Influencer Vetting Checklist

Choosing the wrong creator is one of the most expensive mistakes in influencer marketing — and it is almost always avoidable. The brands that consistently select high-performing creator partners are not the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones with a rigorous, repeatable vetting process that they apply to every creator before any commitment is made.

This checklist distils the creator evaluation process used by LMG Media across hundreds of influencer campaigns into a single, actionable reference document. It covers every dimension of creator quality that matters commercially — from the quantitative signals that indicate audience authenticity to the qualitative judgments about content standard, brand fit, and community health that no analytics tool can fully automate. Work through it in order for every creator you are seriously considering, and you will catch the red flags that generic influencer platforms and surface-level follower counts consistently miss.

The checklist is organised into six evaluation areas: engagement authenticity, audience quality, content consistency and standard, sponsored content performance, brand safety and values alignment, and commercial readiness. Each area includes specific check items, benchmark thresholds where applicable, and guidance on what a pass, a flag, and a fail looks like for each signal. At the end of each section there is a simple scoring guide that allows you to build an overall creator quality score — making it straightforward to compare multiple creators against each other and prioritise your shortlist.

Whether you are vetting a single creator for a major campaign or screening a large pool of applicants for a micro-influencer programme, this checklist gives you a consistent, defensible framework for every selection decision. Download it, share it with your team, and use it as your standard before any creator partnership is confirmed.