Fake Followers vs. Real Impact: The Future of Influencer Marketing

Well, fake followers are the real thing if you are still hesitant about believing it. Influencer marketing is rapidly growing in the world of marketing, but with growth comes the harsh reality. The issue of fraud engagement and fake followers is not a significant threat to most industries.

Moreover, as this trust issue has now become serious, it was present even before we talked about it. This has been a significant issue for brands and influencers who are still grappling with how to address it.

In the industry, there have been some mistakes that resulted in missing the real engagement and falling into the trap of fake followers. As brands have already been on the edge of falling out with the social media influencers who have been gaining attention because of their bot followers.

The need is to be aware and bring them out of their covered-up bot curtains.

These followers are only bots.

However, this only gets tougher with tempting profiles that have thousands and millions of followers, thinking that it is all relevant and engaging followers.

Now, bursting the truth to you, these followers are all purchased via engagement pods or bots. Also, if we turn to statistics, the numbers will be more shocking. Around 58% of Instagram profiles are suggested to have a certain number of fake followers. This number is only growing now and consistently more than the real engagement rate.

With the bot followers, what comes more is the fake engagement, which is also too good to be real. These followers are mostly inactive and mostly fabricated. But with everything fake, what’s at stake is the real trust that is offered by the brands and consumers in the influencer marketing industry.

Also Read: Going Beyond Instagram – Influencer Marketing on Different Platforms

Trust is at stake.

These followers are not only killing the real engagement but also hampering the work integrity. Also, when brands come to know about the misled, the complete influencer marketing ecosystem is at stake. With this also comes a lot of skepticism within the industry.

Moreover, the harsh truth is that social media platforms have not been thinking enough about solving this critical reality. Popular media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Meta are still not up to solving the root cause completely.

We don’t even have the relevant tools to help detect the authentic followers and engagement, which also makes it difficult for brands to trust influencer marketing agencies or social media influencers to be honest.

Transparency is the key.

The industry needs more transparency when it comes to influencers. With growing mistrust, we need stricter guidelines to be followed, authentic tools for brands and agencies to make informed decisions.

Social media influencers with fake followers must be held accountable for misleading, and strong action should be taken against them.

As for influencer marketing, the real thing is authenticity, and if it is missing, it will only result in mistrust. It is also about forming relationships between brands and audiences, with fake followers incoming, this cycle gets corrupted.

Also Read: Influencer Marketing Costs Are Rising… But So Are the Results

Conclusion

With so much uncertainty, the future of social media influencers and influencer marketing as well is unclear. So, the need is to deep dive and give hands-on higher for accountability, authenticity, and transparency.

The only thing now required is to save the real power of influencer marketing, which is not built on mistrust or bot followers or fakeism.

As for brands, this will result in actually being able to trust the influencers and invest in them. So, the reality is all here; it’s just blurred out with a bit of fakeism.