What is a Seeding Brief?

What is a Seeding brief?

A Seeding brief is built for product gifting at scale. You send gifted product to a group of creators, and in exchange they post about it on their social channels — the modern version of sending out PR boxes, run inside Cohley.

Seeding briefs are product-only for creators (creators aren’t paid a fee) and support Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube posts. They’re designed to run with very little manual work: Finn accepts creators for you, and content is cleared to post automatically once it passes AI Asset Analysis.

Deciding between brief types? See How do I choose the right brief?

How a Seeding brief is different

To keep seeding lightweight, a few things work differently than they do in UGC, Influencer, or Professional briefs:

• Finn accepts creators for you. You set how many creators you want and describe who you’re looking for. After your apply-by date, Finn automatically accepts matching creators — up to the number you chose. There’s no Applicants tab and no manual vetting step.
• There’s no chat with creators. You’ll still see automated updates from Cohley inside the brief, but direct messaging between you and the creator is turned off for Seeding briefs.
• AI Asset Analysis is automatic — and so is posting. Every submission is scanned against your AI Asset Analysis requirements. When content passes, the creator is cleared to post. You don’t approve each asset, and you can’t send change requests in a Seeding brief. You can always view what was flagged. (More on AI Asset Analysis requirements.)

What a Seeding brief costs

There are two things to budget for:

• Cohley’s seeding fee — $35 per completed creator. This is in addition to your Cohley license; it isn’t covered by your subscription. A creator is completed once they’ve linked at least one post, so accepted creators who never post aren’t charged. Billing is in arrears — at the beginning of each month you’re invoiced for the creators who posted the prior month. You agree to this pricing when you launch the brief. No additional agreement is necessary — simply pay as you go. Full billing detail: Seeding Briefs: Matching, Requirements & Pricing.
• Your product and shipping. You cover the cost of the product itself and getting it to creators.

Creators are not paid a fee. The gifted product is their compensation — that’s what “product-only” means, and it describes creator compensation, not your total cost.

Reimbursing creators for product

Seeding briefs don’t include creator compensation. If a creator purchased the product themselves, you can reimburse them for the product cost.

Reimbursement is something you start — nothing triggers it for you. Unlike the rest of a Seeding brief, this step isn’t automatic: Cohley has no way to know a creator spent their own money. When you’re ready, use Reimburse Creator on each creator in the brief, or ask Finn to reimburse a set amount per creator. There’s no upfront budget to set, no field to record what you expect to owe, and no receipt upload.

If you’d rather not manage that, ship product yourself or through your Shopify integration and skip reimbursement entirely — see How to run a Seeding brief.

Measuring results

Performance for Seeding posts shows up just like your other briefs: organic post performance for Instagram and TikTok is available in Social Performance. YouTube posts are supported, but aren’t measured in reporting yet

Ready to set one up? 

See How to run a Seeding brief.