CEO reveals the A-listers buying their social media fame as 25% of large Instagram followings found to be FAKE

Recent reports from Modash have found that large Instagram accounts may be buying fake followers that make up up to 25% of their total follower count. CEO of Bacon Marketing Philip Bacon shares his tips for spotting fake Instagram followers, and reveals the A-listers guilty of buying bots.

What are fake followers?

Fake followers are accounts that a person or agency creates for the sole purpose of boosting follower counts. These profiles don’t belong to active users, and in some cases, they lift personal information from real social media accounts to appear authentic.

Why buy followers?

Influencers and celebrities will buy a percentage of their Instagram following to boost their numbers and make them seem more attractive to brands to reach out for sponsorships. In most cases, more followers means more money. Racking up 100,000 followers would mean a brand deal pays out anything from £1,000 to £3,000 for a short-term campaign, but once an account hits a million followers, they can expect £8,000 minimum for a sponsored post – and much more as they build their profile.

While buying a following may prove to be lucrative in the short-term, if an account with a large percentage of fake followers is reported to Instagram and deemed to be ‘gaming the system’, it would most likely be permanently banned.

Looking at engagement

The biggest telltale sign that an influencer or celebrity is buying fake followers is their engagement. Does the number of likes and comments they receive on their posts match up with their follower count? If the account has millions of followers, but only a few thousand likes per post, something may be fishy… Philip points to TV personality Piers Morgan as an example, who has 1.9 million followers, but only averages around 5-10k likes on his posts.

Do the followers make sense?

Another way to determine if an account has fake followers is by looking through the followers they have. Are they predominantly inactive accounts, low follower accounts, or not within the correct target audience for this particular account? Take a company that provides B2B services in your local area and has a large following – if the vast majority of their followers are in the Middle East or Asia, it’s highly likely that they’ve purchased traffic.

Who is buying followers?

Philip reveals some of the biggest celebrities that he suspects are faking their followers – using a Hype Auditor tool to check followers, engagement and known bot info – and even the queen of Instagram herself Kylie Jenner is reportedly faking her following.

Conor McGregor – 27% reportedly fake

Cardi B – 28% fake

Tom Holland – 31% fake

Kylie Jenner – 40% fake