Recruiting on Instagram, TikTok and Threads

Who to target

Three criteria, and all three together.

Some audience. Not a large audience: an audience that exists. A few thousand followers who comment are worth more than tens of thousands who do not react. What you are looking for is proof that people come back.

Regular posts. Look at the dates of the last twenty posts. A person who has posted every week for six months has discipline; a person who posted thirty times in January and then nothing does not. The trade demands content every week, and you will not build that habit in her place.

No contradiction with the persona. If you know how to sell a specific persona, described in the marketing module, the creator must be able to carry it without forcing herself. A contradiction between what she already posts and what you want to sell shows in the conversations, and fans feel it.

Conversely, three signals that should move you on to the next profile: an account that already points to a sales page managed by someone else, an account whose age is not obvious and that you will not be able to verify before the first exchange, and an account showing no face and no identifiable element, where you will not know who is replying.

The first message

It must be short, honest and free of promises. It says who you are, what you do, why you are writing to her in particular, and it asks a question. It contains no figure.

Here are three variants, written for this lesson, to adapt and never to copy as they are.

Variant 1, direct. “Hi Lea, my name is Julien, I help creators with content sales and running their inbox. Your posts since the spring have been very regular and I thought the question might interest you. Have you ever considered monetizing, or is it something you have ruled out?”

Variant 2, through the question. “Hi Lea, Julien here, creator manager. An honest question, no strings attached: is your inbox already taking up your time, or not yet? That is what I handle for the people I work with, and your account made me think you will get there fast.”

Variant 3, after an interaction. “Hi Lea, I commented on your Sunday video. My name is Julien and I handle sales and conversations for a few creators. If one day you want to talk about it for twenty minutes on a video call, without deciding anything, I will explain how it works and what it asks of you.”

What these three messages have in common: a real first name, a named job, a specific reason to write, an open question, and no promise. What they do not have: an amount, a comparison with other creators, urgency.

The pace

How many messages per day? None of the platforms publishes a number, and this course will not invent one. Here is what is published.

Meta’s Community Standards, whose home page states that they “outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads”, prohibit in their Spam policy “Posting, sharing, engaging with content or creating accounts, Groups, Pages, Events or other assets, either manually or automatically, at very high frequencies”. The threshold is not quantified. The word “manually” matters: it is not only automation that is targeted, it is frequency.

The Instagram help center describes what happens to your message: “you’ll need to accept message requests in your Message Requests folder before they appear in your Chats list”, and “Message requests that may be offensive, unwanted, contain spam or are hidden based on your Hidden Words preferences will appear in a separate Spam folder. You won’t receive notifications for spam.” In other words, a cold message is a message the person has to go and find, and that a filter can make disappear before she sees it.

TikTok lists in its Community Guidelines, in force since September 13, 2025, what it considers spam: “Using automation to run many accounts or send repetitive content”, “Posting a large amount of irrelevant material”, and states: “We strictly prohibit automation tools, scripts, or other tricks designed to bypass our systems.”

The practical consequence: send few messages, all different, from an account that posts itself and has a history. A few personalized messages per day, written by hand, from a real account, respect the spirit of these rules; fifty copies of the same text do not. And TikTok’s word “repetitive” concerns you directly: three variants is not a coincidence.

The classic objections

“What is your commission?” Answer with the figure, right away, and with what it covers. A creator who asks this question first is serious. Never say “we’ll see”, and do not compare with “the other agencies”: you do not know what the others do. The site’s revenue split tool, at /tools/revenue-split/, lets you show her the calculation rather than assert it.

“I want to stay anonymous.” Separate two things. Anonymity toward fans is a persona choice, compatible with the trade, with content constraints to describe honestly. Anonymity toward you is not possible: the identity check in the next lesson is mandatory, and the platforms themselves require it. Say so clearly.

“I don’t show my face.” It is possible and it sells, with a catalog and a persona built for it. Do not promise that “it works just as well”. Say that it is a format of its own, that you do or do not know how to sell it, and offer to discuss it in the interview.

“Who are you, exactly?” Your first name, your last name if she asks, your company if you have one, and a video call. A creator who checks who you are is doing exactly what you will do with her in the next lesson.

What you must never write

A revenue promise. “You could make this much per month” is a figure you will not deliver, that will be held against you, and that puts you in the category of messages she has already received ten times.

Pressure. “Offer valid until Friday”, “I have other profiles waiting”, “you are losing money every day”. The person who accepts under pressure leaves as soon as she can.

A lie about your identity. A fake first name, a fake gender, a fake company. Meta’s policy on inauthentic behavior targets deceiving people “about the identity, or origin of an audience or the entity that they represent”, and TikTok prohibits “Pretending to be a fake person or organization with the goal of misleading people”. Beyond the rules, a collaboration that starts with a lie about who you are does not survive the first video call.

The next lesson starts at this exact moment: she has replied, she agrees to talk. It remains to be seen whether you want to work with her.