Let’s take a step further in the numbers and facts on fake of Instagram, with also some focus on the wine accounts. Following the post from earlier this year on Fake influencers and Instagram, and working on for so many months, I kept digging and researching analytics on the influencers marketing research for some clients and as I work with several wine producers, brands and appellations, I focused on this niche market.

So what I have learned from this? Well too many accounts pretending to be “influencers” are using Instagram Engagement Pod, Bots and abusively Follow / Unfollow to start, and this is not only happening on Instagram… and not only in the wine world

What needs to be noted plenty of these fake influencers just rely on their Instagram numbers! Numbers don’t mean a lot on social media as they can be tricked and fakes easily …but there is plenty of companies doing daily analytics … and trust me, numbers talk if you are cheating. And what will if someday Instagram breaks down?

Note plenty of influencers profiles in all kind of segments travel, wine, food, photography, don’t have real active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube… And sadly views, likes, and followers can be fake and bought on all platforms these days… I have even seen agencies using it or promoting “influencers” using it (I even spotted some big YouTube accounts faking it) !

As I mentioned wine is such a niche compared to photography, travel, animals, DIY… that hashtags related to it such as popular #wine #winelover #winelovers bring way less awareness than a #photography #travel … I have done enough research to say that there is plenty of cheaters!

So we went deeper with the help of data & analytics companies, focusing on the wine niche, here are some numbers :

4-week follower growth number and percentage
  • 20 % of accounts are below the 10K followers mark, and in this segment, about 80 % of the accounts have a legit growth – but plenty of accounts are sadly also using engagements pods to inflate their numbers
  • On the other end on the accounts over the 10K mark of followers 90 % of the accounts are using suspicious methods such as the infamous Follow/Unfollow method, and using Comment Pods and even some bought followers
  • We find some accounts have countries that don’t really relate to their audience in their following reports Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia…
  • The total of Mass Followers & Suspicious accounts in their following goes up to 60 % of the “audience” for some profiles.
  • The 4-week follower growth goes up to over 10 % percent for some, which is clearly impossible

To give you some comparison: we can take Alex Vizeo, a well known French travel influencer who even had his own serie on National TV channel he is today at 74.3K followers on Instagram and a little over 93K on Youtube in a legit way, creating useful daily content and videos! So explain to me, how some wine Instagram accounts would have same numbers of higher than him?

How consumers, unless they are wine geeks, would love to see a feed with just wine labels or poor quality content with no real storytelling. How these accounts would get the same numbers as real famous persons? Well, simply they are fake!

Following numbers from my study and analytics focusing on wine, I would just say double check people before doing anything with them, don’t be fooled by numbers!

Why Instagram is doing nothing about it? Well, they are cleaning up slowly and fixing the mess, and it is easy for Instagram to know where the “traffic” is coming from as each link shared get its own special print. I believe they can’t lock it all and do it in one shot otherwise at the end of the year they would have a report with bad numbers for their shareholders… Also note, so many accounts stealing and reposting content these days and so many fakes & automation are ruining the platform more and more.

Also note that analytics platforms don’t have access to all as the IG Stories data can’t be accessed and the Direct Messages are all private for all profiles on Instagram

I got provided also some extra data by HypeAuditor you can use the platform to generates and get reports on – what you should focus on to start is the patterns on Follow & Unfollow – check the growth – comments authenticity, and eventually, take time to see who comments below the posts

Here are numbers based on the all Instagram world

Percentage of Fraud-Free influencers by country
The lowest rate of fraud-free influencers was detected in Italy 🇮🇹 (33.34%), 🇩🇪 Germany (36.72%), and 🇮🇳 India (36.02%). The influencers in🇯🇵 Japan,
the 🇬🇧UK, and 🇫🇷 France have the highest quality.
Over 40% of influencers in these countries are authentic

Percentage of influencers who use Follow/Unfollow by country 🔥
Here is the podium 
1- Russia (23.34%) 
2 – Italy (21.78%)
3- Brazil (21.66%)

India, Italy, and Germany have the biggest rate of influencers who grow their comments using suspicious methods. 🔥

Percentage of influencers who use Comment Pods by сountry 🔥
Italy 1st position again 🙉
Influencers in the US, India, Brazil, and Japan prefer to buy comments instead of using pods 🙊

Percentage of influencers who use Comment Pods by followers number : Engagement Pods are widespread among influencers who have between 1K and 20K followers. They can easily boost their engagement rate using this method because each new comment will affect the ER. When the amount of followers is bigger, comments pods have less impact on the ER and they become non-effective. Medium and macro-influencers prefer to buy comments instead of waste their time in engagement groups.

Automatic Likes usage percentage by followers number – Most influencers prefer to periodically buy likes instead of pay for auto likes services.
But anyway we’ve found some patterns specific to different groups of influencers. Auto likes services are more popular among influencers between 5K and 100K followers. Influencers with over 1M followers rarely use these services.

You can try HypeAuditor if you want –  with the code FABIENSOMM You can get 3 credits to generates reports for free https://hypeauditor.com 

In collaboration with HypeAuditor