Many Twitter users are finding out that people aren’t nearly as popular as they appear on Twitter. From politicians to celebrities to brands, there are fake Twitter followers everywhere. In fact, people buy followers. It is inexpensive, and it helps legitimize the Twitter account. It is harder and harder to figure out which followers are fake, but it can still be done.
If you learn what the red flags are, you will be able to spot fake followers. You will want to look at the account to see certain features and understand whether it makes sense. Twitter actually tries to find and remove fake accounts, so if you find fake Twitter followers, you can report them so that Twitter can shut them down. Continue reading to determine how to tell if Twitter followers are fake.
Look at the Ratio of Followers to Following
One way to learn that a Twitter account has fake followers is to look at how many people the account is following and compare it to how many followers the account has. Most people do not sign up for Twitter just to follow people they don’t know. People might have interests in following certain accounts, but they will not likely be following thousands of accounts.
If you notice an account that is following thousands of people but has very few followers, it is probably a fake account. There are follower brokers who sell followers for around $18 for 1,000 followers. These are the kinds of accounts you will find using this method.
Compare the Number of Followers to the Number of Tweets
Another red flag for fake followers is when you see an account that has a lot of followers but very few tweets. If somebody doesn’t post content on social media regularly, they are unlikely to gain followers. To gain followers, they need to post, the tweets need to be seen by people, they need to be retweeted, and then people will follow.
In fact, if they have a lot of followers and rarely tweet, you should ask yourself how the followers found them. You can look at the account and see for yourself. Remember that if it doesn’t make sense, then it is probably a fake account.
Look at the Profile
If you find that you are gaining followers, you might wonder who they are. Whether you want to know who is following you or who is following someone else, you can always look at the profiles of these followers. You will find that fake followers have certain things in common.
Fake followers rarely have a profile picture of a person. It is more likely to be an object, a quote, or some kind of scene. In addition, you will not find a lot of personal information on the account. They will not have very many of their own tweets either. Fake follower accounts are designed to follow people, so very little effort is put into filling out their pages.
Whether you find that you have a lot of new followers or you wonder if an account really has as many followers as it appears to have, you can do some investigating to find out how many followers are fake. People think that having a lot of followers makes them popular, and this helps to legitimize the Twitter account.
If you find fake followers on your own account, it is a good idea to block them. You can also report them to Twitter. You can actually use a third-party tool to pick out followers that might be fake based on their activity levels. If an account does nothing but follow thousands of people, it is probably managed by one of the follower brokers. There are a lot of bots on Twitter as well, and your tweet might contain a keyword that is a signal for a bot to follow you.