I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because we’re scaling partnerships across both Russian and US markets, and I realized we don’t have a consistent process for actually vetting creators before we commit to working with them.
We’ve got a few creators we work with regularly, and those relationships are solid because we know them. But when we’re looking for new partners, especially for cross-market campaigns, it gets complicated. The questions change. What matters in one market doesn’t always matter in the other.
Like, we had a creator who had huge engagement in Russia, great stats, looked perfect. But when we ran a campaign with them for a US audience, the whole thing fell flat. Turns out their audience was mostly Russian-speaking, even though their follower count looked good. We didn’t dig deep enough.
Now I’m trying to figure out: what should we actually be looking for when we vet a creator for a cross-market campaign? Are there red flags I should catch early? Are there specific questions I should be asking before we even propose a partnership?
I’ve heard some people talk about looking at past partnerships, checking audience authenticity, understanding their collaboration process. But I’m not sure which of those actually matter most, or how to weight them.
What’s your actual vetting process? Do you have a checklist, or is it more intuitive? And what’s the one thing that usually tips you off that a creator is a bad fit?
Great question, and honestly, this is where relationships matter. My process starts way before any official vetting. I talk to creators informally—at events, through introductions, just getting to know them as people.
When I’m considering a creator for a specific brand, I’ve usually already had a few conversations with them, so I already know their personality, their values, whether they’re thoughtful about partnerships or just chasing money.
That said, if I don’t know a creator well, here’s what I look for:
- Recent partnership analysis – What brands have they worked with? Do those partnerships make sense? Or are they just taking every deal?
- Communication style – How quickly do they respond? Are they professional?
- Their own content – What are they actually passionate about? Does it align with your brand?
The biggest red flag? Creators who don’t seem to care about brand fit. They’re just looking at the paycheck. Pass on those.
For cross-market campaigns specifically, I always ask: ‘Have you worked in both markets before? How did you approach the differences?’ Their answer tells you everything.
From my experience scaling internationally, vetting is really about understanding which creators have actually bridged markets successfully before. Because it’s genuinely different.
When we started hiring creators for European expansion, we learned the hard way that a creator who’s huge in Russia doesn’t automatically work in Germany or UK. The audiences have different expectations, different senses of humor, different levels of skepticism toward sponsored content.
So now we ask:
- Have you worked with international brands before?
- How do you adapt your content for different markets?
- Can you show us a partnership where you crossed into a new market?
If they’ve done it before, they understand the complexity. If they haven’t, they’re more likely to just post in their ‘default’ style and hope it works.
Also, we look at whether they actually understand why a collaboration makes sense. Not just ‘yes, I’ll post it,’ but ‘yes, I’ll post it because my audience genuinely uses this product and I think they should know about it.’ That distinction changes everything.
I approach this systematically. Here’s my checklist:
Audience Check:
- What’s the demographic breakdown? (Age, location, interests)
- What percentage of their audience is in your target market(s)?
- Is engagement concentrated geographically, or spread out?
Content Check:
- Pull their last 50 posts. What’s the average engagement rate?
- Which posts get the most engagement? (This tells you what their audience actually cares about)
- Do they post consistently? (Consistency matters for audience trust)
Partnership Check:
- Search for their previous brand collaborations
- Look at engagement on those posts specifically. Is it higher, lower, or similar to their regular posts?
- Read comments. Do people seem excited about the partnerships, or are they complaining?
Authenticity Check:
- Use a tool to check for fake followers (there are several that work well)
- Look at comment quality. Are people leaving real, thoughtful comments, or generic spam?
- Check if they’ve been flagged for engagement fraud
For cross-market campaigns, I add:
- Track their followers by country. What’s the split between RU and US?
- Look at their hashtags and posting times. Are they optimizing for one market or trying to reach both?
This takes maybe 30-45 minutes per creator, and it saves you thousands in wasted spend. Worth it.
The way I think about vetting is backwards from most people. I don’t start by evaluating creators against your brand. I start by understanding who your target customer actually is, and then I find creators whose audiences match that profile.
Sounds obvious, but most brands skip this step. They see a creator with big numbers and assume it’ll work.
Once I’ve identified potential creators, I look at:
- Audience overlap – Does their audience match your customer?
- Partnership sophistication – Have they worked with brands like yours before?
- Contract professionalism – How do they handle negotiations, timelines, deliverables? This tells you about their maturity level.
For cross-market campaigns, I also assess their strategic thinking. Do they understand that a Russian audience and a US audience might need different messaging? Or do they just treat ‘audience’ as a monolith?
The creators worth working with are the ones who ask you questions about the campaign. They’re thinking about how to make it work, not just collecting a paycheck.
As a creator, I want to say: when you’re vetting creators, please also think about the type of creator they are.
There are creators like me who really care about authenticity and won’t post something that feels wrong to our audience. And there are creators who will do anything for money. When you work with the second type, your campaign looks inauthentic. Audiences can smell it.
So when you’re vetting, maybe ask: ‘Would this creator use our product if we weren’t paying them?’ If they give you a wishy-washy answer, that’s a red flag.
Also, ask about their creative process. Do they want to collaborate on the content, or do they just want your brief and copy-paste it? The creators who collaborate are the ones who make campaigns actually work.
For cross-market stuff specifically, I’d ask: ‘How do you adapt your voice for different audiences?’ Some creators just post the same content everywhere, regardless of market. That’s lazy, and it usually shows in the results.