When starting your brand's social media posts for the first time you'll often find yourself inundated with influencers looking to "help." They will offer a menu of things like a post for $500, a tweet for $750 or a permanent post for $2000. Often times you'll see their follower account in the 10s, if not 100s of thousands, which means they have a great reach right? Wrong.

Nine times out of ten those followers are fake. 

 Before committing to an influencer and potentially losing thousands of dollars doing so, look at their engagement. Do they have any? Does it seem natural? Click on their followers and their profiles. Do they appear to be real accounts? 

The return on investment is pretty important for a small brand with a budget and losing money and time can not only hurt the bottom line but put you out of business eventually. 

When choosing which influencers to work with it's best to stick with those who have less than 10,000 followers and are trying to improve their numbers. They will be more willing to work with you on price, or simply help you for product content. 

Also, remember to read the "fine print." Often influencer will promise to post, only to remove it 24 hours later. In a world where money is the most important thing to most people there are scammers everywhere. 

Don't be scammed.

As long as you do a bit of research before committing you're going to be fine. Just keep in mind that influencers can't help you sell a bad product. In fact, even a good product doesn't always perform as good as you think. Keep in mind that influencers are really good for one thing: brand exposure. Don't expect a ton of sales and focus on working with influencers who are trying to grow their own content branding. 

For more tips on how to not get scammed by influencers let's have a chat.