Should you check in with a creator before they post?

The razor went out on the 1st and the tracking says it landed on the 3rd. The deal is one video, live on the 14th, which is the day the two-blade bundle goes up on your site. Today is the 9th, and the last thing in the thread is their confirmation, which came back the day after you sent the terms.

Nothing is late, and nothing is wrong. And you have a message half-written that says just checking in, still on for the 14th?

Two answers arrive quickly. Send it, because the 14th is five days out and nobody has said anything since. Or don't, because they agreed to a date and chasing people who haven't missed anything is how you become the brand nobody answers. Neither one asks the question that decides it: what would that message do?

What can a message do at this point?

Two things. It can be a hand-over, or it can come back as an answer.

A hand-over. The discount code tied to their name, the final product shots, the asset that only exists on your side. If one of those isn't in their hands, the message has a job of its own and it doesn't need a reply.

An answer. Whether it's filmed, and whether it's still coming on the 14th. Worth having only if you'd do something different once you had it.

Those two are the list. The one most people reach for, which is making the video arrive sooner, isn't on it, and the reason sits in what you can and can't see from here.

What you can't see is where the video is. Our guide on when to pay a creator had to sort the days of a collaboration by which of them both sides can point at, because that is what a payment can be attached to. A video going live is one of those: that guide pairs it with acceptance as "two days you both already hold." Filming is the other kind, "a day you're told about rather than one you can see." The making of this video, from the first take to the export, is all that kind. That guide only had to sort the day a fee can hang on; the rest of the production sits on the same side of its line, which is this page's extension of it. The one visible thing in this stretch was the shipment, and it has already happened.

The waiting is the other half, and none of it is yours to compress. Our guide on having enough time before a launch splits what has to happen before a date into the waits that are yours and the ones that aren't, and puts the shoot firmly in the second pile: "The shoot happens on their calendar, inside the window your offer named". Of those it says, "None of these move because you cleared your afternoon." That guide does its arithmetic before a campaign starts rather than in the middle of one, and the split holds either way.

So a message might land on somebody's phone at the moment they were deciding what to do with their evening. It might not, you won't know which, and nothing about the date comes under your control either way. That is why hurrying isn't on the list of two: not because it can't happen, but because you can't plan on it. One competitor's guide to negotiating and running creator campaigns treats this stretch as its own stage, and says of it: "The period between 'yes' and the actual post is where enthusiasm fades and coordination breaks down." There are moves in that stretch, and the rest of this page is about them.

For the razor: the discount code and the product shots went out with the confirmation, so there's nothing left to hand over. Whatever this message is, it's the other one.

So what would you do with the answer?

The test is one question: would the answer change something you'd do before the 14th?

If it wouldn't, you're asking them for a fact that changes nothing on your side. All of that message's cost lands on them, and nothing comes back on yours.

To run the test you need the moves. Before the date, two of them are usually still yours.

You can move what sits on the date. That slot is the place on your own calendar the video was going to fill, and the slot stays yours even when the date doesn't. Another creator's video can take the 14th if theirs is already in, and this one runs in the week after.

You can take the dependency off this video. The launch email, the week's posts on your own account, the module on the bundle page you were going to drop it into: whatever you built on top of this one can be built without it. That costs you something, which is exactly why you'd want to decide it rather than discover it.

Both of those need lead time, and an answer is what gets you the notice to spend it. Our time guide has a test for anything that promises to save time: "Ask which wait it removes." A message removes none of the waits, which is what that test is for. What it can do is reach you while the choice is still open.

That is also what separates this from the stage before it. Writing to somebody who hasn't answered yet, our no-reply guide asks one question of a second message: "does this message change what they're being asked to decide?" Here they have already decided. The job isn't a question in front of them any more, so the question moves to your side of the table: what changes for you.

For the razor: the 14th has the bundle page on it and a launch email the team was going to build around this video. The video isn't the only thing that can go out, because the email can be written around the product shots instead. So there is a move, and an answer picks it.

Now change one thing about that plan. Say the launch email was written around the shots from the start, the bundle page needs nothing from the video, and a video that turns up on the 16th still has a slot in the posts you had planned. Nothing of yours is waiting on the answer. The date still matters to the deal and the message still has nothing to do, because whatever comes back, the week goes the same way. That's the case where you leave it.

When is the last day it's worth sending?

Not an interval. Our no-reply guide refuses to give one for the stage before a yes — "Not on a schedule anybody can hand you" — and works out a day from the campaign's own calendar instead.

The shape of that calculation is in our guide to a missed deadline, which names the thing you start from. Something arrives on its day whether or not the video does, and "Call it the date that doesn't move." From there: "Start from the date that doesn't move. Then take off what filling this slot with somebody else would cost you, end to end." That subtraction, in that guide's words, "unlike the floor it includes your own work" — the floor being what our time guide calls "the sum of the waits that aren't yours." The deadline guide and the no-reply guide are both working out a day to give up on somebody, which isn't your question. The arithmetic is what carries over.

So run it with your move in place of theirs. Start at the date that doesn't move, the deadline guide's name for it. Take off what your move costs, end to end. Then take off the room the answer itself needs, because a message you send on the last possible day is a message whose answer arrives too late — the no-reply guide counts a room of the same shape into its own subtraction, "writing to them, and waiting on an answer", for the next name rather than this one.

