Why social media influencers may not boost your enterprise

It is possible to make a topic on twitter trend using automated accounts masquerading as human users. These accounts are known as Twitter bots. They are allowable on the platform according to the company’s terms of service. However, they can be suspended or censured if the bot violates twitter’s values, rules and policies.

Bots are used to repeatedly tweet, comment, like and retweet on a specific topic. Alternatively, the bot makes a particular tweet look very popular by getting hundreds of other bots to like and retweet it. This influences human twitter users, who willingly engage in the bots message. This creates the perception that several people are discussing the topic.

In July 2018, Twitter suspended accounts that it judged as fake. This saw the follower counts of companies, celebrities and influencers drop. Former president Barack Obama lost over two million followers, in Kenya, many social media personalities lost thousands of followers. It is therefore necessary for corporates and advertising agencies to change the focus from metrics like followers, retweets, views, post likes, and clicks to how the influencer’s endorsement translates into higher sales and ultimately beneficial engagement with real customers. Telling signs of a bot include a hyper active account that tweets and retweets hundreds of times a day beyond the capability of a human user. An account that has no history – it has been on twitter for a relatively short time but has tweeted hundreds of times. And an account that is following thousands of users but only has a handful of followers.