u/Successful-Moose7244

If you want to scale with influencers but don't want to burn cash on bad deals, get scammed by fake engagement, or waste months on advice from people who've never actually booked a sponsorship, this is for you.

I'm a co-founder at a SaaS in the creator space. Between our own growth and helping brands figure out their influencer strategy, I've booked hundreds of partnerships and spent significant budget doing it. Here's the honest brain dump on what actually works.

Start with Instagram before anything else
For our niche, creators and social media marketers, Instagram was where the highest concentration of our exact audience lived. Long form YouTube integrations are powerful but Instagram influencer content gave us faster feedback loops and lower minimum spend to test. We could run 10 micro influencer posts for the same cost as one YouTube dedicated video and learn 10x faster.
If your audience is on Instagram, start there and max it out before spreading to other formats.

Have a proven offer before you touch influencers
We made the mistake of running influencer campaigns before our landing page and onboarding were tight. Traffic came in and leaked straight out. Nail your conversion flow first. Add scarcity to the CTA where it makes sense, something like "first 500 signups get extended trial" consistently outperformed generic CTAs for us.

Micro influencers over macro almost every time
We tested both extensively. Creators in the 8k to 60k follower range with genuinely engaged audiences in the content creation and social media marketing space consistently outperformed larger accounts with diluted audiences.

The metric we cared about most was comment to follower ratio not raw follower count. A creator with 20k followers and real engaged comments was worth more to us than someone with 200k followers and emoji replies.

How to spot fake engagement
Suspiciously consistent view counts across every video regardless of topic. Repeated or near identical comments. Too many emojis, celebrity profile pictures in the comment section. These are all signals of inflated numbers. We got burned once early on and built a checklist after that.

Commission vs flat rate
Early stage when budget is tight, push for commission deals. We offered 30% recurring on every subscription generated. Most creators initially prefer flat rate but if you show them the math on what 30% recurring actually compounds to over 12 months most of them come around. Build a simple spreadsheet showing the projection and walk them through it.
Once you have budget and proven creative, switch to flat rate because paying 30% forever gets expensive fast when campaigns actually work.

What to look for in a creator
Audience relevance to content creators and marketers. Consistent views across their last 10 to 15 posts. How often they publish. Engagement rate weighted heavily toward comments over likes. We would take a creator with 6k views and 12% engagement over one with 15k views and 3% engagement every single time. Engagement predicts conversion, views alone don't.

Finding creators at scale
We used a mix of manual Instagram search, trend data to identify which creators were gaining momentum in our niche before they peaked, and a researcher on Upwork who built us lists of qualifying accounts with contact information. The Upwork route saved enormous time at scale.

Outreach that actually gets replies
Keep it short. Lead with the paid opportunity clearly in the subject line so they know immediately it's a business conversation. Four to seven touchpoints across the sequence because the money is almost always in the follow ups. Most deals we closed came from the third or fourth email not the first.
Dedicated landing pages or coupon codes per creator so you can actually track what's working and double down on the partnerships driving real results.
The 30% rule
Roughly 30% of your partnerships will actually perform. Those are the ones you nurture, repeat, and build real relationships with. They carry the entire effort. This is a volume game early on which is exactly why commission deals make more sense when you're starting out. You can't afford 10 flat rate deals while you find the 3 that work.

The creators that performed we treated completely differently. Early access to new features, genuine relationship building, creative input into how they presented the product. Those partnerships compounded in ways that pure transactional deals never did.

For identifying which creators were genuinely gaining traction in our niche before we reached out, we used Social Hunt. It surfaced momentum before it peaked which meant we were reaching out to creators right before their audience exploded rather than after. Timing that right made a meaningful difference in both response rates and campaign performance.
Happy to answer questions on any of it.

Hi everyone. So my daughter just turned 3 and up until a few weeks ago she was honestly such an easy kid when it came to sleep and just being independent in general. She'd go to bed on her own, sleep through the night, no issues. I felt really lucky honestly.

Then she went to my sister's house for a weekend with her older cousin, came back, and it's like a completely different child. Every single night I have to lay down with her until she falls completely asleep. If I try to sneak out too early she wakes up and we start all over. And if she wakes up at 2am or 3am she doesn't just cry a little, she panics. Like full on frantic, running to our room, totally scared. I have to walk her back and sit with her again until she's out.

During the day it's the same thing. Yesterday she couldn't find me in the living room for maybe 30 seconds and she lost it. I was literally right around the corner. She follows me from room to room now and if I get up from the table before she's done eating she will just abandon her food and follow me rather than stay and finish. It's like she needs to physically see me at all times.

Nothing scary happened at my sister's as far as anyone knows. Everyone said the weekend was fine and she had fun. I have no idea what triggered this.

Is this a normal developmental thing that just kind of happens sometimes? Has anyone else gone through this out of nowhere? And if so how long did it last and what actually helped? I feel so bad for her because she seems genuinely scared and I don't want to make it worse but I also can't sit in her room for an hour every night forever. Any advice would mean a lot right now.

