Wizard

HOW TO VET A KOL BEFORE YOU PAY THEM Most web3 projects waste 30-70% of their KOL budget on the wrong picks. The reason isn't bad intentions. It's bad evaluation. Teams pick KOLs by follower count and pitch deck instead of the 6 things that predict campaign performance. Here's exactly what to check on a KOL's profile before you sign or pay anything. The check takes a few minutes. Skipping it can burn a 6-figure budget. 1. ENGAGEMENT RATE VS. FOLLOWER COUNT A 20K-follower account with 12 likes per post isn't a KOL, it's a shell. The math is brutal but simple: real engagement for accounts under 50K should be 1-3%. If you're seeing 0.1% or wild swings between posts, the followers were bought, the engagement is fake, or both. How to check: pull engagement on their last 20 posts (not just their pinned post). Average it. If it's below 1%, walk away. 2. SMART FOLLOWERS (THE HARDEST SIGNAL TO FAKE) Smart followers measure how many of a KOL's followers are themselves influential. Anyone can buy 20K followers. Almost no one can buy 500 high-influence accounts to follow them. A low smart follower count means the network is mostly farmers, lurkers, and bots even if the headline number looks great. The thresholds to use: → Under 5K followers → want 50+ smart followers → 5K-20K followers → want 200+ smart followers → 20K+ followers → want 500+ smart followers minimum 3. REPLY SECTION QUALITY Open the comments on their last 5 posts. If 70% of replies are great post 🔥, amazing thread, to the moon, LFG with no substance, you're paying for distribution to bots. Real KOLs have audiences that argue with them, ask questions, and add their own takes. 4. PAST CAMPAIGN ANALYTICS If a KOL refuses to show specifics from past campaigns, wallet activations, sign-ups, referrals, and conversion data, they don't have any. Real operators have receipts. They want to show them. 5. PRICING STRUCTURE A KOL who refuses any performance component doesn't believe in their own audience. This isn't about "free until you convert" that's exploitative. It's about any deal worth doing having SOMETHING tied to outcomes. A floor fee plus a performance kicker. Flat-fee-only deals are how budgets disappear with nothing to show. 6. HOW THEY DESCRIBE THEIR AUDIENCE The biggest tell. Listen to how they describe their followers in their deck. "My audience converts" → product mindset. Will burn the relationship for one good campaign and you'll never get a second one. "My community trusts me to recommend" → operator mindset. Long-term partner. The rule we applied @babs_agency If 2+ of these raise concerns, walk away. Doesn't matter how big the account is. Doesn't matter how good the pitch deck looks. The campaign won't perform. The 6-point check takes a few minutes. The wrong KOL can burn a 6-figure budget. Save this if you're hiring KOLs. Share it with the next founder who tells you "we're spending $80K on KOLs this quarter and don't know how to pick them." GM Legends!