I tried all the methods for sourcing & hiring creators, so you don’t have to.

Written by Joseph from Twitter

These are the 6 sources I use to find scrappy, undiscovered creators who can make videos for consumer apps:

1. Creator data platforms
2. Creator marketplace websites
3. LinkedIn posts
4. LinkedIn job postings
5. TikTok manual search
6. Twitter manual search

What to look for

Things to AVOID in creators:

• High follower counts with bloated prices. If they have 100ks of followers they’re too big for most consumer app companies
• Don’t know how to make content that gets views AND sells. Usually, brands hire creators that only know how to make fully organic content. Then their sponsored posts flop

Things to LOOK FOR in creators:

• Undiscovered, coachable creators with 5k-50k followers who haven’t started to charge thousands per post.
• Creators who study conversion-focused branded content that still feels organic, and thus lands on the FYP and gets views

How to work with these creators

• Guidelines for sending first message:

• Mention cash

• I find that smaller creators are used to brands that don’t pay / only gifting campaigns
• So I make sure to use the word “pay” upfront
• E.g. “hey love your content, I’m working with x brand and we’d like to pay you for a post. lmk can share more / send you an email”

• Hype up your app

• They want to get views just as much as you do. They’ll believe they can get lots of views, if they trust that your product is actually good
• Therefore, hype up your app. Credentials, metrics, founder background, etc
• E.g “we’re making ‘uber for x’ trying to achieve xyz mission. growing fast, 5k downloads and 4.9 stars on the app store”

• Deal structuring

• Each creator makes a new brand account, posts 1 video per day for 30 days. Can pay anywhere from $500-3000 per month depending on their level of experience
• Give bonuses for high view counts. $300-1000 per 1M views is typical

• This playbook is from ecom. For a deep dive, search “oliver brocato $10m in 12mo” on YouTube

1) Creator data platforms

Rating: 6/10

Upfluence, Modash, Grin, etc. These websites are the first things that’ll pop up when you Google “how to find tiktok influencers”. This is good for volume, but you gotta make sure your funnel / vetting process is good because there’s a lot of noise.

These are big SaaS platforms (made for agencies and bigger brands) that cost $300/mo+ and typically lock you into annual contracts. They have powerful search features, but you still have to reach out to the creators COLD (it’s just scraped data, the creators aren’t opted into the platform).

How to use:

1. Sign up for account on Modash, $300/mo
2. Use powerful search features to find the type of creator you want
3. Export the emails
4. Cold email the leads using instantly/smartlead/gmass etc
5. Offer them the brand deal
6. Make sure they understand videos for consumer apps ofc

My results: I ran a cold email campaign using Modash, 10k emails sent -> 300 opt-ins -> 30 vetted and admitted into Consumer Club Discord community

2) Creator marketplace websites

Rating: 4/10

These are hit or miss in my experience. The creators are actually opted into the platform, which is good.

But the biggest problem is that most of the influencers are a little overpriced, and often don’t know how to make videos about consumer apps.

How to use:

1. Sign up for a site like SocialCat, which has a free trial
2. Fill out your company details and create a job post
3. Wait for creators to apply to it
4. Talk to the creators and vet them

My results: I posted an opportunity on SocialCat, 40 creators replied -> 3 had experience doing videos for apps -> 1 vetted and admitted into Consumer Club Discord community

3) LinkedIn posts

Rating: 7/10

No one else is really doing this at scale. It does work! But you kinda need to have an audience that has some college students or creators. I have 16k+ followers on LinkedIn which are mostly college students looking for job opportunities. So I post things like this on LinkedIn and get 30k+ views and 150+ comments.

How to use:

1. Make an engagement farming job post like below
2. Ask people to comment their email
3. Send emails to all of them with the details. My open rate is about 70%
4. Vet the creators, have them fill out an application

My results: I post myself, and I pay other students to post -> 100+ comments per post -> 50 opt-in -> 30 fill out an application -> 15 vetted and admitted into Consumer Club Discord community

If you want to try this, feel free to tag me in your post and I can comment for increased reach (it’ll get shown to my 16k+ followers). https://www.linkedin.com/in/choi-joseph/ 

4) LinkedIn job postings

Rating: 7/10

This also works and people definitely aren’t doing it that much compared to the other methods. I post jobs like this and they get 100+ applicant clicks per 24 hours. It’s kinda expensive though, I think they charge something like $70 per day to keep the job posting up.

How to use:

1. Post a job and write a simple job description
2. It costs money to keep it up. But the LinkedIn free trial lets you do it for like 2 days
3. Send the applicants to an external site or directly on LinkedIn
4. Vet candidates

My results: I make LinkedIn job postings -> 100+ comments per post -> 50 opt-in -> 30 fill out an application -> 15 vetted and admitted into Consumer Club Discord community

5) TikTok manual search

Rating: 8/10

This one’s actually really underrated. Here’s 2 ways to do it:

1. TikTok search bar

1. Literally just search any keyword in your niche. NEEDS to be mobile (on your phone) so you get the extra advanced search features. I know, extra scrappy lol
2. E.g. you need people related to “tech sales” so just search that term

2. Following list

1. If you find a good creator, just look at their following list and these will often be even better than Search bar, since they’re human-curated via the taste of the creator you just found.
2. E.g. find a good one, then look for keywords in the names of the following list

My results: I reached out to dozens of creators with this -> 50-75% reply rate with personalized outreach -> 5-10 vetted and admitted into Consumer Club Discord community