The rise of micro-influencers, and more creators in general, is making it harder and harder to filter out the good from the bad.

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Here’s the truth: 👇

• Followers can be bought.
• Creators can be far from what their page shows.

Don’t give up on finding the right creators for your brand! Our curiously creative CGC team has put together the top three things to look out for when starting creator partnerships.

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📊 Followers aren’t everything

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Back in the day, a lot of followers meant the creator had quality content. You knew those creators would make fabulous UGC (with great reach) for your brand!

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But that was then, and this is now. It’s time to look beyond the follower count. A creator can have 50,000 followers, but if no one is engaging, commenting, or supporting the posts, then the content really isn’t resonating with anyone. In turn, that’s going to reflect on the type of UGC you’ll get back.

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The new north star metric? Engagement. Whether a creator has 2,000 or 20,000 followers, it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to hire a creator for UGC, you need to know that they can make engaging content.

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The harsh reality is, if they can’t make engaging content for their followers, how can you expect them to make engaging content for you, your client, or your brand? 🤷‍♀️

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🤯 Micro-influencers give macro results

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We now live in the world of the micro-influencer. But still, these types of profiles continually get overlooked for UGC. Many companies and marketing firms continue to focus solely on big follower counts and miss out on one opportunity after another…

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Which micro-influencers should you be reaching out to? The ones with high engagement rates.

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Generally, these creators have:

• A better turnaround time.
• Higher response rates – because no one likes being ghosted.
• Lower costs!

Good content is good content, and the bulk of this content is and will continue to come from emerging micro-influencers. If you can save money, and get better results at the same time, what is there to lose?

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🏆 Remember the objective

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The objective of UGC is to get natural content that resonates with as many people as possible. This means focusing on finding accounts with high engagement that viewers can connect to and find similarities with. Unattainability doesn’t sell, connection does.

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When it comes to the time to source the next batch of UGC, think, Will my audience connect and resonate with this creator, or will they be put off by another ad clogging their feed?