Fake or not fake? Ghost Accounts on Instagram – Social Media Analysis

Buying Likes and Followers is absolutely no problem today. In Russia there are even the first machines for Likes at airports, for a few rubles you can buy 50, 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 followers here. Super practical, before you set off on your journey, to pimp up your own social profile a little. Today we want to show you an industry that is influenced by such organic front interaction numbers. The higher the interaction rate, the greater the commitment of the fans, i.e. interaction through comments, likes or further answers or even sharing photos and videos. The more fans you add, the lower the interaction rate.

Mode and fake Instagram Accounts

Especially in the area of fashion, outfits and styling, Likes have become an important currency and advertising today. Who checks if the follower number of the fashion designer is real? Most people press Like and you have already placed this channel in your algorithm.

Quality assessment based on engagement rate and interaction rate

If you are a social media manager yourself, you should check the Instagram channels of people as well as companies. Many social channels contain a conspicuous number of ghost accounts, but these do not provide any interaction. From this it can be concluded that, as a rule, these are not real persons.

To help you understand how different such interaction rates can look, here is a best practice example from the fashion industry. Model agencies deal with the development of young talents and the placement of jobs. The young models then work for photo shootings, online shops, social media channels or for fashion shows. Of course, you want to look good at first sight, especially when young models visit your own Instagram channel. But how authentic are the followers? Are they real people interacting with the brand or agency consequences and their content, or are they ghost accounts interacting with the channel consequences? With the help of various software for social media analysis, we once started a small market study for you. The numbers will allow you to see the qualitative differences and adopt the methods and techniques for your own work as a social media manager.

How are such ghosts accounts created?

On Instagram anyone can log in to a user account. You don’t need your own unique number, e.g. the mobile phone number, but each user can create as many Instagram accounts as he wants. If someone has programming knowledge, he can quickly build a network by linking proxy servers and various Instagram accounts. In principle, you don’t even need programming skills, you just need a hard-working intern and a smartphone.

Search engine for Instagram

In order to keep as many of these fake and ghost accounts as possible outside our closed Influencer system, our software sets out to exclude many smaller accounts. For this an enormous majority of influencer campaigns do not require small channels, this makes no difference to the majority of agencies. On the contrary, you can exclude many fake accounts and concentrate on the accounts that are worthwhile. In our influencer search engine you will therefore find almost exclusively relevant and larger influencers in a range from 10,000 to 20,000 followers.

Further information about Social Media Software

Further information about our social media software can be found here:

• Social Analytics