I’m at the point where we need to start diversifying our influencer partnerships beyond our immediate network. Right now, we work with creators we found through personal referrals, previous campaigns, or just cold-outreach luck. It works, but it’s slow and honestly pretty chaotic to manage.
We’re a Russian-rooted brand scaling into European markets, so we need partnership with creators in different regions who actually understand both audiences or can authentically speak to one market really well.
I’ve been looking at how other in-house teams do this. Some people swear by influencer platforms with built-in vetting and analytics. Others say that’s overpriced and old-school—they just use TikTok analytics + spreadsheets. Some teams tell me specialized communities or networks are where the real credible matches happen because you’re vetting through peer reputation, not just follower counts.
The tradeoff I’m seeing: speed vs. reliability. Platforms are fast but feel impersonal. Community introductions take time but you get real context. Direct outreach is cheapest but super hit-or-miss.
What’s your workflow when you’re actually building a roster? Do you use dedicated tools, community networks, traditional outreach, or some hybrid? And how much time do you actually spend doing the initial vetting before you even talk to a creator?
We use a hybrid, honestly. For volume, we screen through a platform—but we don’t rely on their recommendations. We build our own criteria based on what we know works for our clients: engagement rate (real, not fake), audience quality (checking comments for bots), content consistency, and brand alignment.
Then we segment: high-confidence creators go directly to outreach. Medium-confidence go through a soft intro to make sure they’re responsive and professional. Low-confidence either get rejected or go into a pipeline for future consideration.
The key thing: we do 80% of our vetting before we ever email them. We check if they’ve worked with similar brands, how they engage with partnerships, whether there are any red flags in the comment section (hate comments, brand safety issues, etc.). This saves so much time because we only contact people we’re serious about.
For cross-border specifically, we also check if they have international engagement or multilingual comments. That tells us pretty quickly if they have reach beyond their home market.
Community introductions are underrated though. Even as an agency head, I love getting warm intros through networks. The creator is pre-vetted by someone I trust, and there’s social proof built in. I’d allocate maybe 30% of time to community discovery and 70% to direct platform/outreach screening.
Also, for cross-border specifically—I’d pay extra attention to whether they’ve worked with brands outside their home country. That tells you if they understand different market dynamics or if they’ll just force their local style onto your ask.