Fake followers: the silent business killers

These days, businesses aim to increase their social media following because they know that increasing their following will boost their brand awareness, thus leading to an increase in sales. What if I told you that it's not the following that a business amasses that dictates their success, but their engagement? It’s true that if a business has a large following that they have an easier time boosting their brand awareness, but what the social media algorithms prefer is how much you engage with your followers and vice versa. This is why one of the biggest issues that marketers have are fake followers on their socials. Fake followers do not interact with your posts, they don't engage in conversations about the brand, and they cant respond to calls-to-action put out by your brand, so they decrease the engagement levels of a business’ social media and in turn, reduce the amount of traffic to a businesses website.

Much of the data used to do market research for a business is through the analytics of their social media. A company will measure its key performance indicators (KPI) using a certain metric measurement. Kerin discusses the different metrics that companies use to determine their KPI’s in chapter seven of Marketing: The Core. He gives Facebook as an example and discusses how they measure their performance in “likes.” Many businesses using social media for their advertising rely on likes as a metric to determining their KPI’s. This information is often used to identify the smallest viable market as described by Seth Godin — the audience that is most likely to fall in love with your business — and tailor marketing methods to appeal to them. A company’s followers also indicate the type of person that is most attracted to a company based on their social media presence. Fake accounts dilute this data because it is not possible to generate a consumer profile on a consumer who does not exist and will not purchase your product. These accounts also prevent your business’ socials from being visible to new consumers because the social media algorithm will no longer boost posts, stories, and advertisements to your followers or the wider audience.