One of the most common questions I get asked from businesses is how to find influencers.
If you’re hoping to take advantage of the influencer marketing trend that I write about in The Age of Influence, one of the toughest decisions is finding which influencers to use for your influencer marketing campaigns. While drawing up a budget is relatively easy, using the right people isn’t as simple to figure out. After all, there are a lot of potential influencers out there, and sizes range from your micro – influencers and nano influencers to the influencers you might know and associate with celebrity.
Once you understand the ins and outs of how to find influencers, your business can successfully profit from influencer marketing. I tried to make this as social media platform agnostic as possible, so whether you are looking for that TikToker, YouTuber, or even B2B LinkedIn influencer, the suggestions will stand regardless of precise influencer search tools or audience sizes.
Influencer Marketing Continues to Be Important Regardless of Industry
The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach approximately $24 billion by the end of 2024. Why? Because 85% of surveyed marketers believe influencer marketing to be an effective form of marketing. One of the many reasons driving this is that some data suggests that as many as 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations through their social channels.
The Benefits of Collaborating with Influencers are Numerous
Of the many benefits of collaborating with influencers, some of the most important are:
- Increased Brand Awareness. Influencers have dedicated and engaged followings. By collaborating with them, you can reach a wider and more targeted audience, significantly increasing brand visibility and awareness in front of the specific target audiences that you want to reach, all while increasing engagement rates and finding new audience demographics.
- Enhanced Credibility and Trust. Social media influencers are trusted by their followers. When they endorse a product or service, it lends credibility and trust to the brand, which is particularly beneficial for small businesses looking to establish a strong market presence.
- Cost-Effective Marketing. Working with influencers, especially micro-influencers, can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising. It allows small businesses to achieve significant reach across many different audience demographics and increase engagement without the high costs associated with other marketing channels.
The Challenge in Finding Influencers Appropriate for Your Brand
SourceFinding the right influencers for your business can be challenging, even with influencer discovery tools, for several reasons. These include:
- Overwhelming Choices. With countless influencers across various platforms, sifting through the options to find the most effective ones can be daunting and time-consuming, even when using influencer search tools.
- Niche Alignment. Ensuring an influencer’s audience aligns with your target market is critical but often hard to determine, making it challenging to find the perfect match across content creators.
- Authenticity Concerns. The rise of fake followers and fraudulent engagement makes it difficult to identify genuine influencers who can deliver real value, versus influencer profiles that have paid for followers or do not hold any real sway with their wider audience.
While this post does not talk about how to verify how much fake engagement or followers that an influencer might have, using the steps I outline below should cut down on this risk and help you find suitable influencers. If you have used influencer search tools and have experienced difficulty or you have partnered with an influencer with faked influencers or falsified engagement metrics, please read my companion post How to Find Out If An Influencer Has Fake Followers or Not.
Remember: when you collaborate with nano or micro – influencers, the danger of fake followers decreases simply because their follower count is lower than a mega – influencer, and they are more reliant on their influencer partnerships.
11 Best Ways to Find Influencers for Your Brand
Based on my experience as an influencer marketing consultant, instructor of a class on influencer marketing at UCLA Extension, and author of the definitive influencer marketing playbook The Age of Influence, these are what I believe to be the 10 best ways to find influencers for your brand.
While some are tempted to immediately go for the paid options, I am going to start with the smart organic options that increase your chance of having a successful long-term collaboration and will only mention paid tools at the very end.
1. Start by Looking at Your Own Followers
Sometimes the best place to find influencers is in your own backyard! Influencers are real people with genuine interests, and many start their journey with a passion for certain products. One effective method is to look at your own social media followers. Potential influencers are often followers who have a large follower count and frequently post about your niche and align with your campaign objectives naturally.
Identify these followers by checking who interacts with your content or posts about your brand, which you can find in your notifications, tagged posts, or by going through who has engaged with your most recent posts. If they’re already promoting your products for free, consider formalizing the relationship with paid collaborations. This can result in higher engagement, since their audience is already familiar with your brand and may feel confident that they are making informed decisions.
2. Do Relevant Hashtag Searches to Find Highly Engaged Influencers
An effective social media marketing strategy includes following relevant hashtags, which can be branded, industry-specific, or popular marketing slogans. Mastering hashtag searches is crucial for finding popular influencers on platforms like Instagram and other social media sites.
When running these searches, note which content creators are producing related content that coincides with the type of content you think would perform well in front of your target audience. While having a large following is important, I would recommend that you focus more on the content quality and engagement; the influencer discovery process should place relevance above follower numbers. One of the greatest benefits of working with influencers is leveraging the user-generated content that they create across your digital threads, and niche audiences can actually perform better than a larger audience.
As you look at the posts from these influencers, check and see if they might already be working with other brands by looking for mentions of #ad and/or #sponsored in the captions.
Leverage a social listening tool to see the types of influencers who are talking about you and your brand or products. Social listening tools will not only allow you to automagically hashtag mentions, but it will allow you to be able to scale your work across multiple hashtags and social networks.
The beauty about social listening tools is that you are not limited to hashtag searches. You can search for your brand name, product name, competitors, or any other keyword that might help you search influencers.
If you are just starting out with social listening, my hands-down recommendation would be to begin with Brand24.
Further Reading: FTC Influencer Guidelines: What You Need to Know Today
Find social media influencers by leveraging your existing customer database. Start by uploading your customer email list to an email tool such as Voila Norbert, which I have personally used, that can detect social media profile information. This allows you to identify your customers’ social media profiles and analyze their online presence–including whether they have an engaged audience.
