How to Find Instagram Influencers for Your Brand

Influencer marketing has become one of the most popular methods of increasing brand awareness. In a nutshell, influencer marketing is when you get influencers to promote your product, building trust towards it among their followers.

But influencer marketing only sometimes brings the expected results. The conversion rates and/or traffic to your page might be low because the wrong influencer promotes your brand.

Thus, finding relevant and high-impact influencers is the real key to success.

To accomplish that, I will share the strategies and tools we use in our campaigns that have proven super effective.

In this article, you’re going to learn:

1. How to find influencers on:
   1. Instagram
   2. Youtube
   3. TikTok
   4. Twitter
2. How to reach out to influencers

Let’s get started.

How to Find Instagram Influencers

There are a lot of tools and platforms that connect influencers and brands. They can help you find Instagram influencers and identify their engagement rates, but most are costly.
So, before introducing them, let me show you how to connect with famous personalities for free.
You won’t be surprised to learn that every platform has a search button — that’s where we’ll start.

Search for a Popular Personality

Start by looking up people you know are influential in the niche you’re interested in.
For example, when I need to find a ‘Fitness Motivator’ to promote sportswear, I’ll search the first name that comes to my mind — Kayla Itsines:
Here is her profile.

There’s a dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the page.
When you click on it, Instagram displays similar profiles, taking into account the niche, interests, number of followers, etc. You can add them to your database to explore later.

Conduct Instagram Hashtag Research

Hashtag research is one of the required steps in finding Instagram Influencers.
Type some keywords that describe what you are looking for.

Click on one of the popular hashtags to discover thousands of posts and profiles. Among them, you can find many influencers relevant to the niche.

Check Listings by Popular Magazines and Journals

Simply Google keywords like “Best Fitness Motivators on Instagram.”

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

Always know what they are up to, who they collaborate with, and who promotes their brand. You can get a lot of valuable information by following their pages; if an influencer tags them in a post, note that information.
Now, do I need to tell you about what comes next?

Use Influencer Marketing Tools and Platforms

One of the tools we use to find Instagram influencers is Heepsy.

Heepsy allows you to find Instagram influencers in the niche you are interested in using their filters. It allows you to search by categories, location, number of followers, engagement rate, or everything simultaneously.

Here are some tips to help you find relevant influencers for your Influencer Marketing campaign.

Set the correct parameters, and start scrolling through the pages, looking for the best fit for your needs.

For example, I chose “Fitness” in Categories, “United States” in Location, and “50k-250k” in Followers.
It brought back 73,320 matching results.

After you find the perfect influencers, you can easily view a report about their audience location, fake/real followers, audience interests, gender, the language they speak, etc.

Click “View Report” to analyze their audience.

As your goal is to promote a product on the influencers’ page, you should also pay attention to the performance of promo posts. Keep in mind that it’s normal for engagement on promotional videos to be lower than on the ones where the influencer is just hugging her puppy.

Here comes one of the best features of Heepsy. It shows all the brand mentions in the captions of the recent 12 posts, with the post’s likes, comments, and engagement.

Unlike most platforms worth thousands of dollars per year, Heepsy has monthly plans starting from just $49/month. It’s reasonable, so even smaller brands and startups can afford it.

Upfluence is another marketing tool that can help you find Instagram influencers, create campaigns, and stay on top of social media activities and trends.

It also allows you to find influencers’ other social accounts. Its Google Chrome extension displays the account’s engagement rate and demographic data.

Even using the free version, you can still view ten profiles daily.

Warning: The numbers don’t always reflect reality. Before paying an influencer, you need to ensure their influence is as significant as their number of followers. We suggest paying attention to their engagement rate.

Engagement Rate and Its Calculation

Engagement rate is a metric that measures the level of engagement a piece of content receives from an audience. It shows how much people interact with a post. Factors influencing engagement include user comments, shares, likes, and the number of followers.

To calculate an influencer’s engagement rate, add the engagements (likes + comments) from all of the profile’s posts, divide the result by the number of followers, and divide it once again by the number of posts to get the per post average.

Finding Youtube Influencers

YouTube Search

Start with a search and find a relevant channel. Then go to suggestions. You’ll find similar channels there. Review the list.

VidRocket

Use VidRocket to find Influencers that may want to promote your brand. You can browse channels by categories to find the most relevant ones.
Click on the profile and add it to your favorites:

If you have a paid account, you can then download the list.

Finding Tiktok Influencers

Even though TikTok is trending, there are few tools you can use for its exploration.

That’s why I recommend to:

1. Start the research manually. Go to the “explore page” and look through trending hashtags.
2. Use Instagram. Another hack you can use is finding influencers through TikTok’s official Instagram page. Pay attention to their posts — you can find the TikToker’s username at the beginning of every video.

Look up the user on Tiktok. Most will have their emails in the TikTok bio. But if you can’t find it, try searching for it on their Instagram profile.

Finding Twitter Influencers

Twitter is one of the best channels for promoting technology and science-related products. Twitter users like reading about others’ opinions and expertise. 

