You're an influencer so you have followers. Worlds of difference
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 4:51 am
Column – Bots, fake accounts, profiles with one photo or reactions with only an emoji: automated fake followers are regularly the talk of the day on social media. Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are tackling the phenomenon hard, but can offer little resistance to the proliferation of fake accounts. However, this is no reason to panic. In fact, fake followers do not have to be a problem at all!
Attention to fake followers
In recent times, many (online) media have paid attention to fake followers. In the influencer marketing landscape, it is a much-discussed topic: you can simply buy followers and likes and this trade in fakes is only growing. Marketers who are used to paying for a certain reach feel cheated, and rightly so: their reach consists of only a server with thousands of bots.
Annoying, that's certainly true. However, it's not the fake followers, but the communication around them that worries me. A lot of media attention for fake followers is based on hopelessly entrenched ideas, namely that the existence of an influencer rests purely on having followers. You have followers, so you're an influencer. Wrong. You're an influencer, so you have followers. A world of difference. I'd like to explain how this works using three important characteristics of influencer marketing : the match between brand and influencer, the authenticity of content and a relevant connection with the target group.
You have followers, so you're an influencer. Wrong.
Match
Finding the right influencer is the beginning of every successful influencer marketing campaign. Of course, you may already have a plan or topic in mind, but the influencer is your creator and your channel. It is therefore crucial to find an influencer that really fits your brand. An important part of that search is the complete screening of potential italy telegram data influencers. If you find an influencer that you are interested in, you dive into his/her content and accounts. Influencers with fake followers are of course not the influencers you want to work with, but fortunately recognizing these fake accounts is not rocket science. So here you can already take a first step.
In practice, however, it turns out that this is often not even necessary. As soon as you dive into the content and assess influencers on quality, you will see that qualitative content and fake followers hardly overlap. Screen the followers, look at profiles without posts or profile photos, pay attention to reactions with only emojis or slogans that would fit under each post. In short: distinguish real from fake . This way you eliminate the majority of fakers in the first step of the selection.
Authenticity
This separates the wheat from the chaff, but is not the end of the selection. After screening the influencer, the focus should be on the content. Where in the first selection we superficially assess the content of influencers to distinguish serious influencers from their less serious colleagues, we now assess content on authenticity. The distinction between the different forms of this is sometimes difficult to recognize. The authenticity of an influencer can, for example, lie in the fact that she presents her content in a very personal and DIY way. Another influencer has specialized in producing heavily stylized content. One pink dresses with purple boas, the other white sneakers with a black shirt. To each his own.
Attention to fake followers
In recent times, many (online) media have paid attention to fake followers. In the influencer marketing landscape, it is a much-discussed topic: you can simply buy followers and likes and this trade in fakes is only growing. Marketers who are used to paying for a certain reach feel cheated, and rightly so: their reach consists of only a server with thousands of bots.
Annoying, that's certainly true. However, it's not the fake followers, but the communication around them that worries me. A lot of media attention for fake followers is based on hopelessly entrenched ideas, namely that the existence of an influencer rests purely on having followers. You have followers, so you're an influencer. Wrong. You're an influencer, so you have followers. A world of difference. I'd like to explain how this works using three important characteristics of influencer marketing : the match between brand and influencer, the authenticity of content and a relevant connection with the target group.
You have followers, so you're an influencer. Wrong.
Match
Finding the right influencer is the beginning of every successful influencer marketing campaign. Of course, you may already have a plan or topic in mind, but the influencer is your creator and your channel. It is therefore crucial to find an influencer that really fits your brand. An important part of that search is the complete screening of potential italy telegram data influencers. If you find an influencer that you are interested in, you dive into his/her content and accounts. Influencers with fake followers are of course not the influencers you want to work with, but fortunately recognizing these fake accounts is not rocket science. So here you can already take a first step.
In practice, however, it turns out that this is often not even necessary. As soon as you dive into the content and assess influencers on quality, you will see that qualitative content and fake followers hardly overlap. Screen the followers, look at profiles without posts or profile photos, pay attention to reactions with only emojis or slogans that would fit under each post. In short: distinguish real from fake . This way you eliminate the majority of fakers in the first step of the selection.
Authenticity
This separates the wheat from the chaff, but is not the end of the selection. After screening the influencer, the focus should be on the content. Where in the first selection we superficially assess the content of influencers to distinguish serious influencers from their less serious colleagues, we now assess content on authenticity. The distinction between the different forms of this is sometimes difficult to recognize. The authenticity of an influencer can, for example, lie in the fact that she presents her content in a very personal and DIY way. Another influencer has specialized in producing heavily stylized content. One pink dresses with purple boas, the other white sneakers with a black shirt. To each his own.