What are Ghost Followers and How to Find Them?

If you use Twitter or any other social media platform, the size of your follower base determines your level of success. A large follower base increases your social media credibility, online appeal, and attracts more followers to your profile. However, in recent years, the rising numbers of ghost followers have concerned brands and marketers.

If we go back a decade, building a follower base only required you to post a few images and updates now and then. But today, even gaining the attention of users requires you to consistently post engaging content that adds value. Also, there is an abundance of content related to any topic which makes it even more difficult to gain the attention of the user. While many still follow the approach of adding value with content, some simply take the short route to success. They buy followers.

The biggest drawback of having a large number of ghost followers for an account on any social media platform is the loss of credibility. People will start speculating about the authenticity of your followers.

For Example: Let’s say a use have over 10,000 followers, but only 300-500 followers actually like or comment on your posts. This will give users enough reason to doubt the authenticity of your follower base.

This puts your profile at risk, a brand would have a hard time finding new followers. Users would either think that your content isn’t engaging or you have bought fake followers.

The biggest consequence of ghost followers, for any account, is the loss of credibility.

For example, if an account has 20,000 followers, but only 20-50 likes per photo, users will easily spot the inconsistency in these two metrics.

Ghost Followers Lower Engagement Rate

Letting a substantial number of ghost followers accumulate in your follower base can make it difficult to analyze the actual performance metrics. You won’t ever be able to measure your success precisely.

Your follower count and the overall engagement are used to evaluate your engagement rate. But if you have ghost followers in your follower base, it will lower your engagement rate as these accounts do not engage with your brand.

Suppose Brand A has 10,000 followers, the engagement on each account averages between 1500-2000 likes along with 70-100 comments. The engagement rate is as expected and also helps attract the attention of other users.

On the other hand brand B has a similar follower count but barely gets over 200 likes and a handful of comments. The reason, ghost followers. Users are more likely to avoid following accounts that have low engagement despite a high follower count.

Ghost followers affect your brand’s credibility and public image

These days, it’s much easier for users to seem popular and gain influence by purchasing fake followers or bots. But there are serious consequences if you are found out, which you will be, eventually. Nowadays, business and even casual social media users can use various analytics tools to analyze followers. They can easily determine the authenticity and quality of your follower base.

Moreover, businesses and brands make sure to thoroughly evaluate the followers of influencers before collaborating. The more ghost followers you have, the fewer chances you will have to partner with brands. Also, if the presence of fake or inactive accounts is substantial, your profile will be red-flagged or blacklisted by the brand.

Users are less likely to see or engage with your content

If you have a large follower count but your engagement is low, users would conclude any of the two scenarios.

• The account has bout fake followers to increase their follower count.
• The account or user does not post engaging content so the engagement rate is low.

Either way, it harms your brand’s reputation and keeps new followers from following your social media profile. You will have trouble attracting new followers and increasing engagement.

These are some of the things that you should keep in mind if you don’t want ghost followers tarnishing your brand’s image on Twitter or any other social media platform.

• Don’t buy fake followers and bots

The first and foremost thing that you should absolutely avoid doing is, buying fake followers. Buying fake followers is essentially inviting a ton of ghost followers to your Twitter profile. While it can create an illusion of popularity that can help you attract more followers, but if the users don’t find engaging content, they will eventually unfollow you. Moreover, the long-term consequences of having ghost followers are far worse.

• Don’t pay for engagement

Brands or influencers that have already bought fake followers even go as far as buying engagement to seem genuine by all means. What they should have actually done is delete those fake followers. Buying engagement can help you sustain for a while but is by no means an effective and fruitful investment. It is an unnecessary investment that will ultimately be brought to light in the eyes of the public.

• Use a fake FollowerAudit tool

If you have a couple thousand followers, it’s easier to find fake, inactive, or ghost followers. But brands and influencers have thousands if not millions of followers on their social media profiles. In such cases, you should use a fake follower audit tool to identify and block ghost accounts from your follower base.

FollowerAudit

FollowerAudit is an effective and accurate fake follower audit tool that can help you identify and block fake, inactive, and ghost followers from any public Twitter account. It can also help you track and monitor the Twitter follower growth of any public user. You can easily analyze your Twitter followers and gain valuable audience insights to help plan an effective marketing strategy to maximize success.

Key features of FollowerAudit,

• Identify fake, inactive, and ghost followers
• Track Twitter follower growth
• Analyze Twitter followers
• Track unfollowers

The basic premium plan starts at $29.99, per month.

Closing Thoughts

The number of followers is an important metric; in fact, it is the first metric that followers see when they visit your profile. It also has a significant impact on their decision to follow you. However, don’t just keep followers for the sake of increasing your follower count. They are irrelevant if they do not interact with you. Such followers will only decrease your engagement rate.

Finally, allowing such followers to grow in your followerbase would generate suspicions that you are buying false followers. As a result, it’s best to get rid of them before they tarnish your reputation. Using FollowerAuditFollowerAudit, you can identify false and ghost followers and establish an engaged following base.