Predictable Influence Part 1: How to find a steady stream of influencers for your brand

When you’re starting to set up your influencer campaign, it may seem hard to predictably find new creators to promote your brand and product. In this post, I highlight 6 methods you can use to find new influencers so you never run out of relevant creators to reach out to.

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Hashtag Method

Instagram and TikTok

Pick the top 3-5 niche hashtags in your industry. Don’t go too broad with this. Eg: If you’re a supplement company, don’t target #fitness or #supplements. Go for #nootropics or #vitaminsupplement or #bcaaenergy. These are more narrow and hence ideal for you. A good ballpark is between 10k-50k posts under that hashtag.

Look at all the “Top” and “Recent” posts and save those influencer profile links into a google sheet. Make sure you review their content and see if they’re a good fit for your brand before you decide to save them. Quality matters. Posts last forever and you don’t want to associate with someone who doesn’t embody the ethos of your brand.

You can avoid all the copy-paste do this seamlessly via Saral.

If you think you’re running out of hashtags, use hashtag recommender tools to your benefit.

Youtube

For YouTube, use a variation of the hashtag method called Keyword Search method. It’s essentially the same, just search for keywords your audience is interested in, find creators who are talking about those topics and save them to your list!

Lookalikes Method

Instagram and TikTok

While doing this you’ll find some really good influencers, follow them. Once you do, Instagram or TikTok will show you other accounts similar to them, check their profiles out and add them to your list as well if they’re a fit. This saves you a lot of time finding the right influencers as the social media platform understands what you like and does the heavy lifting for you.

Youtube

There’s no direct way to do this on Youtube. Not all hope is lost though. Here’s what you can do:

Click on the videos that pop up when you search for your interest keywords and look at the recommended videos, you’ll find some interesting and underrated creators there. They’re typically the ones who maintain the right keyword density when posting so that they can organically grow and appear in your search results.

You may also choose to look at the featured “Channels” tab on their YouTube profile to see if they endorse other creators like them.

Customer Advocates

Some products have inherent social value. They’re sharable and customers keep talking about them. Usually these tend to be sports brands, beauty/fashion brands, or mission driven brands (eg: vegan). People tend to show these products off.

Is your product like that? Then you’re in luck.

Instagram

Find the people that tagged you in posts by navigating to your profile and looking at the “Tagged” tab. Do they have a sizeable following to make a difference to your brand (usually 3k+), then save them to your list!

Tiktok

Go to your Inbox > All Activity > Mentions. Here you will see everyone who mentioned you. Review and save if the ones that are a fit!

Youtube

If you have an active YouTube channel, you can find people who mentioned your channel under Notifications > Mentions on your app. If you don’t have an active and well-known channel, don’t worry. Just search for your brand name and you’ll find creators who have already posted about you.

Steal Competitors Influencers

If they like your competitors products, they will like and recommend yours too. Just use the “Customer Advocates” method above to find your competitors influencers and save them to your outreach list.

This method can also apply to adjacent or tangential products i.e. products that also sell to your target customer.

Eg: If you sell yoga mats, finding influencers who recommend an ayurvedic supplement brand may also help.

Use FB Brand Collabs Manager

This works only for Instagram and Facebook creators.

This will help you simply search for creators without having to sign up for expensive database tools. They’ve also got reliable in-platform data such as audience overlap and recommended creators based on your past partnerships.

Learn more here: FB Brand Collabs Manager.

TikTok Creator Marketplace

This is the same thing for TikTok. For now, they only have influencers over 100K followers, so it will not work if you’re taking a micro/nano-influencer strategy.

Again, these have authenticated in-platform data, which is the most accurate. Learn more and apply here: TikTok Creator Marketplace.

Use Database tools

There are a ton of them, check out Modash or Upfluence. They have their limitations though so try them out and read reviews before you sign up for paid plans.

You can also use free crawlers like Channel Crawler or THAT IG TOOL

I highly recommend you exhaust all free methods before opting for database tools as they may not be as accurate, plus they are inherently biased to make you find more influencers, thus sacrificing quality for quantity.

Leverage Freelancers

Finally, don’t forget to delegate this process once you’ve figured out a good cadence. Once you have influencers onboard, your time is better spent nurturing and maintaining relationships with current influencers instead of finding new ones.

I’ve had success hiring freelancers on Upwork for a social media leadgen task. They should charge anywhere between $50 to $65 for 100 influencers, making it much cheaper and cost effective when compared to database tools. Your final goal is to delegate the process so you can save resources and devote your time in other high-impact areas of your influencer program.

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These are way too many methods if you’re just getting started, don’t feel overwhelmed. I recommend picking 2-3 methods starting from the top and moving downwards as your influencer program keeps growing. Don't forget to save and share this post with your team and your friends who need help finding influencers for their brand.

Do you have any other methods in mind? I’d love to hear from you.

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