Fishing Out Your Fake Followers
The advice that follows is more aimed at the social media newbies than the advanced Twitter, Facebook and Instagram warriors, who are now savvy enough to know a “fake follower” when they see one. So, what’s the issue with having fake followers and how might they negatively affect your social media presence? With the help of Social Media Examiner, one of Peppermint’s trusted social media resources, we’re going to provide you with four tools to weeding out those fakes!
Spotting the fake fans
Phony profiles and spammy comments on your Facebook page can seriously damage your appearance in the newsfeed: Facebook might remove you completely if you don’t get rid of Likes and Comments from ‘friends’ that are from a fake account. Personal experience shows that spotting a fake account can be difficult, partly because the person often seems to be friends with your friends.
You may never have heard of the person inviting you to be their friend, but you see a number of ‘mutual’ friends and you click confirm. Don’t! They’re no use to you and they can cause trouble. For example, have you suddenly had a spate of fans follow you from Asian countries? Please ignore them unless you know them personally, or you can check with a mutual friend. Also, women beware; a number of these accounts will stalk you for sexual services and become abusive when you ‘unfriend’ them.
Two of The Fake Follower Apps
You have probably noticed that some days on Twitter you suddenly gain quite a few followers. You look at their profile and wonder why they’re following you, plus frequently they’re offering to buy you fans, 5,000 links or whatever. Don’t follow these people back. They’ll leave you anyway when they realise you’re not playing ball.
At Peppermint, we know it feels nice to see the number of followers rise, but you really only want ‘real’ followers that can genuinely help your business: they have to be relevant to your business to boost your credibility. If you’re not sure who is genuine and who’s fake; get Fakers App from Status people. Another free tool is FakeFollowers from Socialbakers. This checks your followers against a checklist of actions.
Target on Twitter
The Twitter Audit tool is best for large Twitter accounts because it works on a random sample of 5,000 at a time. It assigns a score to each follower, again based on a set of criteria, such as number of tweets and date of last tweet from the account.
The Instagram Exorcist
Thumbs up to the developer Michael Landers, who created IGExorcist to rid you of ‘ghosts’ in your Instagram account. This tool will check your followers to see what percentage of them are spam accounts by looking at activity over 300 days. Typically, spam accounts don’t interact with accounts they’re following for long periods of time, unless they’re posting spam comments.
And, that’s the four key tools Peppermint and Social Media Examiner currently recommend to help you fish out those fake followers. We hope you have fun with them!
If you’d like help with any aspect of your website, whether it is design, content, social media or SEO, contact Jade Thompson at Peppermint Spain on +34 951 316 553 or email info@peppermintcreate.com