"Fake it till you make it" is how the old saying goes, but have too many social influencers taken that old adage too much to heart in the race to look as popular and as influential as possible? In the wake of some interesting in-depth research into levels of fakery on popular social media channels, Ciaran and Daniel explore fake social accounts and followers and fake interactions. We’ve spent some time investigating the dark side of Social media metrics so we can explore how they get gamed. Ever felt that the reach metrics of influencers don't quite tally with actual business results? Is your influencer marketing programme being scammed by influencers gaming social algorithms with fake followers and fake interactions? Listen in and learn how shady social media practices could be skewing your results and what you might do about it to correct course. Useful Links PRWeek Article https://www.prweek.com/article/1590362/majority-uk-instagram-influencers-engage-fakery-landmark-new-study More detailed write up of this research by Anders Arkalid. https://medium.com/@aa_88162/influencerstudy-agoodcom-4c7ac6c27fae Google Trends https://trends.google.com/trends Keywords Everywhere https://keywordseverywhere.com/ Google Keyword Planner Tool https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/ Hype Auditor Slide Deck https://www.slideshare.net/pmievents/influencer-marketing-without-the-proper-checks-transparency-will-not-work PR week Autumn research Endelbach https://www.prweek.com/article/1494118/influencer-campaigns-focus-social-proof-not-reach Instagram crackdown on fake accounts https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/19/instagram-fake-followers New York Times investigation into celebrities buying fake followers https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html What is a click farm? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-30/farming-for-likes-fake-social-media-engagement/10944078 Spark Torro Twitter Follower check https://sparktoro.com/tools/fake-followers-audit Hype Auditor https://hypeauditor.com/en/ Fakecheck.co https://www.fakecheck.co Fakecheck worst offenders https://www.fakecheck.co/bot10-social-engagement#report Fakecheck 10 best accounts https://www.fakecheck.co/top10-social-engagement#report Moz Link Explorer https://moz.com/link-explorer Ubersuggest https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/