What factors would disqualify a shortlisted creator from an influencer partnership?

We asked influencer marketers this question, and the following is a list of the most common answers. Use this list as a checklist to help spot red flags in potential creator partners and avoid entering into a collab that you might regret later.

Here’s a quick graphic of the top contestants to give you a preview of what’s coming: 

1: Poor content quality

What it means: defining low-quality content is difficult (and even a little subjective), but it’s one of those ‘you know it when you see it’ types of things.

For example, if you’re finding relevant Instagram influencers, having no Reels or very few Reels would be a sign of a poor strategy. Or perhaps the video production quality is blurry and unclear.

But it isn’t limited to surface-level: if a creator creates product tutorials, for example, you can examine the quality of their content by checking whether or not they go into detailed explanations, explain everything clearly, spotlight all the features, etc.

Nacho Selma, Influencer Marketing Manager at Isnach, adds that high-quality influencer content is essential not just because it’ll perform well, but also because you can repurpose it into various marketing assets for the company:

Nacho Selma

Influencer Marketing Manager Isnach

For me, the most important thing is the quality and type of content the influencer has previously published. When the content is of higher quality, there is a greater chance of it going viral and reaching more people. Additionally, that content can be useful for other areas of the company in the future.

‍How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: gauging content quality is difficult to outsource to a tool. Browse through an influencer’s posts (at least the most popular ones) manually and check whether or not their content is high-quality.

⚡ Pro-tip: also scroll down and see whether an influencer’s content quality has improved throughout the years — in both production quality and how they present a topic or product. This is an excellent way to understand whether an influencer is invested in constantly upping their game.

2: Inactive or sporadic activity

What it means: an influencer needs to post consistently to build a connection with their audience and stay on an algorithm’s good side.

If a creator is inconsistent in their posting frequency, it’s also a sign that they might be flaky or disrespectful of deadlines in your influencer collaboration.

How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: the manual way to examine inconsistency is to see how far apart an influencer’s posts are. You can also follow them to check whether they show up on Instagram Stories, Broadcast channels, etc.

The easier and more automated way is to use an influencer marketing platform like Modash which has the ‘last post’ filter. This allows you to filter for inactive influencer profiles. You can find creators who have published posts in the previous 30 days, three months, or six months.

Now, you’re only screening for creators who are active and post consistently. Whew – at least one influencer marketing task can be automated.

Try Modash for free to apply this filter (and many more!).

3: High number of fake followers or engagement

What it means: it doesn’t matter if an influencer has a plethora of followers, comments, or likes if it's all fake. Creators often resort to buying these metrics because they’re paid in part depending on the size and engagement of their audience.

Now, every account has some fake followers – especially if they're popular. However, there is an amount that's cause for concern. After all, you want to reach real peole with your collaborations – not bots.

Not to mention: partnering with creators who resort to purchasing followers is never going to lead to authentic partnerships.

How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: Modash has a free fake follower tool that can tell you the percentage of an influencer’s fake followers in a jiffy. Just enter their Instagram username and click “Check profile,” and you’re done.

Checking for fake followers is easy. But what about fake engagement? The easiest way is to vet the comments on an influencer’s profile manually. In our survey of 29 marketers sharing how they vet influencers, a whopping 89.7% said they browse the comment section. What should you look for in these comments?

1. Check whether the comments are from bots. People leave comments related to the content, but bots comment with emojis and generic compliments. Here’s a handy graphic comparing a comment section’s green flags and red flags.

2. Another important thing to check is whether the same set of people are leaving comments on an influencer’s profile. Social Media Specialist, Timotej Jerman, rightly highlights that this reeks of an engagement pod:

Timotej Jerman

Social Media Specialist

Another red flag is always seeing comments from the same five people, usually other influencers. And then when you go check out their content, it's the same story. That tells me they're likely running a pod and inflating each other's engagement metrics.

⚠️ Note: every influencer will sooner or later have at least a little bot comments, likes, and followers. This doesn’t mean they have purchased those metrics. Cheyanne Pettyjohn, Director of Influencer Marketing at Rookie Wellness, explains how to find a level of bot activity that isn't acceptable:

Cheyanne Pettyjohn

Director of Influencer Marketing Rookie Wellness

Sometimes, a little bot content is inevitable. But if I see a creator with 40,000 followers, 100 likes per post, and 3 comments, most of which saying, "Check out my profile love!" I know their community isn't organic and their content would not sell to real people.

Another way to check whether an influencer has bought followers is to check whether their growth rate is consistent on Modash. Sure, there might be a few spikes here and there due to a post or two going viral, but the overall graph should still be stable.

Ultimately, give the influencer a chance to come clean or explain themselves if you see everything right except signs of fake followers/engagement. Maybe there was a bot infestation on their profile and they’re working to erase it. I’ve seen it happen. If there’s a solid explanation, you can probably risk giving the influencer one shot. 