By doing this, you can discover if any of your potential customers are influencers with a significant following and engagement. These influencers already have a connection to your brand, making them ideal candidates for authentic and impactful collaborations.
Further Reading: Influencer Activation: The 8-Step Process to Best Activate Influencer Relationships
5. Establish a Brand Ambassador Program
By putting up a linked landing page in your bottom footer and announcing on your social media and in your newsletter that you are creating a Brand Ambassador program, you can begin the inbound flow of influencer “leads” for your program.
This influencer marketing strategy is not a short-term solution but a smart long-term strategy. As I mention in Digital Threads, I actually recommend that you begin with encouraging user-generated content and developing a Brand Ambassador program before reaching out to external influencers for popular posts.
Further Reading: How to Create an Influencer Program That Delivers Influencer Marketing ROI
6. Check Out Your Competitors
Think of this one as a sort of reverse market research. By checking up on competitors’ followers and those who engage with their social media profiles, you might be able to identify influencers who might be interested in your company, as well. Doing a search for your competitors’ branded hashtags might also unveil brand ambassadors and other influencers whose social media channels match your own.
The challenges of collaborating with influencers who work with your competitors are obvious, including the fact that they might have an exclusivity clause in their contract with them. That shouldn’t stop you from including these people in your target list of influencers you want to reach out to for influencer campaigns, however, assuming that you find them to be relevant influencers to your brand.
7. Do Relevant Google Searches
Finding influencers with real followers across various social media platforms isn’t always straightforward. While individual platforms offer some insights, Google searches can also be effective for discovering new influencers. After all, for long-term success, it’s crucial to diversify your search methods and continually add new influencers to your team to expand your reach.
Start by searching for specific niches, like “top SEO influencers” or “Japanese food influencers.” These searches yield blog posts that contain lists of profiles to analyze for engagement and relevance. Additionally, Google can reveal influencers’ interests, workplaces, and other affiliations, helping you assess their suitability for collaboration based on personality and lifestyle.
Influencers often have blogs or are mentioned in forums, which are indexed by Google. This indexing can reveal influencers’ reputations, including potential red flags like fake followers. Google can also do the heavy lifting and uncover valuable discussions and comparisons about influencers, providing deeper insights into their influence and engagement.
Don’t neglect Google.
I mention this after Google because ChatGPT is NOT a search engine per se, although there are AI search engines like Perplexity.ai that exist. As another tool to help you potentially discover more influencers and refine your list, you can’t beat the flexibility of ChatGPT. Due to the fact that it is coming from AI, however, you always need to validate the responses that you find and make sure that they represent relevant influencers! Campaign management is nothing if your tool belt is filled with poorly-performing tools.
Further Reading: AI and Virtual Influencers: What is Their Role in Influencer Marketing? (with examples)
9. Attend Industry Conferences and Events
Industry conferences and events can be a great way to connect with a wide range of influencers and ultimately land on some influencer collaborations. These gatherings often host speakers who may be mega influencers or those who have simply found success online, and you can engage with other attendees to glean information and insights into how to find the right influencers for your needs.
You can also take this time to evaluate who is posting what on social media, using the event’s branded hashtag. Advanced filters can’t beat the organic nature of meeting new people and learning what makes them tick–all without the risk of stumbling upon fake influencers who have little to no credibility or legitimate audience.
10. Survey Your Customers, Partners, Followers, and Other Influencers
Now that you have followed the first nine steps, you can take what you learned in step 9, and cast a net amongst the people you met to determine who influences the people in your sphere of influence. You can ask this question via an email survey, a social media post, or (the best option) ask other influencers you have hopefully begun to work with–all without the help of a dedicated influencer search engine.
The influencer marketing industry has matured, providing businesses with a range of tools to find and collaborate with influencers, eliminating much of the guesswork involved with influencer analytics. These tools come at a price, however, and are not always as inclusive as they could be. Many of these tools work on an opt-in basis or have their own unique algorithms which might or might not lead you to the best influencers for your brand.
Influencer Marketing Platforms. These discovery and management tools streamline finding influencers interested in sponsored work and facilitate outreach.
Influencer Marketplaces. Marketplaces allow you to connect with influencers, offering various levels of vetting to ensure authenticity. They significantly simplify the process, but you still need to select the right, authentic influencer for your brand.
Influencer Databases. These are extensive directories of influencers that can be filtered by niche, engagement rates, and demographics, making it easier to find the right match for your campaigns.
Other Influencer Marketing Tools. These tools perform narrower tasks to facilitate campaigns, such as analytics for tracking performance, content creation aids, and tools for managing influencer relationships.
Using these platforms, marketplaces, databases, and other tools can significantly enhance your influencer marketing efforts by offering comprehensive solutions for discovery, vetting, and management.
Note that I did not add a 12th way, which would be “Ask your agency.” Why? Because your agency is probably using one of the types of tools mentioned above!
Further Reading: The 21 Top Influencer Marketing Platforms
Next Steps
As with any skill, learning how to find Instagram influencers takes time. Fortunately, you aren’t alone. Many marketers are getting better at using effective techniques to locate their ideal influencers, and we’re always happy to help. In fact, many of us are influencers ourselves (myself included)! Once you’ve gotten started, you’ll be able to see that influencer marketing is well worth the effort and expense.
What’s your favorite influencer discovery technique? Let me know in the comments below!
Hero Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash
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