I do my best to go through and remove the obvious ones--buy x followers for $15, etc. But I've been wanting to do a more thorough sweep, so this article was really timely. I'm going to give some of the free versions listed here a shot and see how it goes :)

Thanks so much and glad to give you some timely info! ;)

If you don't speak the language someone is posting in, that makes sense.

or like these! maybe the pothead one is real! xD

LOL!

Very helpful! Thanks.

Thank you Mary Jane, glad you found it helpful!

I just completed this and am in the process of culling about 2500 ghosts on Instagram. Who would have know I had so many. Thanks for the article.

Wow! You are welcome!

Just completed a Fake Followers check. Out of 150,000 followers on Twitter, 96% legitimate. I've been trying to cull through these followers and always love it when Twitter does a purge of inactive/spam/bots. They did one last week and they flushed out 7,500 followers. Makes my life easier.

Doesn't it? But it's a good idea to stay on top of it yourself as well.

Completely agree. I clear out in-active followers all the time on Twitter, but the Instagram one was great.

Thanks, glad you found a new tool!

Great article. I just unfollowed a bunch of inactive accounts last night so this was really helpful also. Although one of my "fake" followers on my account was my husband, who has never tweeted in his life, LOL!

Guess what? My husband is an inactive Twitter-er, too! :)

Thanks for sharing these excellent apps Lisa. At first I was too afraid to check my Twitter account but decided to give it a go and to my surprise I had better scores with each app than @LisaMariaKarl showed. Very comforting - John

John--you shouldn't be afraid! Even if you had a large number of inactive/fake followers, better to clear them out. :) Glad to help!

There you go! Nothing to be afraid of! ;)

I guess what I'm not understanding is, why do we need to block fake accounts? How does the fake accounts impact our standing on twitter?

Twitter, Instagram and other social networks are frowning on people boosting themselves as 'experts' by faking a following. In addition, you could be subjecting your real followers to phasing and spam. Hope that helps!

ah ha, I suppose that makes sense. I need to get to work then! :)

Definitely! Don't waste your energy on fakes!

Okay so just so I'm understanding, from this point on, those that I KNOW are spammers (buy followers, no interaction, etc( that follow me, I need to block them immediately? Man it's going to take me days to go backwards blocking ;)

I use unfollowers.com to gauge who the churners are. They look legit, I'll follow them, then two days later they've unfollowed me. So I in turn unfollow them, as well. So with these tools, I'm just taking it to the next level then, correct?

Sorry for the delayed reply Wendy, but yes! How is it coming along for you?

Hi Lisa, any advice on removing or finding 'Fake Likes/Fans' on a Facebook page? Thanks!

Hi Sara! Yes, Kandice Linwright published a great article about that here at Social Media Examiner. You can read it here -->http://www.socialmediaexami...

I normally track followers and their activity levels using Tweepi and it works well for me. I was intrigued by the tool Twitter Audit and had a shot at it. The good news is that 97% of my followers are genuine but the fact that 3% are fake means I need to have a closer look at it. Hopefully those individuals are inactive and not fake as in really fake. Thanks for the tips, Lisa.

You're welcome! Different tools will show different results and it's always a good idea to take a closer look.

Is it safe to assume these are apps that are endorsed by Social Media Examiner? So they are legit and respectable?

These are from real and legitimate companies and people. The articles here are informative, not endorsements.

It's great. need these types of tools for Facebook also. Kindly make a post or let us know once this type of tool will be out in market for cleaning up the FB Page. Thanks..

Hi Rajesh! Kandice Linwright published a great article about that here at Social Media Examiner. You can read it here --> http://www.socialmediaexami...

Great tools!!
Really helpful to remove the unnecessary or fake followers.

So glad you found them helpful James!

Last time I used an app, I got into trouble as Twitter blocked my account for aggressive unfollowing. Beware of apps, they might do more harm than good.

I haven't heard of that happening. I'm so sorry it happened to you. :(

There is always the potential for this to happen. The thing to remember is that these are tools and you need to exercise judgement in how you use them rather than just automatically implementing everything thrown up.

A tool to help identify fake LinkedIn accounts would also be very useful.

I agree Patrick, it would be nice not just for LinkedIn, but all social networks.

Indeed, Lisa!

This is so great. I was getting frustrating. Taking time to remove those fake accounts can be exhausting. Especially for small business owners like myself.

question...i wanna delete all non follow backs,but is there a way to delete them all at once..instead of one by one?

If you block and unblock does it delete them from your follower numbers? I was trying that, but it didn't seem to work.

Sorry for the delay in replying...I don't know of any way to preemptively block fake followers. Wouldn't that be nice!

How do I remove fake followers on you FB fan page?

Here's a post about removing fake followers on Facebook: http://www.socialmediaexami...
Hope it helps!!!

Is there any tool or website to check fake/bought followers on instagram? Or at least a tool to see the followers countries?