 So a few days ago, I was watching a video from another YouTuber by the name of Patrick C.C. And Patrick C.C. did the video documenting his experience of working with TikTok influencers for a campaign that he was running, I think, around his own project or something like that. Now, Leroy deleted his after like 24 hours, I suppose, so I guess I got scammed. And as I was watching that video, I was thinking like, man, it's interesting to see someone else go through all of the red flags and all of the troubles that we have as a marketing agency because it lets me know that I'm not crazy and that sometimes these TikTok influencers really are like tripping. You know what I'm saying? Like everything about his campaign wasn't terrible, you know, but there were a lot of things in there that we have come to identify as red flags when it comes to influencers. So that's what I want to talk about for this video. What are some red flags that you can look at when it comes to dealing with TikTok influencers? How can you keep yourself from getting finessed or making sure that you have the best possible chance at having a great campaign on TikTok? Let's get into it. It's the network. What's going on? My name is Kory Music Marketer and co-founder of Country Band Agency and today I want to talk about red flags. And when I'm talking about these red flags, I mean specifically in the space of TikTok influencers and TikTok influencer-based campaigns. Now, those type of campaigns have become super popular, I would say, since 2019 once we start to see a surge of songs that's going viral on TikTok. Now, every artist in their mom wants to catch a viral TikTok hit and they're all jumping into the platforms, dropping thousands and thousands of dollars on influencers hoping that it makes them the next Arizona service or an old town road or something like that. And while, you know, I have my own thoughts on that that I get into in another video, TikTok influencer marketing really can be a really effective way to push music out when done correctly and when you work with the right people. Now, the problem that comes with doing TikTok influencer marketing is that a lot of them are kids, you know what I'm saying? Just to be real, like you're trying to get teenagers and kids to do great business and just a lot of them aren't equipped for that. And I won't knock all TikTok influencers because we do have a great network of influencers that we work with that just are amazing 95% of the time. But every now and then you do run into a bad Apple and if you don't know how to recognize the red flags, then you might run into a bunch of bad Apple. So that's why I want to get into this for this video. A couple of red flags you can look forward to let you know, hey, you need to stay away from that TikTok influencer, take your money elsewhere. But before we get into all that, come and follow me on Instagram and TikTok. Links will be in the description below. Come talk to me, come engage with me, come give me some video ideas, all that good stuff. Also, we have relaunched the Brandman Network Elite platform. So if you're interested in learning some of the same music marketing techniques that we go over in videos, then check it out. The link will be in the description below. It's really dope. It's only going to get better. And you know what I'm saying? I like the thing that we make in magic over there. Like we turn every day regular arts into marketing geniuses. You know what I'm saying? So once again, link in the description below. Check it out, sign up if you're interested. Hopefully I'll see you in there. So the first red flag that I look for is, are they managed by some type of influencer agency or not? Now, this isn't always a red flag necessarily when it comes to their work ethic. I often have found that influencers that have some type of management agency behind them, especially like a big agency, they do tend to be a little bit more responsible and take it a lot more serious because, you know, they've been pushed to a point to where they have to care about it like a job. The reason I put it on here as a red flag has a lot more to do with price. Usually the influencers that are, you know, being managed by some type of agency, they are usually the most expensive influencers that you can work with. I'm talking about on average, we're getting influencers like that who are charging like $2,000 and above for a single post. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that they now have other people that make money off of them. Right? Like when you are signed to a management company, you don't have to pay your manager. You may have to pay overhead costs that come with their management agency. So we've seen influencers that we worked with that were maybe charging five, six hundred, maybe a thousand dollars, get signed to a management company. And then now their prices double or triple because once again, they have all these other things they have to pay for now. So it's not a red flag when it comes to work ethic. It's not a red flag when it comes to like, will you be finesse or not? But it's usually a sign that that influence is going to be pretty expensive. Like anytime I see a, you know, contact me at something and it has a dot agency or agency in it. We stay away if the, if the client's budget is within a certain range, you know, or we may save them for, for bigger campaigns and bigger budget campaigns, but nine times out of 10, those influence is going to be pretty expensive. Now, an actual red flag that I look for, you know, when determining if an influence is going to try to finesse me or if they're just going to be difficult to work with or anything like that is, do they give you a set price or number when you ask them how much do they charge for promo? Now, if you've watched my influencer outreach video, which if you didn't go check it out, I'll, I'll link it somewhere here. Um, but if you watch my video, I talk about how to reach out to influencers and just to politely ask them, Hey, how much do you charge or how much would you charge me for this service? Uh, it's usually really quick, pretty simple, pretty painless process. And what I have found is that most of the serious influences have some type of number that they're ready to hit you with. So they'll quickly hit you back with like, Hey, it'll be $500 for a fee post that post will stay up