Followers for Sale: Malaysia’s Fake Influencer Epidemic
Do you ever approached by influencer with over 9000 followers on instagram? Of course you probably as it’s normal today even real followers or not. But do you ever been scammed by such influencer? It could be likely too due to the rise of so called fake influencers. Nowadays, social media influencers have really taken center stage in marketing, their way in connecting with the audiences and influencing their buying choices making them crucial element for companies’ marketing plans. However, alot been taken advantage of this and when approach by fake influencers where followers are bought, engagement is fabricated, and your businesses are left paying for empty numbers.
The Rise of Fake Influencers in Malaysia
Over the last decade, influencer marketing has been at all time high in Malaysia. Predominantly from local beauty brands to beverages, more and more businesses are looking to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube stars to help showcase their products. With whole lot of influencers around, there also will be rise in numbers of fake influencers too as it’s really easy nowadays.
These fake influencers are people who buy followers, likes, and comments to give their online presence a false boost. Thanks to various tools and services available online, creating a fake influencer persona has become incredibly easy. For just RM50 (my random number), anyone can snag 1,000 followers , and for RM100 (another random number), you can rack up thousands of “likes” on your latest post. Some individuals even go to the extent of crafting completely made-up identities using AI-generated photos and profiles. Some may go easier way by stealing photos from random profile.
Why is this happening?
- The Pressure to Succeed: Social media is a competitive space. Many aspiring influencers feel pressured to appear “successful” by inflating their numbers.
- The Lack of Awareness Among Businesses: Many small businesses, eager to stay relevant in the social media era, lack the resources or knowledge to properly vet influencers.
- The Monetization of Popularity: Influencers with large followings can command lucrative sponsorship deals, making fake followers a tempting shortcut to rapid financial gain.
Real-Life Impact on Malaysian Businesses
The epidemic of fake influencers isn’t just a harmless numbers game, it’s hurting businesses real bad. Some investment been put on them, which ended up with nothing and suffered heavy losses. Now let’s have an example scenario of this, let’s say a local beauty product brand collaborated with an influencer who claimed to be megastar for beauty brand boasted 777k (alot of random numbers ya?) followers. The business send in RM7777 worth of beauty products for this so-called influencer in exchange of posts and promotes. However, the results are isn’t as expected or could said, no traffic increase whatsoever. In the end, the so called influencers discovered to be having more than 99% of fake accounts follower while all the engagements & comments are generated by bots. Sad day that for such aspiring beauty business, who though able to penetrate to international market but ended up with big loses just because engaging with the fake influencer.
While there definitely alot of high-profile cases of influencer fraud in Malaysia that have caught international attention. Influencer marketing agencies like Faves Asia and Nuffnang have pointed out in various interviews and reports that the issue of fake followers and bot engagement is still a significant challenge in Southeast Asia which include Malaysia. But the damage done just because of going for wrong influencer are enormous if the business are no longer SMEs.
The Red Flags: Spot the Fakers!
Sometimes it will be so obvious to spot it, but at some the similarity with genuine influencers are uncanny. At least here some of the red flags that usually should watch out for (including fake accounts setup for scammers)
- Unrealistic Follower Growth : How can be possible for so suddenly number of followers grow till 100k in a day? Unless you’re really some big names (C. Ronaldo gain 10 millions subscribers on his Youtube channel in just a day!), then such numbers gain are.. sus!
- Low Engagement Rates : You got 100k followers but only got exactly 100 likes? Where’s the others? Sus!
- Generic Comments : Unless the post is about a giveaway contests then we might see alot of generic comments. But all the time just everyone just commented “Nice!” or some emojis? Sus!
- Many Posts in a Single Day: The entire profile posts, why all just post in one day? Why not just randomly or daily? Another sus!
- Inconsistent Content Quality: Why some of posts are poorly edited? While some look like some pro photographer involved? Very very sus!
- Industry Awareness: The more you’re in such industry, will most likely aware of this sus accounts
- A Shift to Authenticity: More brands are prioritizing genuine engagement over follower count.
- Better Tools: Instagram and TikTok are keeping up by improving their algorithms to detect and remove fake accounts.
The Bigger Picture: What’s the Impact?
Due to all that, Malaysia’s influencer marketing industry is at risk of losing credibility due to fake influencer epidemic. The real deal content creators become harder to stand out among the sea of fakers infested.
However, there are positive trends on the horizon:
Malaysia’s ever growing issue with fake influencers is a real eye-opener to consider approach influencer for their services. It’s time to prefer quality and authentic posts that truly resonate with audience than some flashy posts with zero value other than fake likes. Check out another related article here!