Vet influencers before you partner with them

Kite defines what a good result looks like before it judges the creator, because the right audience for a protein bar has little in common with the right audience for payroll software. It uses your customer research to write down who the creator's audience should be, which countries matter, and what the partnership is for, such as sales from a discount code, signups, or reaching a new group of people.

Kite also lists what would rule a creator out. That might be a recent sponsorship for a direct competitor, claims about products like yours that you couldn't stand behind, or a style that clashes with your brand. You can add your own conditions, such as a budget ceiling or a minimum share of followers in the United States.

You check for fake followers by looking for engagement that doesn't fit the account, because bought followers add to the follower count without watching, liking, or commenting. Kite reads the creator's recent posts and looks for the patterns that separate a real audience from an inflated one:

• Engagement that's too low for the account's size. A creator with 200,000 followers whose Reels draw 3,000 views has an audience that mostly isn't there.
• Engagement that's suspiciously uneven. A real audience rises and falls in a believable range from post to post. A run of quiet posts with one enormous outlier deserves a closer look at where that outlier's engagement came from.
• Comments that could belong on any post. Real followers ask questions, tell stories, and reply to each other. Bots and engagement groups leave the same emoji and generic praise on everything.
• Follower growth with no explanation. A jump of 40,000 followers in a week should line up with a post that took off. When nothing explains it, the followers were probably bought.

Kite reads these signals on its own for creators on YouTube and LinkedIn, where it can pull posts, engagement, and comments with its built-in research sources. For Instagram and TikTok, it reads each public video's views, likes, and transcript from its link. Connect a HypeAuditor account and Kite also pulls HypeAuditor's reports on Instagram and TikTok accounts, which add an authenticity score and the account's follower growth over time.

The metrics that show an audience is real are the ones bought followers can't fake cheaply: views relative to followers, engagement that holds steady across many posts, and comments with real substance. Kite calculates each of them across the creator's recent posts rather than trusting any single one.

• Engagement rate. Add up the likes and comments on each recent post, divide by the follower count, and average the result. Rates fall naturally as accounts grow, so Kite compares a creator with others of a similar size on the same platform instead of holding everyone to one number.
• Views per follower. For video, the share of followers who actually watch is more telling than likes. A creator whose videos regularly reach a large share of their followers has an audience that is real and paying attention.
• Consistency over time. Kite looks at a run of posts, not the best three. The creator's typical post is what you're buying.
• Comment substance. Kite reads the comments and notes how many ask a real question, mention a personal detail, or start a conversation.

Say you sell a skincare line and you're considering a creator with 120,000 Instagram followers who has quoted $2,500 for one Reel. Kite reads her last fifteen Reels and finds they average 9,000 views, with one at 140,000 that was picked up by a larger account. The typical Reel, not the outlier, is what your $2,500 is likely to buy.

You tell whether a creator's audience matches your customers by looking at who engages with their posts and what they talk about, then comparing that with the customers you already have. Kite already knows who your customers are from its research on your business, so it can make that comparison directly.

Kite reads the comments on the creator's recent posts to see what the audience cares about. Commenters asking which serum is safe for sensitive skin are your skincare customers. Commenters asking for the creator's editing presets are other creators. Kite also reads the transcripts of the creator's videos to see what topics they actually cover, which shows whether your product would feel like a natural fit or an interruption.

For a business audience, Kite can go further. On LinkedIn, it reads the comments on a creator's recent posts and looks up the public profiles of the people commenting, so you can see whether they hold the job titles you sell to. A founder who posts about finance operations and draws comments from controllers and CFOs is a strong fit for accounting software, regardless of follower count.

For the audience's age, gender, and country on Instagram and TikTok, HypeAuditor's demographic reports give the clearest answer. Without them, ask the creator for screenshots of their own audience insights, and Kite reads those alongside everything else.

The best preview of how your sponsored post will perform is how the creator's previous sponsored posts performed, so Kite finds them and compares them with the creator's ordinary posts. It identifies sponsored posts from disclosure tags such as #ad or #sponsored and from the brands named in captions and transcripts.

A creator whose sponsored posts draw about as much attention as their regular posts has an audience that trusts their recommendations. A creator whose sponsored posts draw a third of the usual views has an audience that skips the ads. Kite also notes which brands the creator has worked with recently. A sponsorship for your direct competitor last month is worth knowing before you pitch them, and a run of unrelated brands in a single week can mean the audience is used to tuning out.

Creators send media kits with their follower counts, average views, engagement rates, and audience breakdowns, and Kite checks each figure against the posts it read. You can upload the media kit as a PDF or an image in the Kite web app, or share it in Slack.

Media kits often run high because they're out of date or because they lead with the best month. Kite lays the claimed figures next to the observed ones. If the kit promises 30,000 average views and the last fifteen videos averaged 9,000, you have a clear, factual reason to negotiate.

Kite brings everything together in a recommendation for each creator: go ahead at the quoted price, negotiate, or pass. Each recommendation explains the reasoning in a few sentences and links to every post behind it, so you can check any finding yourself in a minute.

When the answer is to negotiate, Kite explains what a fair price looks like based on the creator's typical views rather than their follower count, and what to ask for, such as a performance bonus, usage rights for the video, or a discount code that lets you measure sales. When the answer is go, Kite can draft the outreach message and the creator brief, including the claims the creator must not make. Kite shows you the outreach before anything is sent.

After the partnership runs, Kite records what the creator cost and what their posts delivered. That record makes your next vetting sharper, because Kite can compare a new creator with the ones who actually performed for you. To follow results after launch, see Track influencer campaign results.