on my profile for a week. You know what I'm saying? Um, if it doesn't do X, Y, Z, and I do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Versus the influencers who are usually a little bit more scammy, they tend to ask you a question I hate hearing from them, right? And that question is, what is your budget? And the reason that I don't like when influencers ask what is your budget is because that to me lets me know that they're not really trying to be fair here. They're trying to gauge how much money can they get from you in total, right? And I've seen it with other influencers that we've worked with before. I've seen influencers that that we've paid $200, $300 charge someone a thousand dollars just because they said they had a thousand dollar influencer budget, you know, which isn't fair. It's not fair to the person that is spending the money, especially if that's not the rate that you're typically charging people or the rate that you know is fair for what you're doing. Now, side note, what I do in those situations is I low ball them just to be real with them. So if an influencer hits me back with that right, I say, Hey, I like your content. We have this song. We want you to work on TikTok. How much would you charge me for promo? And if they go, what's your budget? I respond to them and say, I have $50 for you. Now, what that has done for me is it either one makes them ignore my emails and start responding to me or it forces them to give you a number. Right. So they'll usually respond back and say, Hey, that's a little bit out of my budget range. I typically charge $350. Now it's like, Oh bet, now we're getting somewhere. Now I can, I can look at your number, engage if you're worth that number to me or not. So like I said, it's not necessarily the biggest red flag on if they're going to financial or not, but I do think it says a lot about your business ethics and just how you conduct business in general, when you have a price list or a price sheet ready to share with people versus when you're just trying to see how much you can milk somebody for. And just like in context, man, when I reach out to Instagrammers or like YouTubers, but they have price sheets ready. So this is an issue that I've really only personally seen with like TikTok influencers and then new influences on the other platform as well, which is also probably why a lot of TikTokers do it because they're super new to being influencers in general. But you typically see price lists and, you know, an established amount for what they want to do from more established influencers who kind of have their business together. So another red flag that a TikTok influencer just may not be worth it or may scam you or may not just do business the greatest way is that they have a large amount of views on the content that you can see, but their posting date is inconsistent. Now, let me tell you what these TikTok influencers do now. I mean, let me tell you that's a common problem that anyone that has ran any TikTok promo has probably went through this, right? Some of them would take your money, they'll post, let's say two, three, four days go by and they don't like the engagement that the video is getting and they'll just take it down. They'll delete it. They'll never respond back to your emails asking why did you take it down? Or, you know, hey, you said you would leave it up for a month or for forever. Why did you take it down? Some will really do that. And what I have come to determine or what I've come to see that lets me know if an influencer is likely to do that is once again, do the posts that you see have a bunch of views on it, but is there an inconsistent posting date in between the video? So for example, if the first video on their profile has a million views and it was posted three days ago, right? And then the second video has two million views and it was posted a week ago. And then the third video has, you know, maybe a similar number, 1.5 million views and it was posted a month and a half ago. That to me is a rare flag because one TikTok just doesn't work like that. Like TikTok isn't like Instagram where you can maybe post a few times a week and like really just go up. Like there are influencers that get away with low video counts, but it's rare to see an influencer that can post like once a month or twice a month and really maintain those type of numbers. So what that tells me is that they delete posts, right? Today or from time to time, we'll delete posts that they feel like aren't high performing or it doesn't make them look good to the outside world. And from influencers that we talk to that do this, they tell us that they do it because they want to make their page look appealing to people who are trying to offer brand deals. And like they pretty much that, like they want to look good to the people on the outside who might give them money. Now the problem with this is that it's misleading, right? Like if I'm willing to pay you, let's say a couple thousand dollars for posting because I believe that you're getting millions of millions of views on your content consistently when in reality that one million plus view video might be one of 20 videos that you posted this month and that's the one that popped. You're being misleading to me. You're not letting me know the full picture. I would much rather pay you a fair price for what you really get than to get finesse for a number for something that you're trying to make me think you get pretty consistently. So one thing that I'll do in this scenario is I'll look up influencers on social blade. If you go to social blade, which is a free social media analysis tool, you can see if they've been deleting posts, you can see how many times they post. And like I said, sometimes you really will come across an influencer that maybe posts like once or twice a month and they get those type of numbers. It's rare, but they are out there. Most of them from what I've determined, delete posts because they want to look good to potential brand investors and potential business partners and stuff like that, which once again, I just, I just think it's messed up. You know, like charge me for what you really get. Don't charge me for what it looks like you get another red flat if you may want to look for it. And this is really when it comes to like bigger influences. This doesn't pertain to honestly like 95% of influences