What to put in your first message to a creator

A frozen-dumpling brand is launching a spicy pork flavor. It's going to a creator whose TikTok account is late-night cooking at home, and whose followers are part of why you already picked them. One video. Nobody has written a number yet.

Nothing is agreed. No fee, no terms, no brief. What you have is one message to write, and one purpose for it: to come back as an answer, not as a question. A message that returns as what's the pay, and when would this be? is your own message with the gaps still in it.

So there's one way to miss, and one thing that hides it. Leave out something they have no way to reach, and they can't answer you. Fill the space with lines they don't need, and one of them ends up standing where the missing fact should be, which is how a message reads finished when it isn't.

What this guide covers

• What is this message asking them?
• So how do you test what's in it?
• What's the job, and where does the video go up?
• Is it paid?
• When does it have to happen?
• What about the line that says what happens next?
• What doesn't go in this message?
• Frequently asked questions

What is this message asking them?

Two different things can be in that send box, and they need different facts in them.

One is an offer: will you do this, for this fee, on these terms? An offer has four things settled inside it — where the video posts, whether you can put money behind it and from whose handle, how long the reuse lasts, and how many rounds of changes you get. If you're holding those four and the number, that's what you're sending, and our guide to writing it is the one you want.

The other is smaller: are you open to an offer for this job, in this window? It's what you send when you haven't written the offer yet. For the dumplings nobody has written a number, so it's the smaller question.

A yes to the smaller question commits them to reading what you send next, and to nothing else. Not to a number, and not to terms they haven't seen.

Which of the two you're asking decides everything below, so settle it before you write a line.

So how do you test what's in it?

One question: is this a fact they need in order to answer you, and can't get anywhere else? That's our test, not a convention.

Both halves do work. Need, because a fact they aren't being asked about won't help them answer. Can't get anywhere else, because the message itself tells them who sent it, and they can scroll your account on their own. What they can't reach is anything about this job in particular: what it is and where it goes, whether it pays, and when.

Run it in both directions. Line by line, could they have answered without this one? And over the whole message, to find what's missing. The line pass is the faster of the two, so start there.

One line in the finished message isn't a fact about the job at all: it's about what happens after they answer. That one gets its own section below. Everything else answers to the test.

Run it on the dumplings. Here's the draft as somebody first wrote it.

We're huge fans of your content. True, maybe, but they aren't being asked about it. Out.

We're a fast-growing brand in the frozen aisle. They do need to know who's writing, because they're deciding what goes on their account — but the message already tells them that, and what kind of company you are they can look up. Fast-growing and the aisle add nothing on top of it. Out.

This could be a great fit for your audience. Not a fact at all, so it can't be one they need. It's a prediction, and the test asks for facts. Out.

We'd love to explore a potential collaboration. No fact in it. Out — and this is the line that does the most damage, because it reads like it covered the three below.

Now the other direction. Read the original the way they will: a brand and a wish, with no answer available in it.

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What's the job, and where does the video go up?

They can't answer without knowing what they'd be making, and a video doesn't tell them. It's a video about a specific product, and it goes somewhere specific.

That second part isn't a detail of the video at all. A video going up on their account and a file they shoot and hand over are not the same commission, and they build the shoot around which one it is. It also decides whether their followers are part of the purchase, because followers are attached to the account and not to the file. It's one of the four the offer settles, and the one that has to arrive before the offer does. We've called it the odd one out because it isn't a permission you exercise later, it's the shape of what you're buying.

Where do you get the answer? From why you went to them rather than a production crew. Your reason for picking them already decided it.

For the dumplings: you went to them for the people already following them, not for the way they light a countertop. So they post, on their own account, and the line is one video about our new spicy pork dumplings, posted on your account.

Is it paid?

Paid here means they get a fee for the work. Whether you can put money behind the video afterwards is a different question, and it belongs to the offer.

They have no way to guess whether there's a fee, and you don't need the number yet. You need them to know a fee exists. Leave it unsaid and they can't answer, because a paid job and a box of product aren't the same thing to be asked about, and they'd have to write back to find out which one you sent.

Where do you get the answer? You already have it. If there's a fee in the campaign budget, it's paid. If you're sending product and no money, that's a different message, asking them for something else.

For the dumplings: It's paid.

When does it have to happen?

The last fact is the one sitting in your calendar and not theirs.

Their calendar is their own. Yours is the thing they're answering about, and they can't check whether they're free for a job with no dates on it.

Where do you get the answer? Off the campaign calendar, working back from the date the video has to be live. Name the window rather than a day if a window is what you have.

For the dumplings: launch is October 5 and you want it up the week before, so filming lands in late September. The line is we'd want it live the week of September 28, so filming before then.

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What about the line that says what happens next?

Here's the line the test doesn't reach. On the dumpling message it reads if you're open to it, reply and we'll send the offer this week, with the number in it.

Take it out and they can still answer. It was never a fact about the job.

Keep it anyway. Without it a yes leaves them waiting: it doesn't say what comes next, or when.

It answers to a shorter question of its own: does the line say what a yes gets them, and when? Let us know if this sounds interesting is the same line with that answer taken out. It asks for the reply without saying what the reply gets them.

What doesn't go in this message?

Everything that fails the test. Two cases are worth walking through.

The brief. The sentence a viewer walks away with, the format, the element that has to stay intact — those get read once they're in, so none of it helps them answer you now.

One requirement carried along with them can't wait: a shoot they'd have to travel to, say. That isn't a fourth fact — it's part of the first one. One video about our new spicy pork dumplings and one video about our new spicy pork dumplings, shot at a studio two hours from you are different jobs, and they'd be answering about the first while you meant the second.

The rest of the terms. Usage rights: whether you're allowed to reuse the video at all — putting money behind it included — on which channels and for how long. Whitelisting: whether the paid version runs from their handle instead of yours. And how many rounds of changes you get.

Those are what the offer will attach to the job, and this message is asking one thing: whether they'll read them. None of it is needed to answer you now, so it waits. For the dumplings, that's the whole reason the message can go out now with a fee mentioned and no number in it. If you had settled the other three and written the number, you'd be sending the offer instead.

Frequently asked questions

The timing is tight. Do we say so?

No — say the dates. Tight, moving fast and ASAP aren't facts on top of them.

Name the window and they can see how much room it leaves. For the dumplings, live the week of September 28 tells them what tight doesn't. If the window is genuinely short, the dates carry that. If it isn't, the word was doing something other than helping them answer.

We're writing to six creators for the same campaign. Does the message change for each one?

Only where the job does. Run the test per creator, not per campaign.

Two of the three facts come from the campaign, so they're the same sentence for everyone on the list: whether it's paid, and the window. The first of the three doesn't have to be. If you want one creator to post and another to shoot a file, those are two different jobs, and a message describing one doesn't describe the other. The dumpling line names an account; the other one would have to name a file.

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