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A Smarter System for Vetting LinkedIn Creators [Scorecard + Creator Watch List]

Get Creator Expert Lindsey Gamble's free vetting scorecard to evaluate LinkedIn creators on metrics that matter—plus access a spreadsheet of 140+ vetted creators ready for partnership.

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If you’ve been paying attention to your LinkedIn feed, you’ve probably noticed how it’s evolved into a thriving creator platform over the past few years. 

This presents a powerful opportunity for businesses. By partnering with these credible voices, companies can tap into trust-based networks of decision-makers and professionals. 

In B2B especially, influencer marketing on LinkedIn has exploded: over 80% of B2B buyers now say creator content shapes their purchasing decisions, and nearly half actively rely on it during decision-making.

But most teams get creator selection wrong. They sort by follower count and start at the top. Follower count tells you almost nothing about whether a creator will drive results for your business. What matters is whether their audience matches your buyers, whether their content earns trust, and whether people actually engage with what they post.

In this article, I’ll share what I’ve learned about creator marketing on LinkedIn  as someone who’s worked on both sides of a brand deal and share how you can find the right creators for your campaign.

Lindsey Gamble is a creator economy consultant and advisor recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in the Creator Economy, named one of Business Insider's Top Creator Economy and Influencer Marketing Experts, and designated a Top 30 US Partnership Marketing Changemaker by Hello Partner. He brings dual expertise as both a seasoned marketer and active creator, helping brands and startups capitalize on emerging trends while writing a self-titled newsletter that's been named one of the best marketing newsletters by Buffer.

Meet the Expert: Lindsey Gamble

Creator Vetting Scorecard

Vet creators with confidence using our comprehensive scorecard. This downloadable resource includes evaluation criteria across audience quality, content alignment, and partnership potential, plus a ready-to-use scoring system that helps you make data-driven decisions about which creators to work with.

Download Now
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Why Teams Should Work With Creators

why teams should work with influencers

LinkedIn is where professional trust gets built in public.

In B2B, the product is usually expensive and buying decisions often don’t happen impulsively. People are looking for validation before they commit. They want to understand the category, compare approaches, hear how others think about tradeoffs, and feel confident they’re making a smart call.

Creators help because they do three things brands struggle to do on their own:

  1. They translate the product or category into human language.
  2. They add context: when to care, when not to, and why it matters right now.
  3. They lend credibility through their existing relationship with the audience.

A good creator partnership makes your brand feel easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to choose.

The Metrics That Reveal Influence

The most meaningful signals of creator value are often invisible in public metrics. LinkedIn recently added two metrics to creator analytics that reveal what follower counts can't: Saves and Sends.

  • Saves indicate utility — content worth bookmarking and coming back to. High save rates suggest the creator produces reference-worthy material like frameworks and how-tos. When someone saves a post, they're signaling it has long-term value.
  • Sends indicate trust — content worth sharing privately via DM. When someone sends a post to a colleague, they're putting their reputation behind it, which is a stronger endorsement than any public comment. High send counts signal authority and a distribution path that bypasses the public feed entirely.
For Caroline Forsey Creator LPs (20)

Personally, as someone active on LinkedIn, my posts don’t always generate massive visible

engagement. Yet people often share the impact of my content at events, during calls, or via

inbound messages, even from those who don’t engage through likes or comments. These

metrics help me understand this quieter engagement at scale.

How to Work with LinkedIn Creators

LinkedIn creators represent a broad group, including native LinkedIn users whose primary platform is LinkedIn, as well as influencers from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube looking to expand their audience.

Entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and small business owners use LinkedIn to share insights and boost visibility for their businesses. Industry professionals and college students also leverage LinkedIn to promote their work, network, and advance their careers.

While not everyone identifies as a creator, what unites them is the drive to produce content that fuels economic opportunity.

Finding creators on LinkedIn isn’t as simple as it is on other platforms, which offer creator

marketplaces and third-party integrations. But here are a couple of effective methods I recommend.

How to Find the Right Creators

You have more options than you might think:

Start with keywords relevant to your brand, product, or service. You can filter by “People” or “Posts.”

The LinkedIn Ad Library includes a searchable database for posts with the Brand Partnership label. Use keywords to discover creators who are already working with brands.

Once you've worked with one creator, ask who else they respect. Good creators know other good creators.

Many influencer marketing platforms and agencies are now expanding their services to include LinkedIn. Companies like Creator Match and Creator Authority specialize in LinkedIn influencer marketing, offering services for creator discovery and recruitment.

Selecting the Right Creators

I see too many prioritizing follower accounts, but it’s often the least useful signal. Instead, here are some key factors you should consider that are far more impactful:

Factor What to look for
Goals
This is the most important factor. What are you trying to achieve through creator partnerships — brand awareness, lead engagement, or something else? Clearly defining your goals will guide you in selecting the right type of creators.
Alignment
How well does the creator align with your brand? Do they share similar values, or does their mission complement what your brand represents?
Audience composition
Analyze the demographics of the creator’s audience. Does their audience align with your target market? Consider job roles, industries, company sizes, and geographic locations.
Content quality
Is their work thoughtful, well-crafted, and consistent over time? Engaging content is key to resonating with LinkedIn’s professional audience.
Sponsored content history
Review the creator’s track record with both organic and sponsored content. Did engagement hold steady during past partnerships, or drop?
Budget fit
Since LinkedIn influencer marketing is still relatively new, pricing can vary significantly. Some creators may be more cost-effective, especially if it's their first deal, while others may charge premium rates. Fees typically range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the creator and the scope of the work.

