EXPOSING FAKE INSTAGRAM GURUS AND INFLUENCERS (Follow/Unfollow, Buying Followers, and more!)

Key Takeaways

what's up everyone welcome back to my channel in today's video i'm going to play a little bit of sherlock holmes and walk you through how you can tell if someone has fake followers fake comments fake likes using a bot doing unfollow follow everything like that so if you're interested in being Sherlock Holmes with me then keep on watching now my intuition is telling me that a handful of people are probably going to dislike this video and the reason why I say that is because these strategies of using unfollow follow buying engagement all of that is just so common in the Instagram world nowadays that I feel like people are just brush it off as normal however the reason why I wanted to film this video is because one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing people who have fake followers or who bought their way to Instagram success and suddenly calling themselves organic Instagram gurus when they're really not and also influencers who you know really take advantage of brands and charge premium pricing when really they bought a lot of their engagement I think it's a huge disservice to the people who have actually grown organically and that's why I wanted to create this video to make sure number one you guys don't get taken advantage of by these experts that claim that they know how to grow organically one day themselves have not and also if you run a product based business or if you want to work with influencers that you're able to really tell what is real and what is fake now before I spill the beans and expose all the fake tactics that people use I do have to mention it next week the first week of April I'm hosting three master classes for free all about social media and Instagram so if you guys are interested in that then make sure you don't miss out and check out the link in my comment section and description box below to sign up to be notified so you don't miss it because I'm only doing it the first week of April and I would hate for you to miss out so if you're watching this video at the day that it's uploaded then make sure you sign up so that you don't forget now the first thing that's the easiest to spot just as a red flag I mean this isn't really determinant of whether or not they are doing unfollow follow or not however if they're followers to follow winged ratio is off that is kind of a good indication that they're probably using a bot now what I mean is that if they have a lot of people that they're following versus the amount of followers that they actually have it's kind of a signal that something is a little bit off or if they're following a lot of people and they have a lot of followers at the same time that is also a really good indication that they're probably using some sort of system or method to do unfollow follow if you want to investigate further you can do these following two things the first is actually check out their followers when you look at the followers do they have sketchy profile names are they private accounts or do these accounts seem really inactive most times if people have purchased followers of these followers are generally dead accounts they're probably super inactive there's probably no profile photo very little posts however they follow a bunch of people on the account this is a huge indication that it is a fake account now if you want to validate if someone is actually using the follow unfollow method what you can do then afterwards is go on socialblade.com now keep in mind socialblade only works for business accounts so if you want to do some investigation make sure the account that you're searching for has a business profile but there's two indications within social blade that can really be a good indicator of whether or not that person is using unfollow follow for example when you go on social blade and you notice that their account is losing a lot of followers so it's like in the double digits that's a really good indication that Instagram is actually deleting and removing a lot of spam accounts from their profile because they've probably either bought followers that were spam accounts or they were using unfollow follow and naturally with unfollow follow depending on the agency that you use or whatever software that you use they're most likely also following spam accounts as well and then on the flip side if you see that they're unfollowing a lot of people meaning that they're following count is you know having a lot of fluctuations one day they're following hundreds of people and then the next day or a couple days later they're unfollowing double that that's a basically the indication that they're using unfollow follow because basically the idea of doing unfollow follow is that you're following someone in hopes that they're gonna follow you back and once they follow you back or regardless if they take action or not a couple days later you just unfollow them so that's why I get really upset when some of my clients or just people that I know get so sad that they're losing followers when in reality you're probably losing followers because someone used a bot and is now in following you not because they hate you or hate your content it's literally because they're botting and they have set in the system that three days from now after I follow this person I'm gonna unfollow them just because I want to grow my account so don't get so stressed about the vanity metrics there's so many people that use the unfollow follow method so when you gain followers and when you lose followers don't take it so personally another quick way to see if someone has bought their followers it's just check they're engaged most times if you see an influencer or just a content creator or someone that's on Instagram and they have like 20,000 followers or 30,000 followers yet they have like 20 likes or 50 likes it doesn't really make sense generally if you have an authentic following the engagement on your posts should somewhat correlate and somewhat have a decent ratio another thing too is that a lot of influencers and a lot of people who want to grow on Instagram aren't that dumb so they will buy likes in order to make sure that holistically it looks even however what they fail to remember is also the comment section so if you see that an account has a lot of followers and a lot of likes but they only have like 3 comments or like 5 comments or even 10 comments it kind of doesn't make sense because if you think about it if your account was able to generate that many followers and that many likes the comments should really match that or be on par in some way to reflect the quality of people that are in your community it does not make sense if no one is engaging with your photo through the comments but they're liking it it just doesn't really click now what you also want to remember is earlier on in this video I mentioned that the