Pet Peeves: Part I - Brand Scams and Annoying Accounts

Wearing a Princess Polly dress and sandals.

In the influencer world, you are constantly navigating a minefield of annoying accounts and fake brands.

Learning how to sidestep “scammy” accounts has become a cherished accomplishment of mine as an Instagram Influencer. The ability to instantaneously discern if a brand is genuine or not is a valuable one as it will save you precious minutes of your day and preserve your mental capacity for bullsh*t.

If you are starting out as an Instagram blogger, why should you care about this topic? These “brands” have no intention of creating a mutually beneficial relationship with you; rather, they will do their best to take advantage of you in terms of your time, effort, and/or money. Unfortunately, I will admit that I have fallen prey to at least a few of these in my earlier days as a blogger.

While the post below is not a comprehensive list, I hope to save many of you time by listing several red flags to look for when deciding to work with a brand.

Note: I used screenshots from whatever I could find recently— nowadays, I usually block and delete messages from accounts that try to solicit me with ridiculous offers.

Red Flag 1: The Brand Solicits You In The Comments.

As my fellow bloggers will know, this is the most basic type of “spammy” or ”scammy” accounts that will hit your Instagram page. If a brand is serious about working with you, they will at least make the effort to message you via a direct message or an email. Every single one of my posts has attracted at least several comments like the one below. If you look at the account that was responsible for the comment, you will find it’s a ghost account with zero or very few followers.

As well, the main account (which in this case is @sincerelysallyboutique) has a suspicious amount of followers for such low quality content and apparel— it has clearly purchased most of its following. If you decide to go through with messaging this “brand”, the following situations are likely to occur:

• The brand will offer you an “amazing” discount on their “incredible” selection. (Wow, what a privilege it is to pay for their crappy offerings!)

• The brand will say that you get FREE items— the only caveat being that you have to pay the shipping costs. Sadly, I have fallen for this scam once or twice; I got charged in USD for the shipping cost and the pieces ended up being very low quality. In an even more embarrassing situation a few years ago, I never received the item I ordered (therefore, the brand stole money from me).

• If you actually end up receiving anything from them without the aforementioned issues, it will be of terrible quality and not worth promoting on your page without hurting your brand and credibility as an influencer.

Red Flag 2: An Account Tries to Recruit You Or Sell You Beauty Products in the DMs.

Personally, this type of scammer account is the most annoying type as the account holder will initially disguise themselves as being a normal follower or fellow blogger. If you unwittingly follow them back or are unlucky enough to have engaged with their posts (a like or brief comment will do), you will activate them from sleeper mode into recruiter mode.

Expect a DM from them starting with something like (I’m paraphrasing here): “Hey beautiful, thank you so much for the love you showed me on my post! I know that this is so random but I just had to reach out! I love your account so much and think you would be a perfect fit for this amazing business opportunity. Would you like to hear more?” (The correct response would be: “Hell To The No.”)

Sneakier accounts might even try to ask you personal questions to build some sort of faux relationship with you before they unveil their true intentions (see screenshot below).

In the past, I used to be nicer and reply with something like: “Thank you but I’ll have to pass— I am satisfied with my current employment.” However, some accounts are so stupidly aggressive that they will repeatedly ask you if you are interested in joining their darn pyramid scheme (or whatever it is— I REALLY AM NOT INTERESTED.).

Consequently, I have developed a sixth sense for such scammers and try to end these unsavoury interactions as quickly as possible— usually by blocking or unfollowing them.

Red Flag 3: Zero Effort Has Been Given To Personalize The Message.

If an email doesn’t bother to address you personally by name (or, even better, uses the wrong name), you should already know that something is off. Bad grammar and/or formatting should also be a big clue. Keep reading and there is a 99.9% chance that the rest of the email or DM is not worth your time.

As seen in the screenshot below, this junk email is trying to sell me sketchy and unwanted services. It is highly unlikely that any email resembling the one below will ever contain anything that would actually benefit you.

Red Flag 4: It’s Personalized But Not Offering Anything Worthwhile.

Don’t get me wrong— the email below isn’t the worst one I could have chosen. The sender actually took the effort to write my name and username correctly; however, at this point in my influencer “career,” I have to be very discerning with what brands or campaigns I take on.

When a PR Agency tries to enlist me to promote products that do not align with my branding (or that i just don’t care about), it’s best to just halt the interaction there. To use the example below, the email tried to enlist me for a phone case or vitamin campaign. Both products are equally useless to me; as well, I have no inclination to create content for such items when my niche is fashion, beauty, and travel.

If I was desperate enough to take these on, I would find myself struggling to come up with quality content for such random items and I would hate myself for posting them. Also, I would never even consider such campaigns without generous monetary compensation.

Red Flag 5: It’s Too Good To Be True… So Keep Reading Until You Find The Catch.

FYI: This company or brand originally sent me an email greeting me with: “Hi Caitlin.” You can bet I was super impressed.

Out of curiosity, I actually read this email and found that a lot of what it said sounded quite tempting— members of this platform would apparently receive access to the hottest trends in fashion and beauty. Scrolling a little further down, I spotted it. Memberships would be available for the “low” cost of $19 a month. Yeahhhh, right.

I will also mention here that, when I created my account 2.5 years ago, I promised myself that I would not spend any significant amounts on Instagram (other than on clothes of course). This includes paying Instagram to promote posts and buying services that increase engagement and/or followers. Needless to say, paying a hefty monthly fee of $19 is not on my checklist. In fact, for the amount of time and effort I sink daily into my Instagram account, I should only be looking for opportunities that pay me.

Conclusion: Use Your Spidey-Sense.

As I mentioned earlier, this post does not come close to covering all of the shady solicitations that you will most probably receive if you enter the sphere of “Influencing.” However, I can only hope that these tips will somehow help you to filter the good opportunities from the bad. Overall, the best thing you can do is follow your gut-reaction regarding an opportunity— if it feels too good to be true or they are asking you too much for too little, DON’T DO IT.

Are you unsure about whether a brand opportunity or campaign offer is good or not? Shoot me a message or comment below and I would be happy to help you figure it out.

Cheers, Debbie (aka The Stylish Wordsmith)