Our State of Influencer Marketing 2019: Exploring influencer fraud on Instagram has just arrived and this is the most complete research on influencer fraud so far.

For this study, we have analyzed over 4M influencers on Instagram and over 500M posts and here are 5 key takeaways from that research.

1. The Instagram audience is becoming older

According to our stats, 45.43% of Instagram users in 2019 are aged between 25 and 34. Over the past few years, the average age of the users has increased markedly. According to Statista, in 2012 the primary Instagram audience was aged between 18 and 24 (35%) and only 33% was aged between 25 and 34.

Influencers are especially effective for reaching Millennials and the older generation of Generation Z.

Ever since Instagram removed the chronological feed, users have been trying to find a way to hack the algorithm. Some turn to using bots, and others to Instagram pods or boost groups.

Instagram Engagement Pods are groups of Instagram users that commit to consistently engaging with each other’s content in order to increase impressions and engagement.

Pods’ members communicate with each other via Instagram DM’s, Telegram, WhatsApp or Facebook groups. Every time someone in the pod publishes a new Instagram post, they share it in the group message thread. Instagram pod members will then click on the post, like it, and leave a comment.

Is it effective to use Engagement Pods?

Your engagement will grow but only when you are actively using the pods. It doesn’t affect your future posts, followers count or sales.

When you think about Switzerland, what is the first thing that pops up in your mind? Banking, doesn’t it? Steven Epprecht chose an alternative and more risky path of quitting a stable job in a bank and becoming a full-time blogger and model. We had a chat about the story behind his blog – “SE signature style” and why using HypeAuditor is a must for any Instagram blogger.

– For many people working in a Swiss bank may sound like a dream. Why leaving a stable job and taking a more adventurous path – becoming a full-time model?

Being a banker in Switzerland is the most typical job you could imagine, it’s like being a baker and make all kind of baguettes in France. Although I prefer the first one still since it’s paid much better. How to become a model in Switzerland? Follow my example, graduate with a bachelor of economics like me, start modelling and then quit your stable job and embrace all the ups and downs of the blogging and modelling world (laughing).

Modelling has been my biggest passion for quite a while now. I tried to use every possibility to get better at it and step by step started to develop my portfolio using my vacation time while working for a bank. Then comes the time for a big decision: to truly dedicate yourself to the modelling, since you should be quite flexible with your schedule, or stay at your 9-5 job. For a typical Swiss, it’s quite a tough decision, since we are quite conservative. Perhaps some of you would pick a financial stability over the need for self-actualisation and happiness. Yet, everyone is free to choose a path to follow. I’m quite supportive of people who are courageous enough to follow their dream and overcome the difficulties which they certainly going to face while paving their way. If you have a passion for life and enough motivation to make it tangible, then it’s better to try and perhaps fail then to regret when you don’t have that much time left.

Hundreds of articles about Instagram growth recommend using the follow/unfollow Instagram trick. They claim that this method can easily get you about 50-100+ new followers a day, but they are silent about the harm that this method can cause.

What is Mass Following and How Does the Follow/Unfollow Instagram Trick Work?

The Follow/Unfollow trick, or mass following, is commonly used by micro and middle influencers and shops to find new followers and clients. It has very simple mechanics:

• • An influencer’s account follows you, or likes, or posts a comment on Instagram.

• • You get a notification and follow them back

• They unfollow you after a couple of days.

Instagrammers use special tools and apps for automatic Follow/Unfollow that starts following other users based on the filter criteria.

They can base it on location (geotags) or hashtags, and search for users following specific accounts and etc.

As the Influencer Marketing industry grows, so does competition among agencies. Data-driven decision making is clearly the strongest weapon. However, data can be quite misleading without a good understanding of what you need to focus on.

We want to pick a good influencer for our portfolio and run a campaign. Anna and Brittany seemed to be really suitable for our project, having quite similar numbers: Anna with 50,9K followers and an engagement rate of 3,31% and Brittany with 52,8K followers and an engagement rate of 3,35%.

However, this would not be enough to make our decision, as we do not have much data on the quality of their audience. Why? The key to success of any advertising campaign is to gain reach among a real audience, which would lead to increased interest in a product and sales. But most marketing specialists do not really know that influencers inflate the size of their audience with multiple tools that are easily discovered on the web. HypeAuditor solves this problem by providing you with an accurate Audience Quality Score that includes 4 key metrics for effective decision making.

Instagram influencers are now an indispensable part of internet marketing. Statista revealed that as of June 2018, there are more than a billion active Instagram accounts every month. In a time when people are dependent on social media for news, entertainment, and communication, influencers have risen to satisfy the demand for brand awareness through this particular platform.

Of course, influencers have been at the receiving end of criticism too, particularly those directed at fraudulent accounts, follower/comment purchasing, and sensational content. HypeAuditor previously revealed that among UK and US influencers, 30% have a low-quality audience. The numbers are even higher among micro-influencers, as more than 50% of their followers are of low quality. These low-quality audiences are usually from bought likers, commenters, and followers, most of which are dummy accounts made for this particular service. This is why you don’t want just any influencer to market your brand.