4: Political content

What it means: this is a subjective parameter. Maybe you wouldn’t want an influencer to post political content and alienate part of your target audience. Perhaps your brand values strongly disagree with an influencer’s political beliefs. All of these are fair grounds for not working with a creator.

But remember sometimes it can be unreasonable to expect influencers to stay completely mum about the political situations in their state or country (like during elections).

A good middle ground here is suggested by influencer marketing pro, Katie Stoller: put a section in your influencer contract prohibiting posting any political content for 24 hours before and/or after your sponsored post(s) goes live. This way, you aren’t restricting the creator, but also you aren’t allowing your collab post to drown between political content:

Katie Stoller

Influencer Marketing Pro

You can’t dictate what they [an influencer] post because you’re paying them to post a sponsored post. You have to be okay with them being political. If you’re working with an influencer, you need to be okay with the other content that they post.

‍How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: manually vet an influencer’s content and see if they have made political commentary in the past. If they have, they’ll likely do so again. I’d also recommend following them and keeping an eye on short-term content like Stories. Many creators might not share extensive posts about politics to stick to their niche, but will still share political content on their Stories.

Again, trying to find creators who never post any political content might be a bit unrealistic – especially when influencers today are marketing channels for political leaders. Try to understand how often an influencer is creating political content and if you’re okay with the frequency, come up with a way to find a middle ground that you can imbibe in your contract.

5: Content that violates your morality clause

What it means: if you market to a family-friendly customer base, you want influencers who speak the same language and cater to the same audience. For example, you wouldn’t want an influencer to speak in vulgar language or use phrasings that might offend your audience.

This criterion is quite specific to your brand and its requirements, so nail down the specifics of what you’d definitely not want on your ideal influencer’s profile. For example, for Miroslava Petkova, Regional Influencer Marketing Manager at COCOSOLIS, influencer content that promotes smoking or drinking is a no-no. Another anonymous contributor said:

[An influencer would be disqualified] if they're not family-friendly or brand-safe. Brand-safe meaning means if an influencer constantly curses in their videos, promotes gambling and the likes.

You can also choose your mileage in this condition. Are you super strict about ensuring a brand match? Or are you a bit more flexible and can excuse a few off-morals posts here and there? There’s no right or wrong; it’s your preference.

How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: there’s no shortcuts here. You have to do a quick scan of an influencer’s recent and past content to ensure they don’t post anything that violates your brand’s morality clause. Again, a good idea would also be to follow the influencer and see how they show up casually in content formats like Stories. The in-feed posts might be brand-safe, but other content might not be. 

6: Inflammatory content

What it means: unlike the previous parameter, there are some content topics that just have a crystal clear tip-off. If an influencer posts content that’s racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic, etc., in any way, you can disqualify them immediately. Nicole Ampo, Influencer Marketing Manager at American Hat Makers, agrees:

Nicole Ampo

Influencer Marketing Manager American Hat Makers

An influencer will be disqualified if: They post NSFW, racist, homophobic, transphobic posts.

‍How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: a scan of an influencer’s posts, captions, and comments can give you a solid idea of whether they post inflammatory content. For big creators, you can also search for any controversies on Google: just type “[creator’s handle/name] + controversy/sexism/racism/etc.” to ensure you don’t miss any inflammatory content the influencer has deleted.

7: Having a skewed ratio of sponsored vs. organic posts

What it means: Look, everyone’s gotta pay the bills. If an influencer has a lot of sponsored content, it isn’t a red flag in and of itself. But if they only have sponsored content, that’s a sore point.

A creator’s audience – no matter how large or engaged now – will quickly get tired of their content if they’re constantly bombarded by ads and product placements. They’ll start to tune out the influencer and maybe even trust them less (since the creator’s almost always getting paid to compliment the brand).

The best influencers know this already. They have a healthy mix of branded and organic content on their profile.

How to spot it in an influencer’s profile: you can filter for sponsored content on Modash. There are dates present in every post so you can understand how frequently an influencer’s doing paid partnerships.

Despite this, I’d urge you to also check for this criterion manually. Many affiliate partnerships done without the paid partnership tag aren’t picked up by Modash’s filter. Plus, even if an influencer has a lot of sponsored posts in a short period, you can’t check whether they’re also posting enough organic content to make up for it if you don’t do a quick manual run through of their content.

Checking for these disqualifications is just the beginning – here’s what’s next

The above deal breakers of an influencer partnership are just the beginning of thorough influencer vetting. A creator should at least meet the above criteria before you can test them for other, more subjective factors like brand fit, personality, audience demographics, etc.

Read this article to learn about 7 (other) parameters you should examine while evaluating an influencer’s profile to ensure they fit your brand like a glove.