How to Do An Instagram Fake Followers Check

Published on 11.05.2024 by Chizoba T

Influencer marketing has revolutionized how marketing is done. By collaborating with a top influencer, you can provide your brand with unmatched visibility. This is because influencers can influence people to follow your brand, buy your products, or take other actions.

However, when choosing an Instagram influencer to work with, most businesses often get one challenge: fake followers. Some Instagram users often get fake followers, creating the impression that they have a larger following than they have. Their goal is for them to reap the benefits of influencer marketing without putting in the hard work. This article will guide you on how to spot influencers with fake followers.

What are Instagram Fake Followers?

Instagram fake followers are social media profiles with bot followers meant to boost the follower count without actual value. While they bring fake likes and comments, they are generic with no engagement. In most cases, these fake followers often have little or no activity on their Instagram accounts.

They do not have a profile picture or a bio for their Instagram account. Their username may be random numbers, while their accounts feed has little or no activity. While sometimes they will comment on your posts, this is usually through generic comments that look outrightly fake. 

Most fake followers are sold by scam companies that deliver bot followers that only inflate your followers' numbers. While there are genuine service providers that will grow your number of followers by marketing it to people in your niche and increasing engagement on your Instagram account, the bot followers add no value. 

Why Instagram Accounts Buy Followers

The number of followers, comments, and likes are very important. They are among the factors that marketers and other people look into when considering the success of an Instagram account owner. When they see a profile with many followers, they think they are dealing with a big influencer. When someone buys followers, they create the impression that they have a large following and, therefore, scam brands to engage them.

Other reasons why people buy followers are:

  • To get more followers. People often prefer to follow accounts with a lot of followers. If an account only has 100 followers, nobody is usually interested in following it.  Buying followers is one of the easy ways of getting 1000 followers.
  • Compete with competitors.  When Instagram users see that their competitors have thousands of followers, they feel they cannot compete. Therefore, they resort to buying followers.
  • Grow your Instagram account. Some people believe that you need fake followers to grow when you join Instagram.  
  • Get more likes and comments. Some fake followers come with fake likes and comments. When other users see a post with many likes and comments, they will likely get drawn to it and like it.
  • Get deals with brands. By creating the impression that they have thousands of followers, it is easy to confuse brands to give them deals.
  • Self-esteem. Another reason why people buy Instagram accounts is to boost their self-esteem. They feel good seeing thousands of people following their accounts even when they understand they aren't real. 

Why Fake Followers Are Bad

If your social media account has fake followers, it means all other metrics are fake too. Remember that these metrics are what brands use to find influencers for their marketing campaigns. Therefore, this can be considered to be a form of fraud. Statistics indicate that  in 2019, brands lost over $1.3 billion to influencer fraud. The scam included deals with accounts that had fake followers.

Besides, scammers use bots to deliver fake followers. These followers may be accompanied by malware and phishing attempts. The fake followers may sometimes have profile photos that may be stolen from other Instagram users. Such accounts may hurt your account as this may be considered identity theft.

How to Manually Check Fake Instagram Followers

Understanding if an influencer has a genuine following is one of the top Instagram marketing tips. Before engaging an Instagram influencer, you should take time to check if they have fake followers. Here are some of the ways you can do that.

Instagram Profile Picture and Username

Often, bot accounts don't have the time to create a realistic-looking bio. That's why their bio section could be blank or may have minimum details. At times, they may adjust the account settings to hide the profile. While this may make it harder for you to determine how genuine an account is, an account with hidden bio information may raise suspicion.

You should check the profile picture and username to determine if an Instagram influencer has fake followers. Is the name and username machine-generated with fake characters and numbers? If yes, this is the first sign that you are dealing with a fake follower account.

Also, check the profile picture and account activity. Has it posted anything recently? If there is a post, does it have any engagement? How genuine does the engagement look? These could be telltale signs. However, you must review more before concluding it is a fake account. You don't want a situation where you report a genuine account.

At times, you will come across fake follower accounts that look genuine. But the moment you follow them, they will send you an offer to buy products or services. This is an indication that you are dealing with an automated account.

Check the People Who Follow Them

After checking the account, it is time to check the people who follow such accounts. Do they have a follower list that also looks fake, or are their followers made up of real people? Since Instagram is more geared towards images than conversations, check if they regularly post pictures. Consider also if the pictures receive engagement, such as real conversations rather than generic comments.

Check if the Instagram accounts engage with the people who comment by responding. When they respond, do the comments look genuine or generic? Are they using the reply function of the comment to spam other people? Check the age of the Instagram account as well. Is it recently opened, or has it existed for a long time? These questions will also help you determine how genuine an Instagram account is.