Bonus: Lindsey's Creators to Watch

Curious to learn about some of my favorite creators? Check out my spreadsheet of 140+ LinkedIn Creators across entrepreneurship, marketing, leadership, legal, and more.

Download Now
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Ways to Collaborate

Once you have some creators lined up to work with, here are some ways you can partner together for content. 

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  • Short-form text posts remain the standard format. Still effective for thought leadership and commentary, especially when a creator has a strong, distinctive voice.
  • Images and carousels work best for frameworks, data visualizations, or step-by-step content. They're easier to scan, save, and reference later, which means higher utility for the audience.
  • Video is the fastest-growing format, with dedicated placement in both the feed and the new Video tab. More on this below.
  • Live events  allow real-time interaction. Good for deeper engagement, Q&A sessions, and building community around a topic.
  • Articles and newsletters offer longer shelf life. These long-form formats are ideal for thought leadership, and it's what many industry experts are leveraging. Partners can do deep dives into your industry, integrate your brand, and provide the audience with valuable insights.
  • Thought Leader Ads deserve special attention. LinkedIn’s version of Meta’s Partnership Ads and TikTok Spark Ads allows brands to give sponsored content a boost through paid promotion, reaching a wider audience, and optimizing for certain objectives.
At this stage, you’ll want to connect the format to your goal. Awareness campaigns might favor video for reach. Consideration-stage content might work better as a detailed carousel or newsletter feature.

Keys to Success

The difference between programs that work and programs that waste budget often comes down to five things.

Are you driving awareness, generating leads, or building credibility with a specific segment? The goal shapes everything else.

Provide context on your product and what you want to communicate. Then step back. The creator knows their audience better than you do, and over-scripted partnerships perform like ads.

Sponsored content should be labeled. This protects the creator's credibility and yours. Audiences respect transparency.

Invest in long-term partnerships with creators. Collaborating with creators on multiple campaigns helps strengthen relationships and makes it easier to integrate the brand effectively. It also opens doors for collaboration beyond sponsored content, such as R&D.

Run small experiments before scaling. Try different creators, formats, and messages. Refine before you commit bigger budgets.

Measuring Success

Tie your metrics to your funnel.

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Top of funnel → Brand awareness

 Impressions, unique views, brand mentions. This tells you whether the content is generating awareness and how many people saw it.

Middle of funnel → Consideration

Reactions, comments, sentiment, shares. But don't stop there. Saves and sends reveal deeper engagement that public metrics miss. A post with modest visible engagement but high saves might be delivering more value than one with lots of reactions but no lasting impact.

Bottom of funnel → Conversion

Website traffic (use UTMs), promo code redemptions, sign-ups, demo requests. This is where content connects to pipeline.

Resist the urge to over-index on any single number. Look at the full picture across the funnel.

Video is an Advantage

I’m fully embracing short-form video on LinkedIn, and I believe you should, too.

LinkedIn has supported native video since 2017, but this year, it has introduced several new features that highlight its commitment to video content:

  • Video Tab: A dedicated, immersive space in the mobile navigation bar for users to scroll vertically through short-form videos.
  • Videos For You: A carousel of suggested videos appearing in the mobile feed, similar to Instagram’s Suggested Reels.

LinkedIn’s investment in video is paying off. Microsoft’s Q4 FY24 earnings report indicated that video is the fastest-growing format on LinkedIn, with a 34% year-over-year increase in uploads.

Why this Matters for Creator Partnerships

There's currently a gap between video consumers and video creators on LinkedIn. This means creators producing video face less competition for attention. However, this advantage won't last forever, so brands should capitalize now.

Video also connects directly to business outcomes. B2B buyers report that short-form video content helps inform their buying decisions, with 80% stating that video-focused influencer content is one of the most trusted forms of content in B2B marketing.

Think of it as high-risk, high-reward, like shooting three-pointers in basketball. Video requires more effort than text posts, but a few standout videos can have a bigger impact than many average text posts.

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What to Look For in Video Creators

When evaluating creators for video partnerships, consider:

  • Format comfort. Do they already post video, or would this be new for them?
  • Production quality. It doesn't need to be polished — authenticity often performs the best — but it should be watchable.
  • Consistency. Creators posting video regularly have more data points to evaluate and more experience with what works.
Repurposing ability. Strong video creators often pull from existing content, like text posts, podcasts, webinars, etc., making production more sustainable.

The Opportunity is Huge on LinkedIn

LinkedIn's creator ecosystem is still a huge opportunity that many brands aren’t taking advantage of yet.  The opportunity for early-mover advantage is real — but it won't last forever.

If you want to capitalize on this, this guide should help you get started with clear goals and thoughtful creator selection based on metrics that actually matter.

I also cover regular tips for building a LinkedIn influencer program and other creator economy tips and insights in my newsletter here.

Download Now

Lindsey Gamble's Creator Vetting Scorecard

Bonus Resource

Lindsey's Creators to Watch
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