You will produce a creator shortlist and a first outreach message ready to send.
You found ten creators and partners in lesson 8.1, Pick creators by audience fit, not follower count. Now you need to choose one and write to them. Most outreach messages to creators look the same: "Hi dear, we love your content, would you be interested in a collab? Let us know your rates." Creators who work with brands receive a lot of these, and most go unanswered.
This exercise narrows your list to five, scores them, picks one, and produces a message and brief they are likely to read.
From your list of ten, choose the five whose comments looked most like your buyer. Score each one from 1 to 5 on four things, where 5 is best.
Audience fit: how closely their commenters and audience data match your buyer, from lesson 8.1.
Content quality: whether their posts are clear, well made and in a style that would suit your product.
Past brand work: whether they have done collaborations before, and whether those posts were disclosed properly, felt natural and got real comments. Scroll back to find them.
Cost: what they are likely to charge or expect. Score so that a higher number is better, so 5 means affordable for you, including free swaps with partner businesses.
If you use a sheet, give it a row per candidate and columns for name, platform, audience fit, content quality, past brand work, cost, total, and notes.
Farah's scores, as an example, came out like this. A working-mother creator: 5, 4, 3, 4, total 16. A large fashion creator: 3, 5, 4, 2, total 14. A creator who posts office-life humour: 4, 3, 2, 5, total 14. A modest-fashion stylist with polished brand work: 2, 4, 5, 3, total 14. A tailoring and alterations business in her area, as a partner: 5, 3, 4, 4, total 16.
Two of Farah's candidates tied at 16. When scores are close, the notes decide. Her note on the working mother said the audience asked about sizes in almost every post. Her note on the tailor said a joint video would reach women who already cared about fit. She chose the working mother first and put the tailor on the list for next month.
Choose one. Running several collaborations at once, before you have run one, makes it hard to learn what worked.
Your message should show that you know who they are and why your buyer is their audience. Keep it short enough to read on a phone in one go.
Open with a specific post of theirs you liked and why. Not "love your content" but the actual video. Then say in a sentence why you think their audience would care about what you sell. Then state what you offer and what you want, in two or three sentences. End with one easy next step.
Here is Farah's message, as an example. "Hi Nadia, your video last week about getting three kids out the door by 7.45 had half your comments asking where your blouse was from. I make modest workwear designed for exactly that kind of morning, with blouses cut not to gap when you sit or lift a child. I'd like to send you two pieces and pay a fee for one Reel showing how you wear them on a school-run morning, with a paid partnership label. Could I send over a one-page brief?"
It names her post, connects her audience to the product, states the offer and the ask, mentions disclosure, and ends with one question.
Before you send the message, decide how you will know whether it worked. Use what you learned in lesson 8.3, Disclose it properly and measure it: a unique code or link for this creator, and a log of messages that mention her. Decide what result would make it worth repeating, such as a number of orders or enquiries in the two weeks after the post. Write that down now, so you judge the result against a plan rather than a feeling.
Farah wrote: "Code NADIA10. Log every order and message mentioning Nadia for 14 days. Worth repeating if it brings at least as many orders as my best month of organic posts in a fortnight."
When you finish, you should have a scored sheet of five candidates, a chosen first partner with a reason, a short personalised message, the one-page brief from lesson 8.2 adjusted for this person, and a written measurement plan.
Now score your five, choose one, and write the outreach message with the brief attached.
Score five creators or partners, choose one, and write a short personalised outreach message plus the brief to attach.
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