Check the Follower-to-like Ratio

A genuine Instagram account should have a like-to-followers ratio of 1.5 and 3%. That means if you have 10,000 followers, a good number of likes is between 150 and 300 followers. However, an engagement rate of 1% may be acceptable, depending on the niche. 

If an Instagram account has fewer likes than this by far, chances are that it has fake followers. On the other hand, if it has a higher number of likes, it could indicate fake likes. However, some Instagram posts may go viral, resulting in a higher engagement rate. 

Some posts may receive a low engagement level because they are of poor quality. Therefore, you also need to consider other factors. Even when an Instagram account has the optimal number of followers, this does not indicate that it's genuine.

Suspicious Generic Comments

Some bot accounts post comments to make their account look genuine. When you check the comments section of a fake Instagram account, all you will see are generic comments such as Wow, Nice, or Cool.  They may also use other comments like good job or good picture. It may sometimes include lengthy statements that are outside the post. This could be something like, “it was nice hearing from you,” “this is so inspiring,” etc. These are all signs of generic comments.

Similarly, fake accounts may leave spam comments promoting a product. While these comments are technically engaging, they don't add value to a brand looking forward to engaging with people.

Inconsistent Account Following Numbers

If an account is genuine, it should have a regular pattern concerning the number of people followed, followers, and engagement level. While no two Instagram accounts are similar, and newbies may have less account activity than established Instagrammers, you can easily use the account number to detect scam accounts.

For instance, you may notice that an Instagram account follows thousands of people, but nobody follows them. They may not post in their account. While this doesn't mean they are bot accounts, it indicates that the account will add little value, if any, as they will not influence anyone.

An authentic influencer should have more followers than the number of accounts they follow, mainly by a significant margin. Unless someone is a newbie, there is no reason why they should follow a high number of people while only a few people follow them. 

Inconsistency in Account Action

When someone creates a bot account, it will most likely follow thousands of people on the day it is created or a few days after. To look genuine, it may even make several posts. After the bot has followed enough accounts, it stops following people.

If an account is genuine, it should have a considerably steady growth in followers. The growth rate may increase as they become more popular but the account should not have a sudden burst in the number of followers.

Check Instagram Settings

Instagram also allows users to spot potential bot followers in their accounts. The platform hinders suspicious accounts from following you before you confirm it. If an account is suspected of spam, it will be filtered in your accounts setting.

Here are the steps you need to follow when reviewing the potential spam accounts.

  1. Go to your profile by tapping on your profile picture located at the bottom left of your profile.
  2. Tap on your list of followers, then tap on potential spam. This will show you the list of accounts that Instagram considers spam.
  3. To approve a request, tap on Delete or deny the request.

If Instagram has filtered accounts as spam, and you would like to remove them, follow these steps:

  1. Tap on the profile picture located at the bottom right of your profile.
  2. Tap on the list of followers, followed by spam followers.
  3. Tap on Remove All Spam Followers, followed by Remove.

If you would like to filter spam followers in your account, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the profile picture or human icon at your bottom right.
  2. Tap the three lines at the top right, followed by Settings and Privacy.
  3. Tap on your list of followers.
  4. Tap onclose to the Filter follower. This will enable you to toggle the filter on and off.

Using Third-party Tools to Detect Fake Followers

There are Instagram audit tools that will enable you to know if an account has fake Instagram followers. Some of the top options include:

IG auditor

If you need a nondescript tool that will help you analyze public accounts, you should consider IG Auditor. While it doesn't work with private accounts, this could not be a problem as most influencers have a public profile. 

The tool was created by a former NASA scientist and will randomly scan 200 followers from any profile you enter. After scanning the profile, it will give the profile a score of 100. This is one of the best free tools for detecting fake Instagram followers and will help boost your Instagram following.

SocialAudit Pro

While it is a paid service, Social AuditPro offers real value for money. This is because it will help you analyze public Instagram profiles and detect those with fake followers. If there are fake followers, it has a feature that enables you to remove them. It's a good choice for analyzing Instagram influencers to choose one best suited for your business. The tool costs $5 for 5000 followers and $20 for 20,000.

Fakecheck.co.

This tool will help you analyze the number of fake followers by considering the account engagement level. If the ratio of likes to followers isn't within the industry standards, the account is deemed to have fake followers. The user-friendly website will show you more information, such as the accounts that engage most with any account. While it's a paid tool, it is cost-effective, costing as little as $1.

Conclusion

If you consider engaging an Instagram influencer, you should know their follower count.  Unlike in the past, when many followers had good results, some scammers have bot followers that will not engage with your Instagram account.

If you want real followers, you should only work with accounts that will help promote your Ig account to people in that niche. By following our guide, it's possible to detect fake Instagram followers. We recommend you also read our guide on key Instagram metrics.