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It is no surprise that we all follow one or more influencers on Instagram and their lifestyle, free products, sponsored trips are very tempting to look at. Did you know that 16 Million of those are fake?

This has led to people taking shortcuts to make their way as an influencer and it is not entirely their mistake according to me.

If I start listing out the people who I know have bought their followers to become an Instagram influencer overnight, I’d probably be writing for a long time.

Brands collaborating with influencers should do thorough research before spending money on the influencers.

Fake bot followers are available for as low as Rs.100 these days and this business is thriving because the brands have set the number of followers the only metric they care about.

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Top 3 countries with the most number of Fake Instagram Influencers

The top 3 countries having the most number of fake Instagram influencers are the US (49 million), Brazil (27 million) and India (16 million).

It is human behavior to want what these influencers advertise on their profiles. But now the audience is more aware of how much money they make per post.

Top influencers get paid in lakhs to share pictures about a product on their stories and Instagram posts.

But how credible do you think these paid reviews are? If somebody was paying you Rs. 80,000 to say their products is the best one, won’t you do it?

A $750 million dollar global fraud

Marketing firm Mediakix estimated that influencer marketing on Instagram alone could reach $2 billion by the end of this year from $1 billion in 2017.

Fake Instagram Influencers use paid methods to increase their following, likes on posts and even bot comments on their posts.

This data was revealed from research conducted by a Swedish e-commerce startup- A Good Company and data analytics firm HypeAuditor together. The research was performed on 1.84 million accounts across 82 countries.

“Companies are pouring money into influencer marketing, thinking that they are connecting with real people and not Russian bots. In reality, they are pouring money down the drain and giving away free products to someone who acquired a mass-following overnight,” Anders Ankarlid, CEO of A Good Company, told PRWeek.

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How to spot fake Instagram influencers

The easiest way to find out if the influencer is fake or not is by checking the engagement rate. You’ll see that accounts having 40k followers don’t even get 10 genuine comments on their posts.

There’s a free tool by the name Social Blade. Simply go to the site and enter the Instagram username to see that profile’s statistics.

If you see 200-1000 followers being added on some days and on some days a huge chunk of their followers leaving, its a fake one.

5 Ways to check their authenticity

Check for a high audience quality to detect fake influencers. An authentic influencer’s follower growth is stable and consistent. Daily follower changes can reveal whether an influencer has purchased followers. The like-follower ratio shows how active an influencer’s audience is. Comments should be rich and diverse.

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