Pay and get online followers

On the flip side, a company or an individual could face legal liability if it is found the numbers have been purposely inflated, says Antara Bose, an active social media personality.

“This destroys brand’s credibility, making it difficult to restore lost image,” she warns.

Hubspot, a Gulf-based digital marketing agency, says that the practice of buying followers to popularise a brand is on the rise, with many social media entities — artists to brands to online personalities — jumping into this bandwagon.

Salma, who is active on Instagram, feels the buyer (of followers) is taking a big gamble because the online regulatory authorities keep a watch on such activities.

She quoted a recent report on CNBC, which said 48 million Twitter accounts could be of inactive members who lure advertisers to pay hefty amount for online posts.

In Oman, for instance, companies are willing to pay up to RO 250 for a photo and RO 500 for a one-minute video provided he/she can prove their online followers run into thousands.

Adam al Balushi, another social media influencer, says if companies in Oman are ready to pay RO 250 to RO 500 for a single post, then you can “imagine the volume of business the social media influencers are doing”.

However, it is not very difficult to spot accounts that have less engagement than the typical accounts. Genuine Instagram accounts tend to follow relatively identical engagement patterns.

A study that analysed the accounts of two million influencers suggested that less than 1,000 followers averaged 8 per cent engagement; 1,000 to 10,000 followers, 4 per cent engagement; 10,000 to 100,000 followers, 2.4 per cent engagement; and 100,000 to 1 million followers, 1.8 per cent engagement. However, an average 1.7 per cent engagement was found to be from more than 1 million followers.

Misinterpreting the “follower database” can also invite legal consequences.