Exploring Instagram Influencers and Fake social Influence Part 1

"Fake it till you make it" is how the old saying goes, but have too many social influencers taken that old adage too much to heart in the race to look as popular and as influential as possible?

In the wake of some interesting in-depth research into levels of fakery on popular social media channels, Ciaran and Daniel explore fake social accounts and followers and fake interactions. We’ve spent some time investigating the dark side of Social media metrics so we can explore how they get gamed.

Ever felt that the reach metrics of influencers don't quite tally with actual business results? Is your influencer marketing programme being scammed by influencers gaming social algorithms with fake followers and fake interactions? Listen in and learn how shady social media practices could be skewing your results and what you might do about it to correct course.

Useful Links

PRWeek Article
https://www.prweek.com/article/1590362/majority-uk-instagram-influencers-engage-fakery-landmark-new-study

More detailed write up of this research by Anders Arkalid.
https://medium.com/@aa_88162/influencerstudy-agoodcom-4c7ac6c27fae

Google Trends
https://trends.google.com/trends

Keywords Everywhere
https://keywordseverywhere.com/

Google Keyword Planner Tool
https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Hype Auditor Slide Deck
https://www.slideshare.net/pmievents/influencer-marketing-without-the-proper-checks-transparency-will-not-work

PR week Autumn research Endelbach
https://www.prweek.com/article/1494118/influencer-campaigns-focus-social-proof-not-reach

Instagram crackdown on fake accounts
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/19/instagram-fake-followers

New York Times investigation into celebrities buying fake followers
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html

What is a click farm?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-30/farming-for-likes-fake-social-media-engagement/10944078

Spark Torro Twitter Follower check
https://sparktoro.com/tools/fake-followers-audit

Hype Auditor
https://hypeauditor.com/en/

Fakecheck.co
https://www.fakecheck.co

Fakecheck worst offenders
https://www.fakecheck.co/bot10-social-engagement#report

Fakecheck 10 best accounts
https://www.fakecheck.co/top10-social-engagement#report

Moz Link Explorer
https://moz.com/link-explorer

Ubersuggest
https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/