Influencers Are Faking Their Engagement For Brand Deals
Influencers & bloggers are making BANK & taking advantage of brands by inflating their engagement number by participating in Pod Groups.
Not everyone…but a lot!
What are Instagram Pod Groups?
Pod groups are basically private group chats consisting of over a hundred Instagram users. Think of it as like joining a Frat/Sorority…except you skip the whole pledge process.
Podgroups are like Instagram Cheerleaders from Breakthrough Social on Vimeo.
Here’s how it works
Let’s say that Jessica, a fashion blogger in New York City, is in an Instagram DM Group with 50 other fashion bloggers that relatively have a similar type of content. Jessica, who is a character I just made up for this example, has 10k followers (~20% of them are probably bots/fake accounts) and aspires to become a highly paid influencer. But, she needs higher engagement and MORE followers so that she can approach brands with her inflated analytics that she only does paid collaborations…starting at $5,000 per post.
What’s the fastest way of getting to the #’s she needs in order to have a strong selling point?
Ah, of course…pod groups.
Jessica decides to join a few pod groups that fit her niche & qualifies for.
Remember, these are private groups — some require some serious qualifications (lol). For example, your following…if everyone has over 100k followers and you only have 10k then you may not make the cut.
Once Jessica posts on her feed, she will then share her content within the group so that everyone that sees it can start liking and commenting on her new post.
Which means higher engagement. That’s when the dopamine kicks in everyone…yup, the sign of relief.
Only a few steps closer until she can start making some real money by inflating her analytics & showing off her media-kit.
Hear that sound? Cha-Ching $$.
Why should businesses/brands be cautious of Pod Groups when executing their Influencer Marketing Campaign?
#1 Wasting Money on Inflated Analytics
Influencers or bloggers define their cost based on their engagement, follower count, and the content production involved.
So if the influencer is in a Pod Group and half their engagement consists of other members within that group, rather than potential paying customers, then you’re paying based on bull crap metrics.
Instead of getting an influx amount of customers that potentially want to buy your product/service, you may just be getting more bloggers that want to collaborate with you.
This happens way too frequently.
Voila! Thank you, next…
#2 Low ROI (Return on Investment)
You’re basically paying a premium based on false analytics.
There are a lot of smoking mirrors that you need to watch out for when it comes to Social Media. People can easily portray a false image & cost your business a lot of money.
But if you take the right precautions & familiarize yourself with the current state of marketing & all the trends then you shouldn’t have much to worry about. Or you can let us handle it :).
