Public relations is all about engaging with the public, media, and other key stakeholders. It aims to boost your brand reputation, promote customer engagement, and achieve overall business success.
But in today’s digital landscape, nothing beats working with social media influencers. These influencers have the power to put your brand in the spotlight. They can get people to patronize your business, buy your products, or hire your services.
Here’s an influencer update: Consumer, business, and tech trends impact the creator economy. These key factors drive influencers to post brand-related content and connect with their target market. However, some go as far as committing scams just to milk money from businesses.
As an entrepreneur, how do you identify and avoid influencer fraud at all costs?
This page covers the impact and prevention of influencer fraud on PR campaigns. Read on to learn how to detect and prevent fake followers.
The Impact of Influencer Fraud on PR Campaigns
Social media has become a powerful tool in today’s business landscape. With over 5.07 billion users worldwide, it has the power to connect with a wide range of people. Think of content creators turned into influencers on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They can help brands promote their products or services on their platforms.
Grant Aldrich, Founder of Online Degree, highlights the rise of social media influencers. He has his fair share of working with an educator-influencer to promote online courses to students. “Not only do they boost their personal brands and engage with their followers, but influencers also help businesses boost their brands and promote their products or services.”
Consider top brands, such as Nike, Red Bull, and Bumble, doing influencer marketing right. Even small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) can partner with social media influencers to connect with various stakeholders for their PR campaigns.
Suppose you’re selling wholesale blank apparel on your e-commerce platform. You want to take advantage of social media to promote your brand to other retail stores. In that case, you can tap into a top influencer in your niche to help sell your clothes in bulk to other clothing line businesses.
According to Statista, the global influencer marketing market has more than tripled since 2019 and is projected to hit a record of $24.00 billion this year.
But here’s the problem: The rise of social media has also paved the way for influencer fraud, which deceives businesses and causes negative repercussions.
Learn more about what influencer fraud is below.
Understanding influencer fraud
Influencer fraud is exactly what it sounds like—the practice of committing deceptions and fraudulent acts as social media influencers. These influencers buy fake followers, likes, or comments and even use AI bots to boost their engagement. However, there is more to this than meets the eye.
With this practice, fake influencers misrepresent their online presence by appearing more influential than they actually are. Worse, they deceive individuals and businesses by influencing them to take desired actions, whether subscribing to their channels, buying products, or hiring services.
Here are alarming statistics:
- The number of brands encountering influencer fraud has increased to nearly 60% this year—a slight increase from 55% of respondents in 2023.
- About 63% of businesses admitted to having worked with fraud influencers in their previous campaigns.
As an entrepreneur, you should do what it takes to protect your business from influencer fraud, especially when implementing PR campaigns. Why?
Find out how influencer fraud can negatively affect your PR below.
How influencer fraud affects PR campaigns
It’s easy to see companies and organizations implement influencer marketing and PR campaigns. However, the most crucial question is: Is it helping or hurting your PR campaign? Collaborating with the right influencers is the key to PR success!
Unfortunately, partnering with fake influencers can set your business up for failure. They can deceive you in ways unimaginable, resulting in the following consequences:
- Damaged brand reputation: Who would want to work with fake influencers for your PR campaign? You could lose your brand credibility and authority in your niche when these fraud influencers get caught. It only means that your company is vulnerable enough to fall prey to such a deception.
- Reduced consumer trust: How can you earn your customers’ trust if your partnered influencer isn’t trustworthy in the first place? The moment your target market discovers that your influencer is fake, you can lose a big chunk of potential customers.
- Financial loss: Influencer fraud translates to monetary losses. You can deplete your PR funds from fake influencers deliberately milking money from your business. You can also lose money from your lost customers who find out your influencers aren’t credible at all.
Kathryn MacDonell, CEO at Trilby Misso Lawyers, recommends being highly critical and selective when collaborating with PR influencers. She suggests setting a working contract with clear terms agreed upon by both parties.
MacDonell cites, “This contract will legally protect your brand and influencers should there be potential disagreements and conflicts. More importantly, it makes you and your partner more responsible in your PR campaign and accountable for your actions.”
Learn how to identify and avoid influencer fraud for your PR campaign in the next section.
