However, technology supports us in our own research on influencers or users before making any partnership with them because many of them buy Instagram likes that can prove fake.
But still, there are many familiar cases of businesses picking partners through profiles that were fake influencers and lost ROI.
Why should you check fake likes on Instagram?
Undoubtedly, influenced marketing technique is a worthwhile chance, but advertising experts require assessing potential skill and their followers before moving ahead.
These parameters help make effective investments, particularly for influence marketing. There are essential keys to ensuring followers and likes of influencers if they are not fake.
Before looking into details, it is significant that celebrities and mega influencers suffer from these things. However, selling and purchasing fake likes and influencers is a common practice.
It means that other profiles of influencers unavoidably followed fake accounts. However, it is not vital to a red flag on fake accounts, but you should measure them because they affect ROI.
Consistent engagement
First, open a random influencer page on your system and visit a few posts. Now observe their comments and likes and find out the average even if you hide are Instagram Followers.
Test the average engagement rate and find it varies. Do you feel any odd behavior in variance? Besides, look at videos and photos. Do they really deserve such an engagement?
High-resolution photos, full photos, photos with babies or dogs, or selfies can get more comments and likes on different platforms.
On the other hand, promotional posts, product images, and poor-quality photos attract low engagement on media networks.
Indeed, the algorithm of Instagram also prefers high-quality images and forwards them to the timeline to earn more engagement.
However, the engagement rate doesn’t affect particular likes because influencers get money for them. For example, if you observe that the average ‘likes on every post lie between 2,500 to 3,000, they are paid likes, and nothing comes from outside.
Engagement depends on posts because you can easily compare high-quality with poor-quality posts, and there will be a surprising difference.
Thus, it is a good starting point to figure out fake likes and followers, but clever influencers buy likes for their posts to enhance engagement.
Check out Instagram podding
Undoubtedly, Instagram podding is significant for the fashion industry because you can find many influencers linked with fashion brands.
Unavoidably, influencers’ link with fashion has a poor reputation regarding Instagram podding. Instagram podding is a group of 32 influencers who take part in DM on IG.
When one creator post content, the rest of the influencers send this post to the group through DM, and every group member comments and like the post.
Such types of influencers have various IG pods, and thus they fast several comments and likes on their content.
These likes and comments matter because they are not bot-generated, so you can consider them real. Besides, some other influencers have the best engagement through sponsored posts.
When you click on it, you can see many users show engagement with products, and even some buy it. That is exceptional, but don’t be fast. Then what to do in this condition?
Open an account and find out if there is a genuine influencer. But there are fewer chances of real users. The sad fact is that most sponsored posts receive less engagement.
An expert can handle sponsored posts in actual content to earn more likes. So, stay away from influencers that are actively engaged in Instagram podding.
Genuinely, it is easy to spot Instagram podding and inspect thoroughly before hiring influencers for your brand.
Spammy comments
Another step to finding fake likes is spammy comments because they would be bot-generated. Surprisingly, bots are too active to like those posts who buy likes.
They are designed to comment on something posted. For example, you come across a post you see comments, ‘OMG your sunnies’, where you buy sunglasses or ‘nice sunglasses’.
Many users look for buying engagement, but you can check your profile to open it and inspect different posts.
Besides, some bot accounts look like real people and add in the comments for a short time. On the other hand, some generic comments look like spammy comments.
Remember, quality engagement looks more conversational. If you are planning to approach any influencer for your products, inspect carefully and check a few latest posts to ensure engagement level if coming from real people.
The inconsistent ratio between comments, likes, and views
Sometimes, consistent engagement leads to fake likes and followers. But inconsistent engagement can also show fake comments, likes, and followers.
Don’t think about any software to check account credibility. Trust in your gut sense. Otherwise, use a calculator to measure the engagement rate and determine the consistent ratio between likes and comments. If anything is above or below average, it can lead to fake likes.
Final verdict
Remember, buying fake likes is less costly than fake comments, and many creators don’t prefer comments to save money. In this condition, creators would have healthy likes but zero comments.
For example, a creator has 50k followers with 2k to 3k likes and 50 comments. You can understand the overall situation of fake likes and followers.
Thus, if an account has thousands of likes, but no comments, this is a red flag even if they have high-quality, engaging content or purchase likes with zero comments.
