Morning folks! Thank you for putting aside mindlessly scrolling through Instagram to read this. With many big brands almost completely shifting their marketing efforts to digital, I thought it apt to write about the myriad options available for future marketers and the many pitfalls you will face. In the succeeding columns, I will delve into search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media marketing, content marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, lead generation, and the topic of today’s column; influencer marketing. As with any digital marketing trend of the past, influencer marketing has become a buzzword amongst both experienced and naïve marketers who assume that by saying the word, they would immediately don the clothes fit for a digital marketing king, only to sadly realise they were as good as the emperor’s new clothes. Writing this column was a pertinent need as I write not for myself but for us as a collective digital community of brands, influencers, and those who create original content as our full-time profession. I hope this will shed some light on genuine influencers so that brands can get their money’s worth. Because every cent a fake influencer takes, is taken away from a hard-working person who is grinding till sundown to gain a genuine following. Look at the engagement! There are multiple ways to get a fake follower/like. They often take the form of bots (programmed algorithms to perform functions like following accounts and liking content) and sometimes are a group of real people in a click farm whose jobs are to create fake accounts and engage with those who pay for followers. These packages come in blocks of 100, 1,000, 10,000 followers for X amount in US dollars. The simplest foolhardy way to spot a fake follower account on Instagram or Facebook is to look at the engagement rate (how many followers like or comment on average on each post). All research points to around 2-5% as the engagement rate on Instagram, for example. So my dear marketers and brands, as a rule of thumb if profile has 20,000 followers and less than 400 likes per post on average, *cough* Fake! *cough* Followers! *cough*. This is for you my dear aspiring influencer – fake followers are the equivalent of steroids in bodybuilding. While it will boost your “mass” in the short run to fool brands, your engagement will take a major hit in the not-so-long run. Because the bot you paid to follow your account isn’t going to come back to like your images even if you moon on top of Pidurangala! Then you get caught very rightly to the “boost everything to get engagement hamster wheel”. [gallery link="file" columns="1" size="full" ids="15689,15690,15691,15692"] We have conquered China! As a marketer or brand, if you have paid an influencer without first asking for a report on their follower demography and geography at least, keep calm and gracefully go and hang your degree in the nearest public toilet. This is what baffles me the most – in this digital ecosystem where every possible metric is available (albeit some collected by these apps in unethical ways), why are professionals still applying the age-old “put an advertisement on the newspaper and hope my boss sees it” mentality? You can target females living in the Western Province who are interested in Fifty Shades of Grey and also like Masala Chai, people! Okay, now since I got that out of the way, if you really are that complacent, at least look at an influencer’s demographic details. If about 50% of his/her following are from China, Russia, or India – no, they are not budding celebrities there; they’ve just paid for followers. In conclusion I am clueless when it comes to plumbing; while there have been times I’ve managed to fix a leaking faucet when there is a plumbing issue, I call in a professional. The first step to this is to say I am not sure how to do this. So either educate yourself to handle digital campaigns or hire a professional. What I’ve listed above are just two simple methods, and there are many tools that can be employed to avoid getting caught to this fraud. There are many reputed digital consultants in Sri Lanka and a handful of agencies that are competent. While this is no marketing pitch, because I felt so strongly about money being robbed from actual creators, we kicked off “Pulse Grid”. It is an influencer network where everyone who joins is stringently sifted for fake followers. While you need not go through an influencer network, my hope is that as the digital ecosystem grows in Sri Lanka and more and more brand budgets transition to digital, actual influencers are identified and utilised. According to a recent Points North Group study, many top brands were found to have spent good money on fake followers. Ritz-Carlton’s influencers had the most fake followers by far; 78%, meaning that over three-quarters of the brand’s spending was wasted on fraud (Forbes, 2018). I don’t think any brand in Sri Lanka would want to end up in a shame list like this. Jay out!         By Janeeth Rodrigo Janeeth Rodrigo is the General Manager, Digital, of the Derana Media network. He is also the General Manager of IdeaHell, the first and only YouTube MCN and Creator Space in Sri Lanka. Facebook: facebook.com/janeethrodrigo Instagram: instagram.com/janeethr