I’ve been through the process of building influencer rosters for dual-market campaigns about a dozen times now, and it’s nowhere near as straightforward as throwing together a list of creators with the right follower counts. The real work is in the vetting and the organization—making sure you have people who not only understand the brand but who can deliver culturally aligned content without compromising on quality or compliance.
Let me walk through how I approach this now.
First, I don’t start with a list. I start with a set of criteria that varies by region. For LATAM, I’m looking at engagement quality, audience demographics, and what I call “audience sentiment”—do people actually care what this creator says, or are they just scrolling past? For the US, the requirements shift slightly: I’m more focused on content consistency, historical brand partnerships, and trackable ROI.
Once I’ve identified potential partners, I build a comparison matrix. This isn’t about ranking everyone on the same scale—it’s about mapping them across different dimensions: content style, audience demographics, reliability in deliverables, and cultural alignment with the brand. What I’m really trying to do is understand whether this creator fits the specific need for the specific region.
The vetting itself is more nuanced than most people think. I actually look at three things: past work (what they’ve done before), audience interaction (how their followers engage), and communication style (how they respond to outreach). The last one is often overlooked, but it’s crucial. Some creators are responsive and detail-oriented; others are slow and vague. This directly impacts campaign quality.
Once I have a shortlist, I test them with a small project first. I don’t go all-in on a major campaign with someone I haven’t worked with. A smaller collaboration—even a single post or story—tells me a lot about execution quality, timeline management, and whether they actually care about the partnership.
Organizationally, I keep everything in a simple system (honestly, a good spreadsheet works fine): creator name, region, audience size, engagement rates, past work links, communication history, and performance scores on previous projects. For campaigns, I also track deliverables, timelines, and any compliance issues (especially important if you’re dealing with regulatory requirements in different markets).
One challenge I’ve run into: ensuring compliance across regions. Some content that’s fine in the US requires different disclosures in LATAM. So I actually include a compliance checklist in my workflow for each region.
How do you all approach this? Especially the vetting part—do you have a system for quickly assessing whether someone is actually worth partnering with, or is it more intuitive for you?