on TikTok. But if it's an influencer that you're charging or that is charging you more than I will honestly say like a thousand dollars or more and they're not willing to sign a contract, stay away. Don't do it. Even if they're the best guy or gal in the world and you feel like you can trust them, just don't do it because that's a lot of money to lose out on. If worst case scenario happens, they don't respond to your emails. They don't post your posts or they take it down. Then you have no protection against yourself to get that money back. So I've seen influences before who would try to talk ours until like, you know, no, man, it's cool, bro. Like, look, man, I got three million followers. I'm not going to finesse you. You know how many people with millions of followers, finesse people every day. It's an alarming amount. You know, so I think that if you're working with an influencer and you're paying them once again more than like a thousand dollars or so, unless you just have some type of established relationship with them where you trust them, you know, they will deliver, make them sign a contract. And if they won't sign a contract, then don't work with them because to me, that's a red flag. I feel like if, you know, if you want, really want my money, especially a money, a sum of that amount or higher, then you're going to do everything in your power to make me feel comfortable. And me feeling comfortable involves you sign a contract saying you're not going to finesse me, you know. So if they won't do it and they're charging you a lot, that's a red flag. They may not run off on you, but it just tells you a lot about their business acumen and the way they're going to do business, you know, maybe not even just with you, but just in general. And the last red flag that I want to talk about once again when it comes to TikTok influencers is are they super slow to respond back to you? Now I get it, influencers are people, people are busy, a lot of them are in school and jobs and all this other stuff. But what I have seen is that the influencers that are super sketchy will respond back to you really, really fast when the conversation's on money, but as soon as you have paid them and the conversation now turned towards doing work, they become extremely difficult to reach and extremely difficult to just follow up with and make sure they're doing a job. Now this unfortunately is one that isn't always easy to catch in the beginning because like I said, a lot of them can just be really upbeat and really positive and responding super fast and then you pay the money in there, they're trying to go. So that unfortunately is hard to gauge in the beginning. So one thing that I do look for is just like how fast are they responding back to just the initial messages about us doing business? Is it taking them four to five days to respond back to your last email about how much they charge? Is it taking them a week to get back to you about if they'll sign a contract or not? If there are long lapses in communication initially, then you can almost 100% expect that it be long lapses in communication once you've actually paid your money and it could get to the point to where they just stopped responding back to you at all. Like we've had influencers post stuff, never let us know even though we ask them to let us know and then like once we're like, hey, this isn't what we asked for. They just fall off the face of the earth. So once again, it's a lot harder to gauge in the beginning but if you are trying to gauge it in the beginning, look for how long it's taking them to get back to you while in those initial messages. And like I do try to get people courtesy. I once again get it, people have jobs, people have school and other things they're doing but if you were responding back to me every 30 seconds, 10 minutes ago and then now I don't know where it's taking you a week and a half to get back to me, I personally take it as a red flag. So there it is guys, those are some of the red flags that I look for when dealing with TikTok influencers for our TikTok influencer marketing campaigns. Now, all of these aren't always going to be 100% definite red flags but I've seen them enough when dealing with TikTok influencers to know that I should be weary whenever I see these things come up. Now to be real with you, these red flags probably apply to influencers on any platform, not just TikTok. I just personally wanted to put it in the format of talking about TikTok because I've noticed that a lot of artists and managers and other marketers are hopping into the space of doing TikTok influencer marketing. So I wanted to put it there so you can protect their sales when dealing with TikTok influencers but really take these tips and apply it to any influencer marketing across the board. They exhibit a lot of these things, there's going to be some red flags down which you can expect to deal with when dealing with these influencers. But I don't want that to discourage you from doing TikTok influencer campaigns because once again, there is a lot of potential for really cheap reach when it comes to TikTok influencers. There's always a potential that something could go viral and you know like TikTok influencers when they do their job and are easy to work with are actually really cool people. We have a lot of influencers that we love bringing business to because they always execute, they're very professional, they're very timely and if they can't do something, they let us know. You know what I'm saying? They're like, yo, I don't have the time for it. I'm too busy. I don't want to take your money and make you chase me around for four weeks just to get back $300, you know what I'm saying? So that's something to think about. Hopefully that's some gems you took out of this and hopefully a lot less of you get finessed when it comes to dealing with these influencers. Other than that, I'd love to know what red flags you're looking for when dealing with influencers. What just absolutely makes your spidey sense is tingle. What lets you know like, hey, this guy, this girl is about to finesse me. Like, what are you looking for? Outside of that, if you feel like you learned anything today, please like and share this video. Hit those post notifications as well as I wouldn't want you guys to miss anything. Once again, my name is Corey and I'll see y'all next time.