3 Ways Social Media Influencers are Defrauding Clients

As businesses struggle to find profitable advertising channels that produce a positive ROI, more and more they are turning to alternative methods of engagement with potential customers. One of the fastest-growing channels is the influencer marketing space which in 2020 was almost a 10 billion dollar market. And whenever you have massive amounts of money being spent on a particular channel, you have people taking advantage of the market and, unfortunately, are engaged in high levels of fraudulent activity with their accounts. 

I have studied this problem in great depth over the past two years because my wife is a blogger and influencer in the food, wine, and travel space. She has grown her account organically over the past three years and has lost business and opportunity to other influencers who are “bigger” but charging less money for their services. Some of these accounts are literally 90-95% fraudulent, from the likes they buy on every post to the followers they have purchased (some growing by ten to twenty thousand followers in a period of one day) to all the comments they generate through engagement pods. It’s almost laughable sometimes to see how far they have taken these fraudulent practices because if they don’t do it, their engagement would be close to 0%. The big social media companies stop showing the influencer’s posts when they see a low engagement rate and when massive amounts of fake likes and followers arrive on the account. This creates a spiral effect where the influencer must continue to buy fake likes, followers, and comments in order to create the perception that they have this massive following. And some do an amazingly good job at it!

How Big is the Problem?

When I dug deeper into the problem, I realized that almost every influencer with over 30,000 followers in every category engages in some sort of fraudulent activity with their accounts. The problem is absolutely massive, and companies are giving out free products and free services, sometimes spending tens of thousands of dollars for an influencer to promote their brand or products, and their ROI on that spend is sometimes close to $0. The number of fraudulent influencers who are getting comped at hotels for free, receiving free meals, getting sent free products to “promote,” or getting paid for campaigns is staggeringly high. 

After stating all of this, I want to clarify that some fake activity is present on all accounts. Even my wife sometimes receives a bunch of random fake followers. This could be from bot farms overseas who need to follow real people to look more legitimate or someone trying to buy followers on her account to hurt her engagement in some way. Even people who are building up a business the right way will run into this problem at some point. 

Why Don’t the Social Media Platforms Stop the Fraud?

You would think that with a massive fraud problem like I just described that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok would have the resources to put a stop to these fraudulent activities, but they turn a blind eye to it all. They may limit the exposure and reach of the account, but they rarely, if ever, ban accounts for these practices. Why would they? The influencer is on the platform constantly consuming ads and content, which the social networks make money on, and it inflates the number of subscribers that each platform must report to the public on a quarterly basis because they are traded on the stock exchange. If they were to deal with the problem of fraud seriously, I would bet that between 40-50% of the accounts with over 30,000 followers would disappear. If that were to happen, the stock price would be crushed, so they allow this activity to happen every minute of the day despite how easy it would be for them to stop it all with a click of a button. 

How are influencers building up a fraudulent presence?

Fake Followers:

A quick Google search will reveal hundreds of companies selling fake followers, stating that they are real people when, in actuality, they are bots that have been created en masse, typically in India and China. For as little as $10, you can receive thousands of fake followers to your account in just a few minutes. They are easy to recognize, however, because they typically have 0-10 posts, following thousands of people, and have no one following them back. If they do have any posts, it’s usually weird-looking images and selfies that are duplicated multiple times - you can glance at the account and know immediately that the follower is fake. 

Some of the fake follower bots are getting pretty sophisticated, however, and look more legitimate to the naked eye. The scam appears to be that they save 15-20 images from real followers, typically young ladies in college, and create fake accounts with English names, using the photos and captions from the real account. I saw one “influencer” buy thousands of these types of fake followers, and at first glance, they all looked legit. But because I saw the fake followers coming in real-time, the pattern exposed itself very quickly. I tried to figure out where she was buying these accounts but was unable to figure it out. 

Fake Likes:

Social networks like Instagram have prioritized profits over customer usability and happiness. TikTok is becoming the number one player, and Instagram feels like they have to copycat in order to become relevant again. Unfortunately, Instagram used to be a place for people to see cute photos of their friends but has now turned into a short-form video site that basically has copied TikTok in almost every way. And when you are scrolling through your Instagram feed, everything is filled with video Reels, suggestions on who you should follow, and advertisements. With my last count, it was about every 10-15 posts was a normal photo post from someone I follow. 

Because it’s becoming harder and harder to grow an account, influencers feel like they have to buy engagement in order to stay relevant and continue to get free stuff or sponsorships. It’s super easy; you can buy 3000 likes on a post for as little as $5 with some vendors. Once you pay, in a few minutes' time, thousands of likes will appear on a post or a Reel.  

Some influencers hide their likes when they post for a period of several hours. They then purchase the likes on the post and unhide their likes showing thousands of “people” who all of the sudden loved that weird-looking selfie that was posted! Instagram is making it harder to find fake likes by limiting the number of likes and followers that you can see and only showing legitimate likes and followers in the small selected sample that they decide to show you. 

Comments Coming From Engagement Pods:

This practice is the hardest to identify because the people who come to your post to like and comment on it are actual legitimate influencers. The problem is that most comments are part of “Pods” which means a group of people who form a community outside of Instagram, usually on Telegram or WhatsApp. When you become a member of these pods, you can message the Pod when you have a new post, and all of the members of the Pod are supposed to go to the Influencer’s account and like / comment on that post. Unfortunately, all of this “engagement” is fake and doesn’t represent real people who might be interested in that post. 

What Can Be Done?

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to detect the fraudulent practices that are happening across most Social Media platforms on a daily basis. There are multiple paid services that are supposed to help in detecting influencer fraud, but they are woefully inadequate and really don’t do anything but show engagement rate - which is obviously easily faked. I had free trials at four different companies that said they could help identify fraud, and when I put the names of the influencers into these systems, all of them said that the engagement was legitimate and they had 70-80% real followers and engagement. I know for a fact that these people have purchased at least 90% or more of their followers, likes, and a vast majority of the comments are coming from Pods. 

I am developing a service that will allow corporations, PR companies, influencer platforms, and others to easily detect the level of fraud that an influencer is engaging in. More information will be coming soon, but until then, if you want to increase the ROI of your influencer campaigns, please reach out to me personally and let me work with your team on determining who you should be partnering with.