Follower Fraud: How to Tell if Someone is Buying Instagram Followers

Introduction

Ever noticed how some Instagram accounts seem to have a huge following or experience a massive spike in followers overnight? They might be buying fake followers! In this guide, we’ll dive into the world of spotting fake followers to help keep the influencer and content creator space authentic.

How to Spot a Fake Follower

What do fake followers look like compared to authentic profiles? It's a bit of a grey area, but once you learn what to look for, they become easier to recognize. Here are some red flags to watch out for 🚩

Imbalanced Follower-to-Following Ratio

Accounts that follow tons of other accounts—often thousands—yet have very few followers themselves are suspicious. Genuine accounts usually have a more balanced follower-to-following ratio.

Incomplete Profiles

Fake accounts often leave their profiles looking a bit empty, with missing bios, profile pics, and often only a few posts, if any.

Usernames

Fake accounts frequently have usernames with lots of random numbers or are in various languages and from different regions. This is because many fake accounts are managed by bot farms located overseas.

Low Engagement

Fake followers usually keep things quiet, hardly liking, commenting, or sharing anything, and rarely have any engagement on their own posts.

Newly Created Profiles

Profiles that haven’t been around long but are following thousands of accounts are suspicious 🤨

These factors alone don’t necessarily indicate a ‘fake’ profile, but when combined, they can point to something being a little fishy… 🤔

How to Spot If Someone Is Buying/Bought Fake Followers

Observe Growth Patterns

Sudden Spikes: Watch out for accounts that suddenly balloon in followers without any noticeable increase in engagement. For example, an account that gains +2000 followers overnight without a post or reel with high engagement around the same time is a red flag 🚩

Use Analytical Tools and Websites

Social Blade: My number one go-to for checking which accounts have authentic follower growth. This FREE website provides analytics for Instagram accounts, allowing you to see follower growth over time. Abrupt increases can suggest fake followers.

Instrack.app: Another website that offers a free trial and shows profile analytics for a limited number of accounts. This sort of app is best suited for businesses and marketing agencies that want to track the analytics of multiple accounts.

Perform a Manual Check

Take a peek at a random sample of an account’s followers you suspect may have purchased followers. Look for patterns in fake accounts, such as minimal posts and low activity levels. If you spot hundreds or even thousands of accounts that all look a little suspicious, then my money is on them being purchased followers.

Followers On Private

Instagram now allows users to set their followers to ‘private,’ restricting access to view their follower list. If you notice that an account's followers are set to private, it might be a sign that there's something suspicious going on… 🤨

Conclusion

While auditing tools are handy, they can sometimes mistake inactive or ghost followers for ‘fake’ accounts. When in doubt, take the time to manually search through the account you’re suspicious of.

Remember, a few ‘fake’ or bot accounts in a follower list is normal; bigger influencers may even have up to 10-20% of these fake accounts. But if you spot hundreds or even thousands of these followers in a row within a short timeframe, that’s your red flag! 🚩

With these tips and tools, I hope you’ll be able to navigate Instagram with confidence, knowing that the accounts you follow are the real deal. If you're a business and still unsure if a creator has a genuine following or not, it might be best to look elsewhere.

If you have any questions or think there's something I missed, please reach out to me on Instagram or drop a comment below ⬇️ I’m here to help!

Keep an eye out for more insights and strategies in our upcoming blog posts! Happy scrolling! 🌟