great opportunity to advertise their product with the help of influencers and turn their followers into its customers. But this whole marketing thing also bore some loopholes.
As people get excited with the fact that a great deal of followers can help them make millions on Instagram, they just determine to get more followers regardless of if it’s right or wrong. This is why they begin paying for followers and become an influencer with a lot of followers but less engagement rate. There are some companies who provide these services of fake followers, likes and comments on Instagram profiles. But ultimately, their fake followers don’t help them with their business as the engagement rate is low and businesses go through losses.
Purchasing Followers
Now is the time when social media has become an integral part of everyone’s life. Earning a good number of followers and likes has become important to them regardless of their desire to become an influencer. But as the fact is spreading frequently that you can make money with Instagram by just getting a good count of followers or views, people are keen on increasing their followers through any medium. Before we move forward, let me tell you that it is not that easy to make money with Instagram as the websites tell you. It may be possible that their money making articles are to keep you active so that they can make money through you.
Obviously, it is true that you can earn money by having a good amount of followers. This is called influencer marketing in which businesses pay the influencer to increase their brand awareness and customer base. Becoming an Influencer has also become an easy task because having around 3k followers can make you a micro influencer. You will get sponsorships for your posts and the likes and views you get will decide the amount of paid money.
But collaboration with a person with fake followers can result in losses for businesses. This is why to maintain their reputation and ratio of followers and engagement rate, people buy likes, comments and shares as well. There are companies available providing all these bot and fake followers services. But ultimately, all of this can not help you to achieve your targeted goals. This is why now businesses have become smart and aware. They find out if they are collaborating with a true influencer or someone with fake followers. But the question is how do they detect the fake followers profile or people with fake followers? It is not a tricky question as we have very simple step-by-step answers to it. You just need to keep your eyes open and observe, you will know the reality. 
How to Detect Fake followers on Instagram?
There are about more than 30% bots and fake followers on Instagram. Day by day, not just brands are becoming smart but recognizing fake followers is getting more difficult as well. Yet, there are some criteria you can follow to identify or Detect fake followers on Instagram.
1. Sudden Spike in Followers: To be honest the process of growing followers and engagement rate is very low. But yet, if your content is super engaging, the process might become a little rapid but only a little bit. If you see a sudden spike in the number of followers of a profile, it can be a sign of warning. For example, if you see a sudden increase in followers overnight or day, it is possible that the person paid to increase his or her followers.
2. Ratio of Followers to Likes: If you are an active user of Instagram, you must know that a person with thousands of followers gets a good deal of likes, comments and shares as well. But when you see a huge difference between the followers count and engagement rate, it can be alarming.
In other words, likes and comments are the way of interaction with other users. It shows how interactive you are. But if a person doesn’t engage with other users very much and still has a huge number of followers, it may be an indication that the followers are fake.
3. Relevant Profile Content: When it comes to followers, relevant profile content is a must. If you see a profile with irrelevant or low quality content and yet having a huge amount of followers, it can be suspicious. Because a person with many followers takes care of its profile quality content, how much or what it posts everyday.
4. Ratio of Followers to Following: An individual with a lot of followers follows many accounts as well. But fake profiles usually have a huge number of following but very few followers as they are created with the sole purpose of increasing someone’s followers.
5. Poor Profile Photo and Bio: Usually, fake profiles don’t have a Profile photo and profile bio is also poor.
Well, these criterias are for you to detect fake followers among the influencers. But it can not always be taken into account as it takes a lot of time and effort. Therefore there are some social media tools available that can help you detect the fake followers such as HypeAuditor, SocialBlade, IGAudit, etc. These tools analyze Instagram and YouTube Profiles to figure out if a person has fake followers.
