Nowadays, brands are increasingly turning to TikTok to connect with their target audience through influencer partnerships. However, the authenticity of an influencer's follower base is key for campaign effectiveness.
In 2023, over 55% of brands experienced influencer fraud, highlighting the importance of vigilance. How can you ensure your brand isn’t part of that statistic? By learning to spot fake followers.
Fake followers—often characterized by low engagement rates, generic comments, and incomplete profiles—can skew your social media analytics, leading to wasted resources and misleading metrics. As a brand, it is key to identify these red flags before partnering with influencers.
In this guide, we’ll explore practical strategies and tools, such as Influencer Hero and Social Blade, to help you spot and avoid fake followers on TikTok. By doing so, you can ensure that your marketing efforts reach a genuinely engaged and authentic audience, ultimately boosting your brand’s credibility and the overall success of your campaigns.
Successful influencer marketing campaigns have one thing in common: They reach the right audience.
Whether a brand’s goal is to increase awareness or drive conversions, the key is connecting with the intended audience to inspire action. But what happens when the audience doesn’t really exist?
This is often the case with fake followers. These fake accounts, which usually consist of bots, are programmed to follow, like or comment on posts, creating the illusion that an influencer has a well-established and engaged following. However, there’s no real person behind these interactions.
According to a study, in 2024 approximately 10% to 20% of TikTok followers can be fake, with an estimated 253 million fake accounts on the platform. The main problem with fake followers is that they offer no genuine engagement and can impact credibility. This means your brand can significantly waste resources and time with little to no return on investment.
Additionally, partnering with influencers who have a significant number of fake followers can also harm your brand’s reputation. Consumers are increasingly savvy and can often spot when an influencer's engagement doesn’t add up. If they see your brand associating with such influencers, it can directly damage the trust you’ve worked hard to build with your genuine audience.
One way to spot an influencer with fake followers is through their engagement rates. If an influencer has a large number of followers but consistently low engagement (likes, comments or shares) on their posts, this can be an indicator that they have fake followers.
Typically, followers interact with content, while fake accounts do not.
The average engagement rate for TikTok followers is between 1-3%, although this depends on their following size. In the table below, you can check these numbers more in detail:
To calculate an influencer’s engagement rate, you can use the following formula:
ER = (Total likes + total comments) / followers x 100
For example, if you’re interested in working with an influencer with 200K followers and, on average 250 likes per post, this results in an engagement rate of 0.12%, indicating that their account is likely to be inflated with fake followers.
To simplify this process, you can use the Influencer Hero free engagement rate calculator. By adding the influencer’s handle, you’ll receive a report with their engagement rate, audience demographics and more.
One of the easiest signs to identify fake followers on TikTok is by checking their comments.
Fake accounts often leave comments that are generic, repetitive or irrelevant to the content, such as “Nice”, “Great,” or random emojis.
If comments are not contextually relevant, this could be a red flag.
For example, Anna Sitar is a popular lifestyle TikTok influencer with over 11.9 million followers. You can see that most of her followers are real, as she not only has an average ER of 1.17%, but when scrolling through her videos, you’ll see that most of the comments are related to her posts.
A useful technique to discover fake followers on TikTok accounts is to analyze follower growth patterns. Genuine influencers typically experience steady and gradual growth in their follower counts. However, a sudden, dramatic spike in followers may suggest that the influencer has fake followers.
According to a report by Rival IQ, the average monthly growth rate varies depending on the influencer's follower count. For influencers with 10K to 50K followers, the average growth rate is 3.4% per month. For those with 200K to 1M followers, the average growth rate is 2.9%.
In general, influencers’ growth rates range from 1.9% to 3.4%, depending on their size. While some variability is normal, significant discrepancies can be a red flag. For example, if an influencer shows a 1.5% growth rate one month and then suddenly jumps to 7% the next, it requires a closer look.
When you see these types of inconsistencies, it’s good to evaluate the influencer’s profile more in-depth, as it can indicate they’ve bought followers. However, keep in mind that sudden growth can also result from a viral video or other factors. This is why it is best to evaluate the influencer’s profile more closely to ensure follower authenticity.
Incomplete profiles are a crucial sign for identifying both fake followers and fake influencers.
Genuine influencers typically invest time in crafting a detailed TikTok bio and profile. They often include valuable information such as contact emails, links to their Linktree (offering access to Amazon storefronts, blogs, and more), and other contact details.
