How to vet a creator before you pay them

Most money lost in small creator campaigns is lost before the first post, at the moment a brand picks someone because the follower count looked right and the feed looked nice. Follower counts can be bought, engagement can be traded in groups, and an honest creator with a real audience can still be wrong for you if that audience lives in another country or has never bought anything in your category. Vetting is how you find out before paying. It does not need software. It needs half an hour, a short list of things to look at, and the willingness to ask a creator for two screenshots. This page gives the routine in the order we would run it, with pass and fail signs for each check, the questions to send, and a simple scorecard for comparing a shortlist. It deals with checking people you have already found. Finding them is covered in our guide to finding micro influencers.

Pass one: what you can check in public in ten minutes

Start with what anyone can see. Open the profile on a phone, where the apps show the most, and look at the last twelve to twenty posts.

Work out engagement on a few recent posts with the engagement rate calculator, dividing by views for short video. Treat the number as a prompt to look closer. A rate that is far above what is normal for the tier deserves as much suspicion as one that is far below, because engagement groups and bought likes inflate it.

Then look at follower growth if a free public tracker covers the account. Organic growth is uneven but gradual, with bumps that line up with posts that travelled. Sharp vertical steps with no matching viral post, followed by a slow decline, are the usual shape of bought followers.

Pass two: past sponsored posts

A creator's paid posts tell you more than their best organic one, because a paid post is what you are buying. Find three or four, which should be labelled as partnerships, and compare them with the posts on either side.

• How far do views and comments drop on paid posts? Some drop is normal. A collapse means the audience tunes out adverts from this person.
• Do the comments mention the product, ask where to buy it, or tag a friend? That is attention landing on the brand.
• Did the creator make the product part of their usual content, or read out a caption the brand wrote?
• Were the posts disclosed clearly? A creator who hides paid partnerships will expose your brand to the same risk.
• Have they promoted your direct competitor recently? It may not rule them out, but you should know.
• Do they promote something new every week? An audience that sees constant adverts learns to ignore them.

If a creator has never done paid work, that is not a fail. Many of the best small creators have not. It means you look harder at pass one and start with a small job.

Pass three: what only the creator can show you

The numbers that matter most are private. Ask for them politely and specifically. Creators who take brand work seriously are asked this often.

1. A screenshot of audience location by country and top cities, from the app's own analytics, dated within the last thirty days.
2. A screenshot of audience age and gender.
3. Reach or views for their last five to ten posts, including at least one paid post.
4. For Stories, typical views per frame and link taps if they have them.
5. Their rate for the specific deliverables you want, with the usage included stated.
6. Whether they are comfortable with your category and any claims you need made or avoided.

Audience location is the check that matters most for a Canadian small brand. It is common to find a creator based in Canada whose audience is mostly elsewhere, because short video travels by interest and not by geography. There is no universal pass mark. Work out how many viewers in your market you are paying for, and compare creators on that figure.

Screenshots can be edited. You are not looking for forensic proof. You are checking that the private numbers are consistent with what you saw in public, and watching how the creator responds to a reasonable request.

Brand safety and reliability

Ten minutes of scrolling prevents the rare but expensive surprise. Go back at least six months, and look at replies and Stories highlights as well as posts.

• Content you would not want beside your product: hostility toward groups of people, dangerous stunts, medical or financial claims they are not qualified to make.
• Public disputes with brands or other creators. One is life. A pattern is a forecast.
• How they handle criticism in comments.
• For health, finance, alcohol, cannabis, children's products and similar categories, whether they understand the advertising rules that apply. Your brand is responsible for claims made on its behalf.
• Reliability in your own exchange. Did they answer within a few days, answer the question asked, and send what they said they would? The way someone handles the enquiry is the way they will handle the deadline.

Then put the agreement in writing, however small the job. Deliverables, dates, usage, disclosure and payment terms on one page protect both sides. See the influencer contract checklist and our page on influencer usage rights.

A scorecard for comparing a shortlist

Score each creator from 0 to 2 on each line: 0 for a problem, 1 for acceptable, 2 for strong. The total matters less than the zeros. A zero on audience location or disclosure should end the conversation, whatever the rest looks like.

Keep the scorecards. After the campaign, put the results beside them. Within two campaigns you will know which lines predict performance for your product, and your vetting will get faster. How to measure a micro-creator campaign covers the results side.

If you would rather not do this yourself

Vetting ten creators properly is about five hours, and it has to be repeated because audiences change. When you buy from us, that work is ours. We act as principal: you buy finished content or disclosed posts from us at a fixed price, and we choose, commission and contract the creators. The checks we run, and what each one means, are published on our verification page, and the free plan you receive names the creators we would use, with the engagement we measured and the date we measured it.

Verification reduces avoidable failures. It does not guarantee that a post will perform, and we do not claim it does. If a creator we commission fails to deliver, we replace them at our cost. Send a brief to get a plan and a fixed price, or read the pricing page first.