Do you care about influencers, social media and the ‘blue tick’?

Unlikely.

I disappear from social media for days or weeks at a time.

Instagram and living my life online are my last priorities.

As much as I love my followers, my kids, family, and mental health all come first equally.

There are a variety of ‘influencers’ online these days, depending on their niché.

Social media is a great way to get lost down a rabbit hole of dance reels and funny videos if you need a break from daily life.

However, there is an element of social media and ‘the influencer’ that you follow or are ‘influenced’ by, that you should care about.

What is the blue tick and how does someone get one?

The fake influencer

Fake, fraud – whatever term suits the wrongdoers.

I’m not talking about all influencers of course.

Many influencers create amazing content and promote products or services in an ethical way.

I’m identifying the influencer that does the following:

• doesn’t disclose ads, sponsorships or paid partnerships (and they know that they should),
• would promote a paper bag if it gave them a pay day,
• has bought followers or faked engagement.

They falsify their experiences to you, the consumer, for a quick buck.

They’ll promote anything and everything they’re offered.

They’ll badger brands for deals.

They’ll likely not have your best interests at heart.

They are simply about making money, regardless of the product.

For example:

Think about an influencer that promotes various makeup, skin and/or hair products from different brands constantly…

Trying and testing products on yourself takes time; a hair treatment you only try once isn’t going to fix your hair overnight.

No one’s hair or skin is the same and not all products work the same for everyone.

You can’t tell me that every single product they’re given works perfectly every time.

What we should be asking influencers is:

“How many products, brand deals or sponsorships are you actually turning down?”

Influencers that buy followers to make you believe the lie

So, why do people buy followers?

Popularity, influencer job prospects and business sales.

Some people think that if you have thousands of followers, that makes you eligible for regular paid social media content.

Not true.

You need authentic and organic engagement from your followers.

You also need to post regularly and post meaningful content.

Buying followers especially is dishonest not only to the consumer but to the business wanting to use the influencer as well.

It is also especially embarrassing when you’re called out on buying followers by fellow influencers.

Because those that have a large following, have generally gained them organically from hard work, promotion and authentic content and don’t like it when people fake it.

How do I know if someone has bought followers?

I was recently scammed on a gift I purchased online.

Then again, I should have done my due diligence.

I know better now.

I tend to look up a business on IG to see their pictures and follower count.

This small business had over 100k followers – amazing!

It must be reputable, right?

Not always.

I should have looked past the aesthetic photos and large following.

The items I purchased became defective within one week.

I was disappointed; this was an expensive gift, the quality of the materials was terrible to not even last a week and as this was a gift, I was embarrassed as the giver.

I was going to message the company to complain.

Instead, I went on and checked their followers and photos.

I should have clicked on the actual photos before.

This business posts nearly daily and not a single comment on about 95% of them.
If a person or business has well over 100k followers, there would generally be a few comments at the very least (unless restricted/comments have been turned off).

Bots or fake account?

When Instagram pages look like this, they are generally bots:

Or when they look like this, they may likely be a fake account:

What to look out for on Instagram

Back to the scam business I purchased from.

Do your research.

I’ve written my purchase off as a learning exercise.

Read reviews and don’t just rely on social media.

Keep an eye on these things:

• Profile name/handle is made up, obscure or doesn’t match the images posted.

• The account is following thousands of people, where they may have only a few dozen or so accounts following them.
• The account is blocked. If not blocked, they may have only a few random photos.
• No profile picture or a random photo e.g. a flower, cartoon, a saying, or a person of interest.

The good influencer

As much shit as influencers get, there are many great ones out there.

It make take time for a full-time influencer to learn their craft and the right versus wrong way to go about business.

At the end of the day, you’ll know which ones to keep an eye out for.

If not, here are my recommendations:

• They are honest about the product or service they’re promoting,
• Authentic and filter-free (in this case, I mean personality filter-free but IG filter-free is great also),
• They apologise when they’re wrong,
• They help others and use their platform for good.

If you like learning about the behind-the-scenes of influencers, a good read if you are interested is by SBS – Faking Influence is a fantastic read and a real thorough insight.

Stay tuned as I’ll be following up this topic with all the goss about the paparazzi and spotting the ‘staged’ photos.