Vetting creators on evidence, not vibes
A checklist for evaluating creator partnerships before you sign — audience quality, overlap, consistency and fit.
By Marcus Adeyemi
Follower count tells you almost nothing about whether a partnership will work. Here is what actually predicts outcomes, and how to check it before money changes hands.
Audience quality
- Authenticity. What share of the audience is real, active and human? A 5% follower count of bots is fine; 30% is a different creator than the media kit suggests.
- Relevance. Does the audience match your target on geography, age and interest — or just on aesthetic?
Overlap
If you book three creators whose audiences are 50% the same people, you paid three times to reach one audience. Overlap analysis across your shortlist and your existing roster is the single highest-value check, and it is invisible without data.
Consistency
One viral post is noise. Look at the distribution: median engagement, how often they clear their own baseline, how they perform on the format you actually want.
Brand fit and safety
Read the last 90 days of content and the comments under it. Tools can flag risk; a human still has to make the call on tone.
Make it a standard, not a debate
The point of a checklist is that every person on the team vets the same way. Creator Intelligence packages these checks into one profile so the shortlist conversation starts from the same evidence.