My kid is 8. Smart kid, funny kid, great kid. But the second that iPad comes out it's like someone replaced my son with a feral raccoon who only communicates in whines.

I try to set limits. We have the "one hour then outside" rule. Sounds great in theory. In practice it goes like this: timer goes off, I say it's done, he does the whole slow-motion meltdown thing, I cave and say "okay 10 more minutes," those 10 minutes turn into 40, my wife gives me the look, and now we're all having a bad night.

And the worst part? I'm sitting there telling him to put the phone down while I'm literally scrolling Reddit. He called me out on it last week. Just looked at me and said "you're on your screen too dad." I had absolutely nothing. Zero defense. Just sat there like an idiot.

I've tried every approach. Strict cutoffs, reward charts, no screens on weekdays, only educational stuff. None of it sticks longer than like two weeks before something happens and the whole system falls apart.

I don't even think I'm a pushover dad in general but this one thing just breaks me every time. Anyone else feel like they're constantly losing this battle? What actually worked for your family because I'm running out of ideas over here.

Thanks for all the helpful advice you guys gave me, Ill try not to cave 🤣 and I will check out the
ScreenEarn app also any other suggestions do mention

I will also make sure to post an update after a week or two

It didn't happen all at once. At first, it was just something we used to keep him busy while we got things done. It made life easier, so we didn't think much of it.

But now it's different.
Every day feels like a struggle just to get him to put it down.

We'll say it's time to stop, and he acts like we're taking something away from him that he can't live without.
Sometimes he ignores us completely. Other times it turns into arguing, and the mood in the house just drops.

What's harder to accept is how much we've lost without realizing it. We used to talk more. We used to do things together without distractions. Now, even when we're all in the same room, it doesn't feel like we're actually together.

He's there physically, but mentally he's somewhere else.

We also notice he doesn't get excited about the same things anymore. Going outside, family time, even small conversations... they all seem less interesting to him compared to the screen. And when we try to bring him back to real life, it feels like we're competing with something we can't beat.

We're not blaming him. It's on us too. We made it easy for this to happen because it kept things quiet and simple in the moment. But now we're seeing the cost of that.

In the end, it's not just about screen time. It's about losing connection with our own child while we're sitting right next to him.

And that's what we're trying to fix before it goes any further.

Update: this post was really viral last time, so I wanted to do this again, and now he's a teen, and he's been spending way more time with us :) And here are some very good tips y'all told me before:

Use chore-based screen time where your child earns it. This has been working perfectly for my teen and younger child. Or you could just use the ScreenEarn app to do all this easily but you could do it manually too even though I dont recommend it…

Encourage them to explore hobbies and shared activities. For example, my kids and I go fishing every week.

Screen time is inevitable. How else do you expect your child to have a social life?

In the modern era we can’t completely deny screen time and as parents we could try to limit it and this is is the first step of progress

I have done this in this past, once during 2022 but now the strategy has been completely different.

My old account still sits with 75K+ followers while the new one just hit the 20K mark.

So some of you might think why two accounts, the thing is my old account was a lifestyle and love content but the reach dropped and growth stalled so I started fresh with another niche that was booming.

I spent a full week just studying accounts in my niche before filming anything. Not casually scrolling either. Actually analyzing. Which formats were getting reach right now. What the first couple seconds looked like on videos that were actually going viral. What patterns kept showing up across different creators in the space.
You're looking for the structure underneath what's working, not just what it looks like on the surface. Once you see it clicks pretty fast.

Every video needs a real reason to keep watching in the first 1.5 seconds. Not a teaser, not a title card. An actual reason. A surprising visual, a blunt statement, or a question that makes someone feel like the answer is about them.

I also started thinking about retention intentionally. Where does someone naturally want to stop watching? Figure that out and build something into that exact moment that makes them stay. Completion rate moves distribution more than almost anything else.

I never posted day to day. Filmed in bulk and always had 5 to 7 videos ready before publishing anything. Takes the pressure off and keeps quality consistent. When you're scrambling to post, it shows in the content.

I didn't tell a single friend or family member about the page.

Didn't cross-promote from my 100k account either.
Sounds counterintuitive but it actually matters a lot. When people who don't match your target audience engage with your content early, even in a good way, it sends confusing signals about who the content is for. The algorithm uses those early engagements to decide who to show it to next. If your first 50 interactions come from the wrong people, your next distribution pool is already wrong.

This is where the most people go wrong getting your followers from your personal life actually affects your growth in the long term

My most viral videos had zero hashtags. What mattered was keyword relevance in the caption, in the text on screen, in the actual spoken words. Instagram reads all of it to figure out what your content is about and who to show it to.

Hashtags aren't completely dead but they're not doing what most people think they're doing. The relevance signals inside the content itself matter way more.

Your bio has one job. Make someone who just found you immediately understand why they should follow. Specific always beats vague. If someone can see themselves in your bio the follow rate goes up noticeably.