For the razor: the bundle goes up on the 14th, and the 14th belongs to the pricing change behind it rather than to the campaign, so check that the date is really fixed and then leave it alone. Nobody else's video is waiting, so the move left is the second one. If the answer is that the video won't be there, the launch email has to be built around the shots instead, and the people who send it need two days. So the answer has to be in hand by the end of the 11th, leaving the 12th and the 13th to rebuild. Their one answer so far came back the next day, so that is the figure you have: a message sent on the 10th is answered on the 11th and still counts, one sent on the 11th isn't. The 10th is the last day it's worth sending. Today is the 9th and holding it buys nothing, so it goes today.

There's a move on your side here that isn't a message at all, and the razor already spent it. Another guide from the same competitor, this one on seasonal campaigns, puts the shipment itself to work: "Receiving the product right before launch serves as a natural reminder for the creator". The box landed on the 3rd, eleven days before the date, so none of that is available on the 9th. By that guide's account the arrival date is worth deciding off the launch date, which is a decision for the campaign after this one.

What does the message say?

Three parts. The question is the only hard one.

What they need, again. Re-send the discount code even when you know they already have it, the way the competitor's negotiation guide builds its follow-ups: "Re-attach codes each time." It costs you a line and removes the one reason for a reply you don't want: it's in a thread somewhere.

The date you're working to, and what happens at it. Not as a deadline they've missed, because they haven't, but as the thing your question is about. Our guide to a missed deadline has you "Put down the date that doesn't move, say what you'll do when it arrives, and ask for the one thing you can't work out from your own desk: where the video is now." That line is written for a date that has already passed, in a message that has to work on consequences. Yours is working on a choice you still have, so the date and what you'll do at it go in for a different reason: they're what make your question answerable.

One question whose two answers send you different ways. Any update? isn't it. Our deadline guide is direct about why, in its own stage: that question "does only the last of those" — the ask for where the video is — "and the weakest version of it. It asks them to tell you they're behind, which they already know, and it leaves you where you were." Before the date they aren't behind, so there's even less in it. Ask instead for the fact your two moves split on. For the razor that's whether it's filmed and whether anything still has to come back to you before it goes up: filmed with nothing outstanding and the email can wait for the video, anything else and it starts on the shots.

That competitor's negotiation guide asks for the date itself, in a line it offers for the moment a shipment lands: "Any idea when you might post?" It is the same question in form, aimed at a stage where no date was agreed in the first place. That stage is the section below.

One more thing about the message, and it cuts the other way from everything above. There's a cost to pushing, which the same guide puts in its own words: "Avoid pressure or guilt", it says, and then, "Chasing too hard often results in low-effort posts." Take the direction, not the frequency it claims. What that guide puts on the other side of too much pressure is the quality of what comes back, and the quality of what comes back on the 14th is the thing you were buying.

For the razor: one message, going out today. The discount code, the 14th and what runs on it, and whether it's filmed.

What if there was no fee and no date?

Then there's nothing to check, and the test above has nothing to run on. That settles one of the two jobs and leaves the other.

A date is something you bought. Our guide on sending a creator free product instead of paying is exact about what a fee buys, "the right to require", and the first item on its list is "That it happens, and when." Without the fee, "Nothing is owed." There's no date you can require, so there's no date to ask about. If something of yours is still built on this video, that's a dependency you took on with nothing behind it, and it was that way before the box went out.

The competitor guides still send a message here. One of them, on communicating with creators, gives its follow-up instruction once the box has gone out — "schedule follow-ups with reminders to post without coming over as pushy" — and notes in the same section that without a fixed fee behind it, some of what goes out can always come back with nothing. That competitor's negotiation guide, repeating the ask, lowers it to the smaller version of the job — "Even a quick Story with your link works great if you're busy" — which is what asking again looks like when there was never anything behind the ask. The same competitor's gifting guide recommends getting the post agreed out loud while admitting in the same breath that such a promise "is not enforceable".

Which leaves what still works. The message can carry what they'd need to post, and the arrival is what the seasonal-campaign guide credits with some of the same work, with no message at all.

For the razor: if no fee had gone with it, there would be no posting date to ask about and no message today. What would be left is the move this campaign already spent: landing the box the week the bundle goes up.

Frequently asked questions

Should we ask them to send us the link when it's live?

Yes, and put it in the message above rather than a second one. It doesn't earn a send by itself: the answer arrives after the 14th, so no move of yours is waiting on it. What it costs is a line. The same competitor's seasonal-campaign guide asks for exactly that in its pre-launch reminder, requesting the link to the post once it goes up, and it asks for something they will have in hand anyway.

The request is for your records. Reading what the video did runs on what you wrote down, and our guide on telling whether a creator video worked puts that bluntly: "The answer is in your own notes, or it doesn't exist." The notes that guide counts are written before the post, since they are what the video gets checked against. A link is how you reach the thing you'll check, so it belongs with the rest of the record, and asking for it now saves you looking for it later.

Six creators are on this campaign. Does each one get a message?

The arithmetic is per job, the message is per person. Our no-reply guide settles the first part — "Do the calculation once per job" — and says two creators on the same campaign with the same job share the two dates it calculates, while the one shooting a file instead of posting has different ones. Five of the six are posting on the 14th, so the job-level part of the subtraction is the same for all five and you work it out once. The room their answer needs is the part that isn't shared, because it comes from how each thread has been answering. The sixth is shooting a file for your ad account, and their date is their own from the start.

What differs is what each message carries and asks. One of them needs their discount code resent. Another already told you it's filmed. A third has nothing of yours waiting on it. Our guide on messaging several creators at once is deciding how many first messages can go out at once, by what a yes to each would leave you holding, and it is explicit that it doesn't pick the names. Here the names are already fixed and each of them has a job. What changes from person to person is what the message is for.

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