This mini-guide will explain the requirements for being accepted as an influencer (creator) on Social Cat. The requirements apply to Instagram and TikTok.
Our goal is to have an engaged community of influencers focused on providing value to the brands while they improve their skills and get compensated.
We take the following factors into consideration:
- Account aesthetics
- Public information - posts, followers, and following
- Quality of the content
- Engagement and audience
Let's dive into each one of them to understand better.
Account aesthetics
Although this is not a critical rule, the first impression is important. Before looking into portfolios and metrics, brands (and we) usually check the influencer's profile.
What we're looking for:
- a personalized bio with information about yourself - think of it as a creator 'mini-resume'
- carefully crafted highlights (if on Instagram)
- engaging captions and hashtags
- a healthy split of video versus photo content posted (if on Instagram)
The above are not necessarily mandatory requirements, but these will increase your chances of getting approved on the platform. We're also making minor exceptions, but it depends from case to case.
Public information
To get approved, we're looking for a minimum of 100 posts on each platform that creators apply with and at least 3,000 followers. All the accounts that apply must be public and kept public while on the platform.
We're also looking for a healthy balance of followers versus following - at the moment, we don't publicly disclose this information but feel free to reach out to inquire more about it.
We make exceptions in specific situations, but this depends from case to case.
Quality of the content
This refers to the quality of the content posted on Instagram or TikTok, whether static content (photos) or video content. Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the minimum requirements and ranking system for this at the moment.
However, influencers must avoid filters, blurry images or videos, and inadequate lighting. Profiles with low-quality content are rejected, as quality is one of the most critical aspects for the brands we work with.
Decisions are also made from case to case, which makes it difficult to synthesize into a set of specific rules.
Some other mandatory requirements:
Creators must speak in front of the camera - brands usually like to understand what influencers can create, especially for video content. We've received much feedback from them related to this, and we decided to introduce it as a rule.
However, it's not necessary to speak in front of the camera in all the videos posted. A minimum of around 20 to 25% of it would be enough.
- Creators must appear in some of their videos - this is similar to the first rule - for brands to understand more about them and see if they're a good fit. It's not mandatory to show up in all their video content, but at least around 20 to 25% of it.
Engagement and audience
In terms of engagement, we're looking at the engagement rate and what types of accounts engage with the influencer that applies. Influencers that show signs of artificially inflating their accounts with more followers and engagement get automatically rejected.
At the moment, we don't have a minimum engagement rate to get accepted on the platform, but we consider this requirement along with others to make a decision.
Notes
In the approval process, we might consider other aspects, such as previous collaborations, how active creators are, profile improvement over time, or overall alignment with our community.
Our team reserves the right to reject creators based on these aspects and other internal criteria not necessarily present here.
We perform regular checks on our community and reserve the right to reject influencers that don't fit the criteria or align with our community anymore.
