Stop Sending Brands a Screenshot of Your Follower Count

Every brand pitch you've ever sent has the same attachment: a screenshot of an analytics screen. Followers, reach, maybe a story-views number with a good week cherry-picked.

Three things are wrong with it, and the brand knows all three.

It's stale — it was true the day you took it. It's unverifiable — it's a PNG, and PNGs can be edited by a child. And it measures the wrong thing entirely: it counts people who saw you, when the brand is paying for people who act.

Zippy's media kit is live today. It's a URL, not an image. And it leads with a number a follower count structurally cannot contain.

The number: did the app actually open

When someone taps your bio link inside Instagram, Instagram doesn't hand the tap to the phone. It opens its own browser — a webview inside the Instagram app, with its own cookie jar, where your visitor is logged out of the thing they're logged into. That's the in-app browser problem, and it's where most creator traffic quietly dies.

Zippy links break out of it. And because our redirect engine is the thing that performs the hand-off, it also sees the outcome: the real app opened, the visitor stayed stuck in a browser, or the hand-off broke.

Roll that up across the buttons on your bio page and you get a sentence no other link tool can write for you:

That's not reach. That's not impressions. That's how many humans your post physically delivered into an app. If a brand is paying you to drive people into their app, that is the entire question, and until now nobody could answer it.

It's a link, so it can't go stale

Your kit lives at zipthe.link/@yourhandle/kit. You send that URL once. The brand opens it in March and sees March. They open it again in June — after the campaign — and see June.

You never re-export anything, never retake a screenshot, never send a follow-up with fresher numbers. That's the "auto-updating" part, and it's also the trust part: a page they can reload is a page they can check.

You choose every number on it

Opt-in, one switch at a time. Opening the editor publishes nothing at all; your kit is private until you tick My media kit is live.

Then five independent switches: app-open rate, total taps, top platforms, top links, daily trend. Great rate but volume still growing? Show the rate, leave taps off. The rate stands on its own.

A switch you leave off isn't hidden with CSS — the number is not in the page's data at all. And the preview in your dashboard is the actual page, rendered by the same code, from the same data. What you preview is exactly what the brand gets.

One thing you can't accidentally do: leak a link you didn't publish. Your kit measures the buttons on your bio page — links that are already public. There's no setting that widens it.

The uncomfortable part: the numbers are honest

We could have made these numbers flattering. Every incentive pointed that way. We didn't, because a brand can verify them, and getting caught once is worse than a modest number a hundred times.

So the page tells on itself:

• It says the numbers are estimates. Zippy measures taps by sampling and extrapolating. The page states that in plain language rather than hoping nobody asks.
• Whole numbers only. No 87.3%. A decimal claims precision we don't have.
• A dash is not a zero. — means nothing has been measured yet. 0% means taps were measured and none opened an app. Every other tool renders both as zero. Those are opposite facts.
• A new creator gets "Not enough data yet." Not a zero-filled stat sheet that reads like your links don't work.
• No fake benchmarks. You won't see "vs industry average 62%" anywhere, because we can't source that number honestly and neither can anyone else printing it.

That's a worse-looking page on day one and a much better one on day ninety.

Send it as an image, if you must

Some brands live in decks. There's a button that gives you the headline as an image at /@yourhandle/kit/card.svg — the same card style as the app-open receipt, carrying the same sampling note. Paste it into an email or a PDF.

If there's nothing measured yet, you get no card. We won't render an invented one.

Your plan can't take it away

If you downgrade, a kit you already published keeps rendering. Downgrading locks editing it, not showing it — the same rule as everything else at Zippy, where a plan change never breaks something your audience already has. And Remove my media kit works on any plan, always. Your data is yours to pull down.

How to set it up in two minutes

1. Claim your handle on Link in bio and add a few buttons (each one points at one of your links — that's what makes them measurable).
2. Post normally for a week. The kit needs taps before it has anything true to say.
3. Dashboard → Media kit. Pick your switches, tick live, copy the URL.
4. Paste that URL where the screenshot used to go.

FAQ

How do I send a brand my stats without a screenshot?

Turn on your Zippy media kit and send zipthe.link/@yourhandle/kit. It's a live page — the brand can reload it any time and see current numbers, which is exactly why it's more persuasive than a PNG.

How do I show a brand my real engagement?

Send them something they can verify instead of a screenshot they can't. Your media kit is a live page at zipthe.link/@yourhandle/kit led by your app-open rate — the share of taps on your links that landed people inside a real native app. That's engagement as an action the brand's product can see, not as an impression count, and the brand can reload the page after the campaign to check that it held.

What is app-open rate, and why do brands care?

It's the share of taps on your links that opened a real native app instead of getting stuck in the Instagram or TikTok in-app browser. Brands care because it measures delivery into their product, not attention on a feed.

Can my media kit show a link I didn't publish?

No. It measures only the buttons on your bio page, which are already public. Private links can't appear and can't move the totals.

Are media kit numbers exact?

No, and the page says so on its face. They're sampled estimates rounded to whole numbers — a trend a brand can trust, not a per-tap ledger.

What does the dash mean on my media kit?

It means nothing has been measured for that row yet. It is deliberately different from 0%, which means taps were measured and none of them opened an app.

Which Zippy plan includes the media kit?

Hero and up. Your bio page itself is free on every plan, and a kit you published stays visible even if your plan changes later.

Related

• Media kit docs — every switch, and exactly what the public page contains.
• Link in bio — the page your kit measures.
• The app-open receipt — the same proof for a single link, as a shareable card.
• A/B testing — find the destination that actually opens the app before you put it in the kit.
• Webhooks and the API — the same app-open numbers, pushed or pulled, if you'd rather build your own report.
• Changelog: Media kit

Stop attaching a picture of a number. Send the number. Claim your handle →