The Fake Followers Files
Published on: 15 Sep 2022 | Author: Raluca
Social following can have a huge monetary value to celebrities and brands, who now employ top social media agencies to maximise their number of followers, but how many of these millions of following accounts belong to a real person? These are the Fake Followers Files.
28%
of the 160.3 million Nicki Minaj followers appear to be either fake or bot accounts.
92%
Jennifer Aniston’s audience credibility. This places her at the top of the list of most credible Instagram accounts.
Brand
Account types on Instagram that gain the most fake followers and bots.
Celebrities and Public Figures With the Most Fake Followers
The Actors With the Most Fake Followers
From Hollywood to Bollywood, this category features some of the biggest onscreen names across the world. If you are a big brand considering working with influencer marketing, take a look at the list of actors with the most fake followers:
- Hande Erçel – 28% of 24.9 million followers of the popular Turkish actress are suspicious accounts.
- Zendaya – 26% of 109.9 million followers.
- Gal Gadot – 26% of the 64.5 followers.
The Musicians With the Most Fake Followers
In the music category, we see two of the most popular recording artists of 2021 sitting at either end of the table. Olivia Rodrigo has the lowest percentage of fake followers, with just 11%. Nicki Minaj, on the other hand, has 160.3 million followers, with 28% of them being suspicious accounts.
The Reality TV Stars With the Most Fake Followers
While the reality TV category features some of the biggest celebrity names with the whole Kardashian family, it’s the Brits that take over the leaderboard at both ends of the table.
While Love Island pals, Amber Gill and Ovie Soko have the lowest percentage of suspicious accounts following them, with just 9% of potential bots, the top spot is reserved for The Only Way Is Essex star, Mario Falcone, with 32% suspicious accounts following him.
The Social Media Personalities With the Most Fake Followers
For many of these social media personalities, their follower numbers are tied directly to their income, but which of them can claim to have the highest percentage of genuine followers?
TikTok sensation, Khaby Lame, has the lowest percentage of fake followers with just 9% suspicious accounts following him. Jay Alvarrez on the other hand has 6.8 million followers with 36% of those being potentially fake followers.
The Sports Stars With the Most Fake Followers
Covering a range of sports from football to basketball, this category features some of the biggest names in sports, but who’s faking it when it comes to followers?
Tom Brady has the most genuine audience, as his 10.3 million followers feature 17% suspicious accounts.
The top spot is shared by former basketball player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Tennis star, Venus Williams both have 26% of their followers coming from suspicious accounts.
The Sports Teams With the Most Fake Followers
In the sporting world, everything is competitive, but who wins when it comes to the unenviable award of having the most fake followers? The top spot goes to English football team, Leicester City with 32% of their 5.8 million followers being potentially fake.
Industries With the Most Fake Followers
The Industries With the Most Fake Followers
When we look at the social media accounts by industry, we can see that some are likely to have far more fake followers than others. In fact, the 40 accounts belonging to brands had an average of 25% suspicious accounts following them, while the world leaders only had an average of 16% suspicious accounts following them.
Brands and Accounts With the Most Fake Followers
The Brands With the Most Fake Followers
Looking at a range of brands in a variety of industries on Instagram, from fashion to food, we found that the tech giant, Apple, had the lowest percentage of potential fake followers, with 20% of their 26.6 million followers being suspicious accounts.
However, sitting at the top of the list was Pizza Hut, with as many as 30% of their followers coming from suspicious accounts.
Pizza Hut is closely followed by other renowned food chains such as KFC, Burger King, Subway and Wendy’s, each having 28% of their following considered suspicious.
The Accounts With the Fewest Fake Followers
Friends star Jennifer Aniston ‘broke’ Instagram when she first appeared on the platform, and it seems as though her millions of followers are mostly genuine, with 92% audience credibility, just 8% of her followers are likely to be fake.
She’s tied for the top spot with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister. While her follower count pales in comparison to her top-of-the-table co-star, she also only has 8% of fake followers.
Conclusion
It is important to mention that limiting the number of suspicious accounts is very hard for accounts with a large following. But if you are a company, looking to work with an influencer, or are simply looking to get more out of your social media presence, fake accounts can represent a reason why impressions don’t turn into conversions and why an account’s reach might seem bigger than it actually is. You can use Sortlist to find an agency who will be able to help you navigate the social media jungle and ensure that you are getting the most out of your accounts.
Methodology
A list of 320 accounts was created by using lists of the most famous names, the most followed and the most engaged with social media accounts. These lists came from sources such as: Brandwatch, Social Blade, Plann, 90 Min
We then categorised these into our nine categories with 40 accounts falling into each.
Using a social media auditing tool from Grin we were able to discover the audience credibility of each account, giving us an idea of the percentage of followers that could be deemed to be suspicious.
It should be noted that these numbers are based on estimates and cannot give an exact number of fake followers for each account.
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