Busting Social Media Verification Myths (2021 Update)
In today’s blog, we are going to be busting common social media verification myths. Over the years, we’ve heard a ton of unreasonable misconceptions about social media verifications. And this post we are going to look at the most common of them. Whether you’re looking to get verified on Facebook or TikTok or anything in between – they all have pretty much the same misconceptions. With that said, let’s get started!
You Need A Certain Amount of Followers
No. You don’t. A lot of our clients assume they need a million followers on Instagram and that would make it easier to get verified. Sometimes I client assumes that just because they have a rather large account, they should be eligible for verification. Well, no. Here is the deal. The smallest Instagram we have verified had 2000 followers. For Facebook, it was 1700 fans. In short, there is no requirement of followers for verification. There is no such thing as a minimum number of followers that you need in order to get verified.
At the same time, having a ton of followers doesn’t help either. Is it great to have 1 million followers? Sure! But, does it help with verification? Absolutely, not! All that matters is the amount of press you have on the web. And that’s it. A person with the right press with 500 followers is more likely to get verified than the person with 5 million followers and no press.
You Need A Certain Amount of Posts
No. You don’t. We have verified profiles with as few as 10 posts. Again, it doesn’t matter how many posts you have. Although, its great to have at least 10 posts to begin with. The most important thing is that the account should be active. Meaning, even if you have 10 posts, the recent most post should be ‘recent’. If your latest post is 2 months old, then that may work against you when getting verified.
So – again – it doesn’t matter if you have 10 posts or 1000 posts. All that matters, again, is having notable and reliable press on the web. And its always a good idea to showcase that the profile is active by having recent posts, stories, and highlights.
You Can’t Have Fake Followers
On multiple occasions, we have had clients who come to us with verification requests because they were denied earlier by another agency due to having ‘fake followers’. Well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It doesn’t matter if you have fake followers or real followers. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your engagement is. Verification is all about the amount of press you have on the web – and that makes you a notable figure, for which you are verified.
Think of this logically. If having fake followers denies a profile from getting verified, then by that logic, anyone can buy 100k fakes for any competitor and deny them of verification? Of course, Instagram doesn’t work that way. By this logic, you can buy 100k fakes for anyone you are upset with for a few dollars and control their verification outcome.
You Need to Know Someone Inside Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/TikTok
No. You don’t need to know someone inside any social network. You can first give the self-application a try by submitting it within the app. In case that doesn’t work, you need an agency that has a media portal access. With this media portal, the agency can submit your verification request and get a guaranteed human review for it. If eligible, you’ll be verified. People and agencies who are able to verify accounts, claim usernames or unban accounts – they don’t know anyone inside a social media company, they simply have a media portal.
Not sure what a media portal is? Alright, let me explain it in as simple words as possible. In short, marketing agencies that have large ad spend on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok get special access from these social networks for dedicated human support for certain requests. Think about marketing agencies that manage large clients in apparel, technology, hospitality, education, and so on – ones that have millions in ad spend every month. Of course, companies like Facebook want to keep such customers super happy. And they grant such agencies a portal where such agencies can make requests. This can include requests for username claims, verifications, unbans, bans, merges, and so on.
Media portals come in all shapes and sizes. Not all portals are the same. Some are high-end portals that have a lot of features and fast-track approval verticals. Some are basic portals with longer timelines and lower approval rates.
You Need Forbes, INC, and Entrepreneur
Well. Not really. We barely verify people who have it all – full feature on Forbes, INC, Entrepreneur, NYT, and HuffPost. Most people we verify have full features from reliable, local, and niche relevant sites. Some may have one or two high-end magazine publications like Forbes. With that said, don’t buy into the myth that only ultra high-end publications works. No. That is definitely not the case. As long as you have reliable PR, it doesn’t matter if it’s on Forbes or not.
We have a detailed article on what kind of PR works and what doesn’t. Check out our blog on Guide to Instagram Verification for more info.
Conclusion
And there you go. These are some of the most common myths we’ve come across so far. If you think we missed out on something, feel free to send us an email and we’ll consider adding more to this post!
Until next time!
