The signs to identify a purchase of followers

26 Jun 2024

Many brands and companies resort to buying followers to inflate their audience with an artificial community. This practice undermines the normal system, which is why it is banned by most social networks. However, there are clear signs that can help detect the purchase of followers.

How to recognize the purchase of followers on Twitter?

The purchase of followers is considered an illegal practice. Twitter is one of the social networks that declares war on fake followers. Thanks to the API of the microblogging site Twitter, it is possible to identify a purchase of subscribers. Indeed, it analyzes the language, country, number of tweets, time zone of the accounts, etc.

There are also social media statistics sites that can help identify an account with several fake followers. For example, if 90% of the followers of a French reality TV account are from Chile, there is a strong probability that the seller of followers is working with Chile. Other parameters can also be analyzed, such as an abnormal increase in followers. Additionally, profiles without avatars, accounts that do not tweet, and accounts with very few subscriptions are studied, and this is in relation to the nature of the subscriber accounts themselves.

Moreover, platforms such as Twitter Audit offer an assessment of the percentage of fake followers of a Twitter account. Although these sites are not always accurate, a high number of "fakes" among the followers of the account in question is enough to raise users' suspicions about dubious practices.

According to surveys, several fake followers follow thousands of accounts, but they do not respond when addressed. Likewise, they do not retweet messages, and when they do tweet, it becomes a complete mess. They post clichéd phrases, often in different languages. Some even seem to have dozed off on their keyboards, stringing together "fleededegetgenddkelfkn" and other robot neologisms. Such inconsistencies are a clear sign that one is facing a purchase of followers.

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How to recognize the purchase of followers on Instagram?

In today’s world, influencer marketing has become an essential tool for many businesses and brands. This practice has even become very popular because of its natural aspect, as it involves conveying a message through an influencer. When you search for Instagram influencers for your marketing campaign, it is important to analyse their Instagram account to ensure that they are indeed influencers or if they are buying fake followers. If that is the case, it is not very wise to collaborate with them. Fortunately, there are ways to identify this kind of influencer.

Thanks to the Heepsy site, you can easily detect influencers with fake followers. Certain elements are analysed that will allow you to discover the quality of an influencer’s Instagram profile. The first analysis object concerns the trend of the number of followers of an Instagram influencer. You will discover the evolution of the number of followers of the influencer in question over the past year. If you notice spikes in follower increases or conversely a sudden drop, this is the first sign that there may have been a purchase of followers. Another possibility is the organization of a contest that requires subscribing to the account to win. To get to the bottom of it, you can visit their account since the date of the spike is displayed.

The other criterion concerns the engagement rate. This is the rate of interaction that followers have with an influencer. This is measured by the number of likes, comments, or views of a video for example. If the engagement rate is low, it means that their followers are not interested in their content and thus less interesting. On Heepsy, you can check whether the engagement rate is low, average, or high.

How to Recognise Purchased Followers on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is not immune to the phenomenon of fake followers. This platform is also fighting against these fake profiles by removing them. In fact, nearly 33.7 million fake accounts were removed in 2020. There are several characteristics to recognise a fake account related to the purchase of followers on LinkedIn.

Among these characteristics, one can observe:

A low profile completion rate: in other words, no profile picture, no cover photo, little to no information in the title, absence of visual pins, no links, no experience mentioned, no skills, etc.
A very low number of connections with an oddly high proportion of mutual connections.
Non-professional email address.
Counterfeit verification badge, particularly in the profile picture or the "title" field.
No or few reactions to comments, shares, and posts observed in the activities section of the profile.
A search for the name or first name on Google shows no results other than the LinkedIn profile.
Use of a duplicated name, first name, or photo.
Business name that cannot be found except on LinkedIn.
No response or presence of inappropriate responses when you send a message like "Do we know each other?" or "Can I help you?".
Instant request for conversation outside of LinkedIn.

If an account is overflowing with such followers, it has likely purchased followers.

Buying followers allows one to gain a certain number of followers to launch a brand or a business. However, social networks have implemented foolproof techniques to recognise the purchase of followers. Moreover, this type of practice is illegal. My Name Is Bond can help you create a real engaged community on social media.

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