AVOID BEING SCAMMED BY AN INSTAGRAM “INFLUENCER”

By this time, I feel like everyone knows about ‘buying followers’ on Instagram … in fact, even I am guilty of this ‘back in the day’ (like in 2012) when I thought I was buying REAL ACCOUNTS … turned out to be all ‘bots’ and I learned a valuable lesson in the importance of doing the real hard work of organic growth on social media … it might take longer, but buying fake followers to boost your number on your Instagram page won’t get you very far when people start noticing that your Reel views and photo ‘likes’ aren’t quite in sync with your following … which brings me to the entire point of this blog post …

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN BUY ENGAGEMENT FOR YOUR REELS AND POSTS ON INSTAGRAM?

If you did, you are way ahead of me … and I’m not talking about through Meta … I’m talking about having it viewed by FAKE BOTS to make the Reel view number look high … I feel so deceived right now! And more than that, I feel a large amount of anger for the small businesses who are being tricked by this type of “influencer” … the one who buys followers and then pays for engagement … making it look like they are LEGITIMATE …

BUT, I HAVE GOOD NEWS …

… there is a way to beat these immoral frauds at their own game … and I’m going to teach you how … because (especially in THIS economy) we all need to make sure we are throwing our marketing dollars where it will ACTUALLY bring us potential shoppers and clients … so, here is my rule book on how to spot these scammers BEFORE you hand over your money to them:

SCROLL THE ACCOUNTS WHO FOLLOW THEM

I realize this can be time consuming … especially since some of these big accounts can have over 25,000 followers … but do it anyway … give it about 15-20 page scrolls and try to count how many accounts seem like a bot … you can even open the ones you feel look fishy and see if they are … a bot is pretty easy to spot … if you spot some, it doesn’t necessary mean this account is a fraud who buys a ton of fake followers … which we why we then move onto step 2 …

LOOK AT THEIR REELS / VIEWS / COMMENTS

After you get a feel for who follows them, head to their Reels and scroll the page to see the ‘view counts’ on their Reels … do they seem low for the number of followers they have? Do they seem inconsistent? Open one of the Reels with a high view count …. how may comments did it get? How many likes did it receive? Is that number consistent with the number of views? BE a DETECTIVE … this is YOUR MONEY we are talking about spending … ok, we aren’t done … moving to step 3

OPEN A REEL AND FIND THE ‘HEART’ AND CLICK ON THE NUMBER BELOW

When I learned you can see who has ‘liked’ a Reel, a whole new world opened for me … maybe this is common knowledge, but I wasn’t aware … and I have been on Instagram since it was in Beta … yeah, I’m old … so, click on the number and scroll who has ‘liked’ the Reel … if it’s mostly bots, we have what we call: SOMEONE WHO BUYS ENGAGEMENT.

LET’S DISCUSS …

If there is an Instagram “Influencer” who is buying followers AND engagement, then they are going out of their way to put up a front of:

“my page rocks … not only do I have a ton of followers, but my Reels get watched so you should give me your money and I will get other people to notice your product and/or service”

… not so fast … in this day and age we, as business owners, need to do our own due diligence … you can’t just “believe” social media anymore … so, let’s say you already are working with an influencer on Instagram and you didn’t do ^^ anything above to see if they are legit … that’s ok … you can still do those things and beyond that, I recommend doing these steps too:

TRACK ONE OF THEIR REELS

I recommend turning on post notifications on an account you are either considering hiring to promote you or have already hired to promote you … when you get a notification that they have posted a Reel, refresh the Reel every 10 minutes … yeah, I know, you’ll feel like a stalker … that’s ok … remember, we are trying to protect your investment … things to watch for: a Reel that immediately bumps from a low number to a very high number within a few minutes … this probably means they pay for engagement … and if you think that’s the case, go up to the step where we talk about looking into what types of accounts ‘liked’ the Reel. Keep on eye on it … either way you will learn something … if the Reel doesn’t gain traction at all, it might not be a good investment … and if it jumps to a super high number (this is why you check on it every 10 minutes so you can see it happen) then you know it’s being paid for.

And to know if they pay through Meta for “legit” (that’s still debatable) engagement or through a ‘bot producing’ agency for engagement - be sure and click on the number under the heart to see what kinds of accounts are ‘engaging’ with it ;)

IS ALL ‘REEL BOOSTING’ BAD?

I honestly don’t know … I do know you can pay Instagram to boost a Reel to a specific audience … but here’s my thing: if the Influencer is REAL and organically grew their following and has a good engagement with their followers, why would they be paying Instagram to boost their Reel? Isn’t the whole point to be the one being paid to boost a company? Either way, this is why we look at WHO is commenting or how many comments and WHO is liking the Reel … very important.

ANOTHER TIP: DON’T COLLABORATE ON THE REEL FOR THE FIRST PAID / FOR TRADE POST

Either don’t collab on it … or wait for 10 hours or so before you accept … this way you can see how this influencer / content creator account flies solo … If you have an established account and you collaborate with an influencer, then the Reel will pull from both of your accounts simultaneously … which will skew the numbers … allow them to be on their own and do everything above to track it … also, this reminds me of a good point … when you are doing your research, only look at Reels that they post ALONE … collaborations won’t give you true numbers.

Look, it’s rough out there … people want to become overnight Instagram success stories and a lot of people don’t have the patience … growing a true following with high engagement is hard and takes A LOT OF WORK … if someone is trying to cut corners to get a paycheck, we need to be able to spot them … hope this checklist helps!!

XO~ Heather