How To Detect Fake Followers and Prevent Influencer Fraud in PR Campaigns
Social media influencers have the power to put your brand in the spotlight. They can draw in potential customers for your business. But on the flip side, fake influencers put your brand at risk and drive customers away.
So, it’s crucial to identify fake followers and avoid influencer fraud at all costs. Here’s how:
Identifying fake followers
Early detection is key to fraud prevention, which essentially applies to your influencer PR campaign. This step helps mitigate the risk of influencer fraud at the outset. That said, here’s how to spot fake followers and identify fraud influencers:
- Examine the quality of followers. It’s best to check their profiles to see if they are real and legitimate—not bots or headless profiles. Likewise, are they aligned with your target influencers’ core values, ideals, and philosophies? Are these followers potential customers for your business who are relevant to your niche? If yes, they are quality ones worth dealing with!
- Check the value of comments. It’s vital to see how valuable and relevant the level of discourse is on the platform. Are these followers real and authentic—not mere bashers offering negative comments? Do they engage with the influencers and provide thoughtful insights to the discussions? If yes, you’re on the right track in your influencer PR campaign!
- Analyze the engagement levels. As you build authentic relationships with influencers, they should also establish good relationships with their followers. If they have poor or no engagement at all, they might be fraud influencers with fictitious followers or bots. In TikTok alone, about 32.6 million fake followers were removed in the first quarter of this year:
Take it from Conrad Wang, Managing Director at EnableU. Their company leverages social media to connect with various stakeholders on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. However, they are a bit wary of collaborating with influencers for their PR campaigns.
Wang explains, “We want to work with influencers whose followers are passionate about taking care of elderly seniors and people with disabilities (PWD). We hope to build an engaging online community that promotes authentic healthcare. So, it’s important to examine the quality of followers before tying the knot with social media influencers.”
Avoiding influencer fraud
As they say, prevention is always better than cure. That begs the question: How can you avoid risking your PR campaign to fake influencers? Here’s how to prevent getting caught up in an influencer fraud:
- Set clear criteria for influencer vetting. The PR problem starts when you end up partnering with a fraud influencer. At the outset, you should be highly critical in your selection process. Consider key factors, such as niche relevance, engagement rate, and level of influence. Ultimately, pick one that aligns with your business values.
- Establish metrics beyond follower counts. When choosing a social media influencer to work with, some brands focus so much on the number of followers they have. However, you should go beyond this key performance indicator (KPI)—factor in not only their reach but also user engagement, lead generation, and sales conversion.
- Perform regular influencer monitoring. Once you’ve selected PR influencers and set a contract in place, regularly track their performance. How many likes, comments, and shares do they generate on their channels? Do they create a high level of engagement on the platform? More importantly, do they generate leads and convert sales for your business?
- Harness the power of digital tools. There’s no denying the impact of artificial intelligence on influencer PR. You can use an AI-powered detection tool to see if prospective influencers have fake followers. You can also utilize automated software to monitor and measure your influencer PR performance. Note: The influencer marketing platform could generate $25.4 billion in revenue, potentially achieving a 23.3% CAGR.
To avoid PR influencer fraud, learn from Murtaza Oklu, Owner of OMO Transfer. Their DTF-transfer company also thrives in social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They consider working with the right influencers to help promote their business.
However, Oklu argues, “It’s easy to work with any social media influencers to promote your business and products or services. But the wrong influencers, whether not related to your niche or having fake followers, can cost your PR campaign money, time, and effort. Therefore, it pays to choose the right influencer best suited for your brand to achieve your desired results.”
Final Words
The power of influencer PR is undeniable in today’s digital landscape. However, entrepreneurs should protect their businesses from potential fraud and avoid fake influencers for their PR campaigns. Why?
The impact of influencer fraud is quite alarming in today’s business landscape. It can cause a damaged brand reputation, reduced consumer trust, and crippling financial loss. Hence, follow our crucial steps to identify and avoid fake influencers for your PR campaign.
With all these in mind, you can rise above influencer fraud and make the most of your influencer PR! Better yet, leverage our media relations services for your PR campaigns. Get in touch with us and book a demo today!