If you are looking to tap Instagram influencers for your brand, consider the following tips first.

Recently at HypeAuditor, we’ve studied over 50,000 Instagram influencers from the US and UK. We’ve grouped influencers together into 6 Tiers, depending on their follower count, and checked their audience quality.

The study shows that celebrities and influencers with millions of followers have, in general, 28.44% of a low-quality audience.  It is noteworthy that UK macro-influencers have 26.66% of a low-quality audience, while US influencers have 30.23%.

This number is even higher amongst micro-influencers, by comparing one with another we revealed that on average over 50% of their audience is of a low-quality. The data shows that the fewer followers an influencer has, the higher their percentage of a low-quality audience.

At HypeAuditor we believe that this happens for several reasons:

• disorderly use of hashtags which leads to the growing number of mass-followers;
• using ineffectual Instagram growth services and shoutouts to influencers without checking their accounts for fraud;
• purchasing followers.

Influencer Marketing is not anymore just an additional channel to acquire new customers. With more than 1 billion monthly active users on Instagram and the U.S. net advertising revenues projected to reach 3.96 billion US dollars in 2018, there are brands that are investing more than 80% of their total marketing budget on influencer marketing activities.

Unfortunately, still a lot of brands don’t know how to properly find the right influencers and how to organize a influencer marketing campaign, wasting marketing budget and not getting enough ROI.

In this article, I will give you 3 main advices when starting a collaboration with influencers.

We are very excited to introduce you the new feature of HypeAuditor –  Instagram Influencers Rankings. It is based on the analysis of 3,295,000+ bloggers. We rank them by the number of real followers and authentic engagement.

The Instagram Influencers Rankings helps marketers to understand the real landscape of influencers in their target country or niche to make better marketing campaigns. Until recently it was almost impossible to do because of the rise of cheating methods among influencers. Over 30% of Instagram accounts are fake and non-active.

How does it work?

• Gather raw data

We gather raw data from different sources, depersonalize and group it.

• Check followers quality

Our AI takes only real followers and likes from them into consideration.

• Rank & track

Algorithm ranks influencers and forms the global top, updated daily.

Our AI updates ranking daily and shows the rank change since last month to help you to keep an eye on what’s trending and who’s growing authentically.

Today we would like to shed light on the infamous Fake Followers. This is a trending topic that has been massively discussed in the Influencer Marketing community lately.

It is now blatant that some of the bloggers will deliberately buy Fake Followers in order to make their account numbers seem larger than they really are. Others unwittingly gain Fake Followers, by signing up for Instagram Growth Services. These services promise a truckload of real followers, but eventually, you end up having your account littered with nothing but poorly designed bots.

In rare cases we have faced – which are the most affronting of all – your competitors buy the bots for you. Yes, you read it right! These “witty marketers” come to the conclusion that there is a painful scarcity of followers on your account, and they feel really, really bad for you. So much so that they go ahead and buy you the cheapest bots you can find on Earth. Good thing they are fairly easy to notice.

We’ve confronted many situations such as this – and now would like to spend a minute to share our experience on how to ditch bad quality audience from your account. 

What are fake followers on Instagram?

At HypeAuditor we believe that a Fake Follower is pretty much any poor quality account: whether it’s a mass follower or suspicious account.

Most of the accounts considered to be ‘mass followers’ are bots that are following more than 5,000 accounts. Deadheads with no posts published at all.

How to Get Rid of Bots on Instagram

There are three conventional ways of removing bad quality followers.

Option 1: Melee Attack

If you have an Instagram Business Account, the only way would be to manually block followers. To do that, find their profile by tapping the (…) in the top-right corner and hit ‘Block’.

To make life easier, it could make sense for you to switch your Business Account to your Personal Account, and then make it Private. Now you won’t need to block the followers, you can just remove them.

Be aware that such manual cleanup will work only if there are less than 10K of bad quality accounts following you.

It will indeed take a while, yes, but in a week or two you will have completely resurrected your account and made it appealing to advertisers again.

Option 2: Apps Custom Designed for your Needs

There are numerous special applications, like IG Cleaner, available on the App Store. However, with more than 5K bots on your account, you might consider investing in a good service since free apps will not allow you to delete as many accounts as you like. So a paid app will come in handy, saving you both time and sanity.

Go to ‘Settings’ and filter out all inactive users, then feel free to wipe them all out. Instagram has set specific limitations on the number of actions taken in an hour, so the app will need some time to clean up the mess. Perhaps a day or two.

Option 3: Mass Following Services

You might be taken aback here. But it is true. Although we’re not big fans of mass followers, and services providing it, they can be of advantage to you. Some of these services allow you to ban your own followers. Don’t be shy to block/filter the accounts that follow more than 6K pages. As with the special app, you will have a clean account in a week.

Remember: if there are tens of thousands of bots on your account, you would have to arm yourself with patience, as it would take weeks, or even months, to do the work.

At the end of the day, have no fear when removing bad quality audience. It’s better to be a blogger with 20K real followers and a good reputation, rather than have 70K followers and a pumped up account. Many brands have decided to step back from working with bloggers who have a bad audience. Think of a recent statement by Unilever.