Fake Followers: Do’s and Don’ts for Authentic Growth

Various factors are considered when giving value to social media accounts, especially in the context of digital marketing. A social media marketing company may look at the type of content posted by an account or the organic views a post gets. The number of followers of an account is also an important factor to consider as content posted by accounts with a large following should ideally reach a larger audience.
This has led to an increase in fake followers, which can be bought for various rates depending on the account holder’s requirements. While this tactic is used by many to add value to their social media accounts, any social media marketing company would argue that buying fake followers is not encouraged in the industry.

WHAT ARE FAKE FOLLOWERS & WHY ARE THEY BAD?

Fake followers are typically inactive accounts, which means that they do not engage with the content posted by the account. There are rare occasions when fake followers are active, but when they are, these accounts usually spread spam-ridden posts like memes and fake news.
A digital marketing agency would consider fake followers a bad idea due to the low engagement from these account. To many, actually having to pay for such inactive followers may seem strange and odd but there is an abundance of fake followers that can be purchased on social media, especially on Twitter. This is because fake followers are a regular practice for many brands.
The reason for this is simple. Many wrongly believe that a large audience size automatically makes an account more reliable and popular.

WHY SHOULDN’T YOU BUY FAKE FOLLOWERS?

If a significant number of brands purchase fake followers to boost their follower count, why shouldn’t you do the same? This is a valid question, but it must be stressed that fake followers are a serious problem in social media marketing and digital marketing services try hard to convince brands to refrain from buying fake followers.
The main reason for this is that fake followers can ruin brand reputation. Twitter, for instance, automatically removes 6 to 7.5 million accounts per week and has implemented several measures to reduce inauthentic platform activity.
If a brand is exposed as one that buys fake followers and follows other shady social media practices, their brand image could be seriously affected. This could also lead to questions about the trustworthiness of the entire company, which will without doubt affect sales.
Brands will also be wasting their budget when account follower numbers are blown up by fake followers. Influencer marketing is among the most popular digital marketing services and a social media marketing company will look at accounts with a large audience to promote brands.
This costs money, however, and a brand will only stand to lose that money if the promotional content is directed at inactive accounts and bots.
Fake followers can also decrease engagements as they are typically inactive and do not interact with other accounts or content. As a consequence, the account will see a drop in engagement volume, which will in turn skew overall reach. This makes it difficult to assess how effective an account’s content is.
A SEO marketing company would also discourage the purchasing of fake followers because these account can flood a social media feed with spam, scams and unwanted or pointless content. This will affect a user’s social media experience as the content they are greeted by will not be of any use to them

FAKE FOLLOWERS AUDIT

A digital marketing agency may carry out a fake followers audit when picking accounts for marketing campaigns or monitoring the growth of brand accounts. This can be done by calculating the engagement rate percentage, where the total number of interactions is divided by the total number of followers and then multiplied by 100.
A second metric to study is the number of interactions per 1,000 followers. This is calculated by dividing the sum of interactions on a post by the total number of followers when the post was published and multiplying it by 1,000.
It is recommended that users carry out a thorough fake follower check on their accounts at least once every six months.

BUILDING A HEALTHY AND ENGAGED SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING

You can still build a social media following even if you do not buy followers and such a following will be organic, healthy and engaged. To do this, you must understand your followers, publish relevant content consistently, amplify your reach through influencers, and create shareable posts.