Have trouble finding influencers to collaborate with? You’ve come to the right place.

If you have tried influencer marketing, you must know how difficult it can be to find relevant influencers for your brand. But as 70% of consumers place peer recommendations and reviews above professionally written content, influencer marketing seems crucial to winning consumers’ trust.

Moreover, the term “influencer marketing” is also growing in popularity, influencer marketing interest increased more than 90X since 2013.

At the start of 2013, Google’s Keyword Tool measured search for “influencer marketing” at less than 50 average monthly searches. Now, influencer marketing is searched well over 4,400 times on average each month. For a better understanding of the growing popularity of influencer marketing, have a look at this graph taken from Google Trends:

In this guide, you’ll learn how to find the right influencers to target a specific audience and generate leads.

But before you start finding influencers, you should know the different types of influencers.

Types of Influencers

Macro Influencers

In the influencers marketing space, influencers with 100K+ followers are considered macro-influencers.

In contrast to mega influencers, who are instantly recognized as influencers due to their fame, macro-influencers are individuals who have gained popularity primarily through the internet.

The average price macro-influencers charge for a single Instagram post appears to be $5,000–$10,000. Brands with big marketing budgets can consider collaborating with macro-influencers to reach a large audience.

Micro Influencers

These influencers reportedly comprise 1000+ followers. These influencers tend to stick to a specific niche and demographics in order to produce engaging and well-curated information, sometimes referred to as ‘niche specialists’ or ‘industry experts’. They reportedly charge between $100 and $500 per post.

As per research, micro-influencers achieved 22.2 times more conversations than average consumers when they recommended products.

Nano Influencers

Nano-influencers, as the name suggests, have a smaller audience of fewer than 1000 followers. However, you should not base your decision on the number of followers. Despite having a small number of followers, nano influencers can create a great impact on the audience.

These influencers reportedly charge $10–$100 per post to promote your business, making themselves an excellent choice for companies with modest marketing budgets.

Users who create user-generated content are sometimes also referred to as nano influencers. According to Bazaarvoice, Eighty-six percent of millennials say that user-generated content is generally a good indicator of the quality of a brand or service.

So if you’ve understood the various types of influencers, let’s know how to find the influencers that can promote your brand.

How to Find Influencers Using Social Media?

Social media is the hub of influencers, you can easily find relevant influencers doing some manual research on social media platforms.

Consider the following tips while looking for influencers on social media:

Search Using Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags can be a quick and easy way to find influencers’ across various industries. A quick hashtag search on Instagram can show hundreds of popular creators and engaging content relevant to your niche.

For example, if you run a restaurant in New York, you can search Instagram for relevant local or micro-influencers using the hashtag #Newyorkfoodbloggers.

 If you already follow some of these influencers in your niche, checking out the explore page on these platforms can also help you find more relevant influencers.

Research Competitor’s Collaborations & Followers

Competitors aren’t the first people you’d think to interact with, but keeping tabs on them and their followers/following can be quite useful.

Furthermore, if your competition uses a lot of relevant hashtags, simply searching for those hashtags can help you identify influencers they collaborate with.

You can also check who influencers follow, as they are likely to follow creators in the same field.

Does the influencer’s image match your brand image?

Before you look at metrics, consider how well the influencer’s content aligns with your brand. As their content will be representing you, it can be crucial for you to determine whether the quality of their content is appropriate for your brand image or not.

You should be able to picture your products or services being marketed on their social profiles effectively.

Authenticity

You can’t deny this – Trust is the key difference between influencer marketing and paid advertising. People seem to trust influencers over paid ads while making a purchase. That’s why 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations.

The authenticity of the influencer’s content seems critical to how their audience views them and, consequently, your company.

So, you need authentic influencers who don’t merely promote a product or service because they’ve been paid to do so.

Study the content they create for other brands. Their approach should be authentic.

Make sure to stay away from influencers who prefer money over their followers’ trust.

Make decisions based on content, not the number of followers

When evaluating an influencer, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the numbers.

Brands often make the mistake of concentrating solely on the number of followers an individual has. Instead of talking about how many people view an influencer’s content, you should be looking at how much value their content delivers to the audience, how much influence it can create.

Some Other Ways to Find Influencers

Google Search

Search on Google to look up the top influencers in your field. Google can also be a great way to find local micro and Nano influencers, look beyond the accounts with the most followers.

Tip: Try to keep your search term long and specific. You can, for instance, search for “top food bloggers in the US” or “micro-influencers for small businesses.”

To get better custom results, you can also use Google’s built-in search options.

• Custom Date Range
• Change Location
• Google alerts

Influencer Marketing Platforms

Manually searching for influencers can be time-consuming and inefficient. An influencer marketing platform can make your influencer search easy and effortless. They are systems specially developed to help businesses with their influencer marketing campaigns.

Using influencer marketing platforms, brands can quickly locate influencers, evaluate their content, and track influencers’ performance using these platforms.

Some tools also include a number of features such as influencer outreach, influencer networks, and so on making it a one-stop solution for your influencer marketing needs.

Using influencer databases

When a company wants to swiftly reach a large number of influencers, they make use of influencer databases.

Various influencer marketing agencies or influencer marketplaces can allow you to have access to these influencer databases. A high-quality database of influencers can help you compare influencers and select which ones are best for your campaign.

But these databases contain data from thousands of influencers, making it vital to pre-determine the demographics you need so that you can narrow down your search. Consumers who are between the ages of 25 and 54 are the biggest content drivers—contributing 70% of all UGC.

Some agencies may provide you digital databases with statistics on things like the number of people that follow the influencers, their demographics, and engagement rate, allowing you to filter your search and get better results.

Dos and Don’ts while looking for influencers to collaborate with

This checklist is for brands to follow when starting out with an influencer collaboration:

Dos include:

• Design a well-thought-out campaign brief that is true to your brand’s story.
• Make use of influencer marketing platforms and social media tools.
• Look for influencers with an audience that already aligns with your target demographic
• Evaluate the influencers and contact them.
• Keep your team updated
• Monitor the results

Don’ts include:

• Select influencers solely on the basis of their amount of followers.
•  Choose content quantity over quality.
•  Numerous CTA’s directed at the audience.
•  Micro-manage the influencer’s content.

Why Collaborating With Influencers is Important For Your Brand (A Few Stats)

Below are a few stats that prove the importance of influener marketing for a brand:

• Over 80% of marketers find influencer marketing effective.
• 84% of marketing and communications professionals worldwide expected to launch at least one campaign involving an influencer in the next 12 months.
• Nearly 85% of marketers have plans to use some type of influencer marketing next year.
• As Ad aspending continues to shift from TV to digital and social media, 60% of marketers said that they plan to increase their budget this year.
• 62% of 18 to 24 year olds would buy a YouTuber-endorsed product (vs. celebrity)
• 22% of marketers say that influencer marketing is the fastest-growing channel for customer acquisition.
• Word-of-mouth marketing with social promotion and generates 34% more customer retention and twice the amount of sales over traditional paid programs.

Final thoughts

It goes without saying that working with the right influencers can step up your marketing game, helping you achieve 11x higher ROI than all other forms of digital marketing. Working with the wrong people, on the other hand, can deplete your budget and hurt your brand.

So finding and collaborating with the right and authentic influencers can be crucial for your brand.

We hope that the above guide was able to help you narrow down your influencer finding journey. While manual research can be overwhelming for you, an efficient influencer marketing platform like Happine can significantly save your time and effort.