way you can tell if a councillor fake is just check the account if it's a sketchy account that has a sketchy user name doesn't have a profile picture you know it's just sketchy look if it's sketchy so many times but can you guys get the point then most likely those are spam accounts and that's kind of how it works when people buy likes they're also basically buying spam accounts to like their photos so it's not real now the next thing that I want to mention and it's kind of a gray area is DM groups engagement groups or engagement pause or however you'd like to call it now the reason why I call it a gray area is because it is real people that are commenting on your photo and interacting with your account and to be honest when I used to be in the makeup niche I actually used engagement groups myself as well so if you guys want a video all about engagement groups whether I think it's worth it or not make sure you thumbs up this video so I know to make it next time because I think that that deserves a whole video on its own however the way that you can tell if someone is using a DM group is just check their comments section and if you see the same few people commenting every single time usually that's probably a DM group that's happening there if you see it consistently happening in all the posts that are going on in that profile now keep in mind like I said before DM groups aren't that bad in a sense because they are people but in my opinion if you're trying to start a business for me personally if your value metrics aren't converting to sales then I don't know however again like I said it is a very gray area when it comes to DM groups I'm not hating on them but I'm also not like supporting them I'm kind of in the middle and again I will do another video on it if you guys want but what I'm trying to say is that yes there are DM groups but people can also buy comments as well so really look in the comment section if it's just people dropping emojis and saying nothing else and it's also coming from a sketchy account like I've been mentioning multiple times that person has probably bought comments as well next up another way that you can tell if someone has a fake account like I don't want to use the word fake account but what I mean by fake account is just basically anyone who is like using a bot you know they don't have an authentic organic following and it's like it's paid or some sort of sketchy thing like that blackhat stuff whatever is if you actually look at the views on their videos now some people are actually quite smart and they buy views for videos now I think that's available I think anything on Instagram nowadays you can buy but some people actually forget to buy views so if everything looks kosher you know the the followings match the likes and it matches the comments but you still aren't sure then check out the video and see how many views that video is generating usually that's a huge indicator that someone has probably bought likes followers comments so on and so forth because if they have thousands upon thousands of engagement and supporters yet they only have like 10 views on their videos then I would probably be wary of that as well now last but not least another thing that's kind of harder to tell unless you're the actual person with the account is that when you have fake followers or spam accounts or you know inactive followers generally these followers come from India or they have populated in India I don't really know why and this video is not meant to be like racist so don't pull on me if you're gonna go in the comment section and say that but it's just the truth so if you actually look at your geography analytics in Instagram and you see that majority of your population is from an area like India then most likely those people are probably spam accounts or fake accounts or inactive accounts or however you want to call it so that's a really great indication for you as the account owner to really understand ok you know how many people fake and how many people are real that's not to say that every single person that's from India is like fake that's ridiculous but what I'm trying to say is is that if you have an abnormal amount of people that are populated in India especially if you're from the US and you're from Canada and your demographic is not from there it just doesn't add up and the reason why I'm also mentioning this tip is because I want you guys to be conscious consumers there are so many agencies out there that promise you real followers well I urge you to actually check your geography or geographic settings or analytics on your account and really understand where the populations are because if a company is telling you that these accounts are real and authentic then they probably shouldn't be majority from India that's when you know that you're getting freaking scammed so I just want you to be wary of that as well and I think a really good rule of thumb is that nothing worth it comes easy organic growth does not come easy it's something that you have to work for and if a company is promising you real followers and real engagement and real whatever overnight or you know within a small amount of time I would literally run the other way because that just doesn't exist and I think that this video is really important for me to make because I think that a lot of people are misled in this industry and they look at experts or agencies and pay them top dollar to grow organically and for real when in reality it's still all fake and also a lot of you guys are interested in starting businesses and like I said if your vanity metrics aren't actually creating sales in your business then you need to really re-evaluate your strategy vanity metrics is not the all end be all what matters its delivering great content having quality people who know you like you and trust you and buy from you know like trust buy that's a really important thing that's really going to generate success into your business so please please please guys don't get so caught up in the vanity metrics especially in a world where everyone buys them anyways so if you are interested in Instagram and you want to learn how to grow on social media organically and build an authentic tribe and following then I highly recommend again to check out the link that's in my description box below and also in the comment section below because I am hosting three master classes in my Facebook page so you don't want to miss out on that it's only happening in the first week of April there's only three of them so you'll get all the details when you click that link below I look forward to seeing you and also if you want more tips and tricks on how to grow an Instagram social media building your business and all of that then make sure you check out these two videos right here anyways guys if you guys have a great day a great week and a great life and I hope to see you next week at my master classes bye everyone