For example, finance TikTok influencer Alex on a Budget teaches her hacks and tips for those looking to save and pay debt. When you go to her bio, you can easily find relevant information, such as where she is located, her email, and a link to purchase her financial templates.
In contrast, suspicious accounts may display minimal profile information or their profiles might be hidden altogether. Some profiles might use generic bios or stock images, which can be a sign of inauthenticity.
When it comes to detecting fake followers, scrutinize the comment sections of posts. As we mentioned above, generic comments consisting only of emojis or unrelated phrases, along with profiles that lack usernames or bios, are strong indicators of bot activity. These signs suggest that the engagement might not be coming from real, active users.
Major celebrities are known to have millions of followers but follow very few people in return.
Often, influencers are the same, following much fewer accounts than the number of followers they have. But usually, genuine influencers have a more balanced follower-to-following ratio.
Alix Earle, one of TikTok’s most popular lifestyle influencers, has 7.1 million followers and follows 392 people.
If we dive into her profile analytics using Influencer Hero, we can see her follower-to-following ratio being balanced, showing normal growth.
However, when there’s an imbalance in these numbers, it can indicate that something is not right. For example, this could be with accounts where they follow thousands but only have a few followers in return. Or those that have millions of followers but minimal posts and overall interaction.
If an influencer's engagement varies drastically from post to post, it might indicate that they have fake followers. For example, one post might have thousands of likes, while another has very few, without any clear reason.
Influencers with real followers tend to have a steady number of interactions with most of their posts. While they might have a video that went viral and has a massive amount of likes and comments, their other videos should be similar.
For example, Nara Smith, a model and food influencer that shares homemade recipes has 9.3 million followers, and most of her videos have more than 2 million views.
Let’s evaluate her most recent videos:
This shows a normal engagement pattern considering her big following.
If an influencer’s followers are predominantly from regions that don’t align with their content’s primary language or focus, this can be an indicator of fake followers.
If you’re looking to work with a U.S. influencer, it makes sense if their primary local audience is in the U.S. and not a completely unrelated country.
Camila Pudim is a Brazilian TikToker who makes professional makeup videos. When you analyze her profile and audience you’ll be able to see that almost all of her audience is from Brazil.
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Influencer Hero is an all-in-one Influencer Marketing software primarily used by D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) e-commerce brands. The platform streamlines the process of finding, reaching out to, and collaborating with influencers across various social media platforms.
Its Free Fake Followers Scanner can:
Daily free search: Up to 15 free searches per day.
Collabstr is a marketplace that connects brands with influencers for various types of collaborations, such as sponsored posts, product reviews, and content creation.
Its Free Fake Followers Detector can:
Daily free search: 5 free searches daily.
HypeAuditor is a powerful analytics platform designed to help brands, marketers, and agencies analyze and monitor influencer performance across social media.
Its Free Fake Followers Detector can:
Daily free searches: 10 free searches per day.
Discover More: Best TikTok Fake Follower Scanner Tools
You can remove bots or fake followers on TikTok by going to your profile > Followers > Find the follower/s you want to remove > Select the three-dot icon > Tap on remove.
Unfortunately, for accounts with many fake followers, the only way to do it on TikTok is manually.
When it comes to influencer marketing, ensuring the authenticity of an influencer’s follower base is crucial for maximizing the impact of your brand’s campaigns on TikTok. Identifying fake followers—whether through irregular engagement patterns, incomplete profiles, or sudden spikes in follower growth—protects your brand from wasting valuable resources and damaging its reputation.
By using the strategies and tools discussed in this guide, such as analyzing growth rates and scrutinizing engagement quality, you can make more informed decisions when partnering with influencers.
Fake followers can often be identified by low engagement rates, generic or spammy comments, and profiles with incomplete information, few posts, or a high following-to-follower ratio.
What tools can I use to detect fake followers on TikTok?
Tools like Influencer Hero, Social Blade, and TikTok Analytics can help you analyze follower authenticity by examining engagement rates, growth patterns, and other key metrics.
Identifying fake followers is crucial for maintaining genuine engagement, building trust with your audience, and ensuring accurate performance metrics for brands and influencers alike.
Yes, fake followers can lower your engagement rate, reduce your account’s credibility, and potentially lead to penalties from TikTok, including reduced visibility or account suspension.
Bots on TikTok often leave generic comments, follow many accounts in a short period, and may engage with content in an unnatural or repetitive manner, which can be a sign of non-genuine activity.
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