None of this is magic. It's research, structure, and consistency done correctly. The 2025 algorithm rewards content that holds attention and gets shared and everything else is basically in service of those two things.

The biggest mistake I see is people posting without studying what's already working first. You're not guessing if you actually did the research.

TL DR :

Invest time and research your niche, studying over scrolling.

Use tools for tracking your personal work and competitors which allows you to gain insights what’s happening. I use Social Hunt for tracking my personal page and for the competitor analysis I used a tool called Pallyy.

Have a system,
batch filming
Content calendar
Knowing the post windows
All these are crucial for your growth.

Fast growing accounts are not the ones who are talented but the ones who start paying attention and invest time.

From a very young age I had a dream to visit the Alps but the money was short but my grind wasn’t. As a kid social media was the only way I could have an easy access since my country had restrictions with child labour.

I spent 18 months studying the algorithms, obsessions over editing and the learning gurus available online attending those sessions. But the end result was 200 view per video and then silence hits no growth.

One day was alone sitting and evaluating what had gone wrong, all those hours of effort and input all in vain. I stopped what I was doing took a break and restarted. I explored what was booming in my niche, what formats kept showing up, what topics were gaining traction before they peaked, what the algorithm was clearly pushing right now versus three months ago.

I used a tool called SocialHunt to do most of this without losing my entire day to scrolling. Also started using vidIQ for the YouTube side. Found a smaller tool called Tikmatics that tracks format and audio trends on TikTok before they go mainstream, barely anyone talks about it but the timing edge is real.

Once I stopped guessing and started modeling what was actually working, everything changed.
First video using this approach hit 34K views. I cried. Not even embarrassed about it. I actually cried.
Within two months I had four videos cross 100K. Brands started reaching out. Got my first paid deal, $400 to mention a product. Felt like winning the lottery. Reinvested it immediately into understanding what was working even better.

Six months later I'm at $8K a month. Mix of brand deals and a digital guide I sell to people who want to learn the same system. Didn't think anyone would buy it. Sold 200 copies the first month at $25 each. Finally I succeeded my childhood dream of visiting the Alps and cherishing my small victory.

So if you are in that seat of realisations drop down your niches. Happy to help

Over the last 18 months, I’ve built an audience of more than 1 million people combined across platforms. A lot of people keep asking what “strategy” I use, but honestly, most of it comes down to understanding people better than understanding the algorithm.

The first thing that changed the way I approached content was realizing that social media is exactly what the name says: social media.

Social means people are watching people. Charisma matters. Personality matters. The ability to hold attention matters. There’s a reason creators like Asmongold, Alex Hormozi, and Kallmekris keep growing. They know how to connect with an audience.
A lot of creators blame “the algorithm” every time a post flops, but the algorithm is just tracking audience behavior. That’s it. If people enjoy something, platforms push it harder. If they don’t care, it dies.

Replace the word “algorithm” with “audience” and suddenly social media starts making way more sense.
The second half is the media part.
People want to be entertained. That doesn’t mean every video needs explosions or insane edits, but it does mean your content should actually be enjoyable to watch. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, even stand-up comedy all understand one thing really well: attention has to be earned constantly.

That’s why I spend more time studying storytelling and human behavior than obsessing over hashtags or posting times.

The biggest thing that helped me was understanding the seven principles of attention.

News companies and media giants have spent insane amounts of money figuring out what makes people stop scrolling, and honestly, the same principles work online too.

The first is impact. Nobody cares about someone posting their 47th identical morning routine. People pay attention when something changes how they think about a topic.

Then there’s conflict. A person talking to a camera is fine. A person challenging a popular opinion is far more interesting. Tension keeps people watching because humans naturally want resolution.
Stakes matter too. Nobody gets emotionally invested when nothing is on the line. The moment there’s risk, pressure, loss, or consequence involved, attention spikes immediately.

Prominence is another huge one. A random creator saying something controversial usually gets ignored. Someone big saying the same thing becomes a discussion overnight. But smaller creators can borrow prominence by reacting to major events, creators, or conversations while they’re still peaking.
Proximity is underrated. People only care when something feels connected to their own life. “A creator somewhere got banned” feels distant. “Instagram changed a rule that could affect your Reels” suddenly feels relevant.

Recency is brutal but important. Old topics die fast online. Timing matters more than most people realize. A huge part of growth is catching conversations while they’re rising, not after everyone is already tired of them. I use tools like Socialunt to track momentum in my niche early, vidIQ for YouTube trends, and Tikmatics to monitor TikTok sounds and formats before they completely peak.

And finally, novelty.
Most trends die because everyone copies them at the exact same time. Once something becomes predictable, attention disappears. The creators who keep growing are usually the ones doing something people haven’t already seen 400 times that week.

TL;DR:

If you want to grow on social media:
Stop obsessing over the algorithm and focus on the audience.

Make content that’s entertaining, emotionally engaging, or genuinely useful.

Use the seven attention drivers:

Impact

Conflict

Stakes

Prominence

Proximity

Recency

Novelty

Trends fade fast, but understanding human attention never stops working.

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