Although users are less active and engaged than on other platforms, a few tweets and likes on Twitter sometimes mean more than hundreds of likes on Instagram.

One piece of software that I use to find Influencers on Twitter is Followerwonk.

Log in with your Twitter account and use relevant keywords to search through users’ bios.

For instance, if I want to promote a data privacy device, I’d start with keywords like cyber security, data privacy, and data protection, selecting “search Twitter bios only.”

But you’ll need to be careful not to outreach your competitors by accident!
The other thing I’ve started using recently is a function hidden away from everyone’s eye by Twitter.

Let’s suppose you have found a relevant person— Sandro P.

In the right corner, above the profile’s bio, you can find an icon with three dots. It looks simple but takes into account its power. You’ll see why now.
Click on it and pick ‘View Lists.’

Then go to the “Member” section.

You’ll find all the lists Sandro P. is a member of.

At first glance, I can see two relevant lists. Let’s look into them.

The ‘Data Privacy’ list has 114 members interested in the topic. Then, what you need to do is explore their profiles. Trust me; you’ll find many relevant influencers.

How to Reach Out to Influencers

Before reaching out to influencers, we highly recommend researching their engagement rates. Identify the niche of your company. Whatever industry you’re in, whether it’s beauty, pet, tech, or innovation, have a list ready with the best influencers in the field.

Outreach Tips Before Starting:

• Pay attention to the market.

Are you working in the local market, or do you have an international online business? If you have a small brand in Denmark and don’t ship internationally, it won’t be reasonable to reach out to influencers from Great Britain with an audience mainly from Great Britain.

• Research on demographics.

Ensure the age range of your influencer’s audience is the exact one you need. If the audience is mostly teenagers, the chances they’d be able to afford your $500 tech product are low. Men make decisions easier and quicker than women regarding tech products.

• Choose the right platform.

Promoting every product on Twitter takes work. For tech products, Youtube and Facebook are significant; for fashion and lifestyle products, always opt for Instagram. Pet products can be easily and successfully promoted both on Instagram and Tiktok.

Build Strong Bond With Influencers

Have you ever wondered why your messages were left unopened, or the influencer ignored your genius idea?

Here is why:

They don’t know who the hell John Newman is. They get a lot of promotional auto DMs, final sale messages, and promotions like the rest of us – the difference is they get ten times more. Tons of messages, cold emails, and flooded DMs are part of their everyday life. 

Grab Their Attention

Before you knock on their door with your brilliant offer, make sure they have noticed your name several times.

Let’s imagine you’re on Instagram and want to find influencers.

Go ahead:

• follow them
• comment on photos
• tell your unique opinion on their thoughts
• tag them on your posts
• comment if you have an offer and ask to check the DMs

Be Clear about Your Offer and Expectations

Influencers receive hundreds of emails and DMs regularly. So be specific with your offer, and avoid expressing your love for them or your passion for being featured on their page.
Be specific on what it is you offer and what you expect from them. And remember to leave the door open for negotiations.
Be ready to compromise.

If your content is engaging and not too promotional, they can post you without additional payments and fees.

However, the more popular an influencer is, the more they expect to receive. That can be a fee for a post, a commission from the purchases from a link, or a discount special for their followers. Some will need a sample as a gift to try out to create a review on IG or a blog. You can also check out Shane Barker’s list of affiliate marketing tools to monitor your campaign.

What to include in your offer when reaching out to an influencer?

• Always mention the number of content pieces you expect over a specific period.
• Outline how you plan to use their content and verify which channels.
• Be clear on what call-to-actions you want the influencer to use in their campaigns.
• Define captions, hashtags, campaign tagging, and link placements.
• If your goal is brand awareness, mention the number of views you expect to receive when they post the content.

Don’t Limit Their Creativity

Remember all the things I told you about expectations?
I just remembered that you should limit your influencer’s creativity if it harms your brand.
The more unique, personalized, and natural the promotion, the better it works for them and you.
Always leave room for influencers to get creative and act authentically because their followers love them for who they are. An influencer knows what content his fans want to see and hear.

Give Backlinks and Express Your Love

After posting your content, remember to thank them and ask them to add you to their contacts to keep in touch with and work with them in the future.

Remember to stay tuned in to their activities. Follow all their social media channels and blogs. Always comment and share their posts and photos on your page and mention them while providing backlinks to their pages, blogs, and accounts.

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If implemented correctly, influencer marketing can be a key driver in building brand equity and value. Finding the right influencer who can authentically tell your brand’s value proposition is vital. If the influencer derives value from your product and cares about your brand, it will shine through their testimonial and inspire their followers.

Influencer marketing is also widely used during Kickstarter campaigns, as crowdfunding products need this kind of promotion and brand awareness more than others.

And last but not least, be bold and reach out to an influencer with an offer. You have nothing to lose if influencers don’t respond but a lot to gain if they do.

Better an OOPS! Then WHAT IF…

I hope you’ll find these strategies helpful. Keep reading if you want to know how to attract Facebook marketing partners and grow your business.