How to Know if An Instagram Account Bought Fake Followers
Have you ever looked at an Instagram account and wish you could tell if these followers are real and targeted or if they just purchased some bot followers?
While some could argue it's none of our business, it actually is.
Business accounts buying followers to establish a fake popularity can be false advertising. If they use this bigger following to leverage brand partnerships, course sales, for example, it can be fraud. Both of those things are illegal.
In the words of my Trademark Lawyer Amber Gilormo of @theboutiquelawyer:
Let’s also remember that these accounts they sell to you, even when they say they are ‘real followers’, that doesn’t make any difference because that’s still not real customers that would buy from that account or their brand partners, and do not represent real “popularity” or endorsement of the brand.
Most of these fake profiles that are sold to you are created with photos and sometimes also name and data from real people, which means it’s identity theft.
Add to that the fact that many times they have photos of underages children, and it just gets worse. Morally and ethically wrong, not much room for debate there.
So I want to share with you signs that an account bought followers.
Disproportionate follower growth without an apparent reason, like a major feature, celebrity shout out or viral content.
Followers do not look like the target audience for that account.
High number or foreign followers, especially from Brazil, Asia or Middle East.
Followers with odd handles, that don't look like a business name or a person's name.
The account you suspect purchased fake followers is not posting a high amount of content, like multiple times a day (in case we could argue that they are growing a little with every post).
Followers are following thousands of accounts, have random repetitive content and short or no captions.
Note that just one or two of these does not mean they bought followers. But many of these combined point to a pretty strong possibility they did.
You can also use tools like Social Blade or Hypeauditor to see how fast they grew and also where most of their followers are from (these tools are not against Instagram's terms because they don't use your account on your behalf).
Hopefully this will help you make informed decisions of who you partner with!
Love,
Manu
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021).
This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content templates designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneurs and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.