How many of your Twitter followers are actually real? A new study revealed over 72,000 fake accounts in just 7 weeks. Described as Dealers and Abusers, fake accounts are taking over the Twitterverse. In fact, even Mitt Romney has joined the growing number of users who have fallen prey to the digital black market. If the goal of any social media campaign is to increase qualified traffic, why are so many users concerned about the quantity rather than quality.
Barracuda Labs went undercover and just scraped the surface of this growing problem. Some of the highlights from the study include:
- Dealers can control 150,000 or more fake accounts EACH.
- Abusers have, on average, 48,885 fake followers.
- The earliest fake follower @krails appeared in January 2007.
Aptly named, The Underground Economy of buying Twitter Followers, this infographic from Barracuda Labs shows just how deep this terrifying Social Media trend goes.
What should you do to avoid falling into the abuser category?
Focus on Quality: While you may feel that tens of thousands of followers will increase your brand awareness, I urge you to fight that feeling. When outlining your campaign goals, add measurements to gauge the passion, reach, sentiment and strength of your follower interaction. Social Mention is one of my favorites. Quality users are more likely to become your brand advocates - broadcasting your message, product or service to other quality users thus increasing the quantity over time.
Identify Dealers & Fake Accounts: Dealers and fake accounts can be identified rather easily.
- Blank feeds
- Feeds filled with pushed content rather than interaction
- Feeds filled with "Want 10,000 Twitter followers"
- Feeds filled with an @mention followed by a link
- The infamous egg image as a profile picture
- A high following to follower ratio
Report, Report, Report: Once you've identified a dealer or a fake account, report it! While this may seem like a digital war on drugs, taking a stand certainly can't hurt. Let's take it one fake account at a time. Who knows, maybe Twitter will use the reporting data to stop the fake accounts before they get past the sign up window.
Interested in finding out what percentage of your current follower base is fake? Check out this new tool from Status People - Fakers. While the company admits that it's not 100% accurate (yet), the snapshot should give you a reasonable average. I'm glad to report, they found 0% of my followers to be fake. @angela_mfm