How to Do an Influencer Search

Finding the right influencer for your brand can feel like searching for a needle in a digital haystack, but it doesn't have to be a guessing game. A strategic approach can transform your search from a random scroll through social media into a reliable process for finding partners who genuinely connect with your audience. This guide provides a step-by-step framework for discovering, vetting, and organizing potential influencers for your next campaign.

Start with Your 'Why' and 'Who': Define Your Campaign Goals

Before you even open Instagram or TikTok, the most important step is to get clear on what you want to achieve and who you're trying to reach. Without this foundation, you’re just looking for popular people, not effective strategic partners.

1. Set Clear Objectives

What is the primary goal of this influencer campaign? Be specific. Your objective will determine the type of influencer and content you need.

• Brand Awareness: Are you a new company trying to get your name out there? Your goal is to maximize reach and impressions. You might look for influencers with large, engaged followings who can introduce your brand to a broad but relevant audience.
• Lead Generation or Sales: Do you want people to sign up for a newsletter or buy a specific product? Your goal is conversions. This calls for influencers with a high level of trust and a proven ability to drive action, often through testimonials, demos, or unique discount codes.
• Content Creation: Sometimes, the main goal is simply to generate high-quality, authentic user-generated content (UGC) that you can repurpose on your own channels. Here, a creator's aesthetic and photography skills are paramount.

2. Know Your Audience Inside and Out

You aren't trying to find an influencer whose audience is "everyone." You're looking for an influencer whose audience is your audience. Create a clear picture of your ideal customer:

• Demographics: Age, location, gender, income level.
• Interests: What are their hobbies? What kind of content do they consume? What other brands do they love?
• Pain Points: What problems are they trying to solve that your product or service addresses?

The closer an influencer's audience mirrors this profile, the more successful your campaign will be. An influencer with 10,000 followers who all fit your ideal customer profile is far more valuable than one with 100,000 followers who don't.

Understand the Different Types of Influencers

Influencers aren't a one-size-fits-all category. They operate in different tiers, each with unique advantages and disadvantages. Understanding these allows you to pick the right tool for the job.

Nano-Influencers (1k-10k followers): These are everyday people with a strong, niche following. They have sky-high engagement rates and a deep, personal connection with their audience. They are often the most affordable and authentic choice, perfect for location-specific campaigns or building grassroots credibility.

Micro-Influencers (10k-100k followers): This is often the sweet spot for many brands. Micro-influencers have established themselves as experts in a specific niche (e.g., sustainable fashion, keto recipes, productivity tech). They blend strong engagement with respectable reach, delivering high ROI without the massive price tag of a celebrity.

Macro-Influencers (100k-1M followers): These are established personalities, professional bloggers, vloggers, and content creators. They offer significant reach and are great for broad awareness campaigns. While their engagement rates may be lower than smaller creators, a single post can put your brand in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

Mega-Influencers (1M+ followers): Think celebrities and public figures. They offer massive, global reach but come with a hefty price tag. They work best for large-scale brand awareness campaigns where the goal is instant recognition. Their authenticity can sometimes be lower, as their audience knows they do many sponsored posts.

How to Find Influencers: The Manual Approach

You don't need expensive software to start your search. With a little creativity and some screen time, you can build a solid list of potential partners on your own.

Search Directly on Social Platforms

Go where your audience hangs out. If you're a B2C fashion brand, that's probably Instagram and TikTok. If you're a B2B software company, it might be LinkedIn or YouTube.

• Hashtag Searches: This is the most basic but effective method. Search for specific, niche hashtags related to your industry. For a coffee brand, don't just search #coffee. Try more targeted hashtags like #specialtycoffee, #homebarista, or #coffeelovergift. Look at the "Top Posts" section to see who is creating high-engagement content around those topics.
• Keyword Searches: On platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the search bar is your best friend. Search for terms like "best skincare for sensitive skin" or "project management tips" to find creators who are seen as authorities on those subjects.
• Location Tagging: If you're a local business, search by location. See which creators are posting from your city or neighborhood. This helps find nano-influencers with a highly relevant, local audience.

Analyze Your Competitors (and Your Own Audience)

• Look at your competitors' tagged posts. Who is tagging them in content? This reveals influencers they might be working with or who genuinely love their products.
• Check who your own brand followers are following. If you notice many of your most engaged customers are also following a specific food blogger or fashion creator, that's a powerful signal of audience alignment.
• See who comments on relevant posts. When an authority account in your niche posts, look at the comments. Often, other creators and aspiring influencers will be in the comments sections adding valuable insights.

Use Google to Your Advantage

Don’t forget the power of a simple Google search. Use specific search strings to find content creators beyond social media feeds, especially bloggers and YouTubers with established websites.

Try searching for phrases like:

"top travel bloggers in california"
"best vegan recipe blogs"
"austin lifestyle influencers list"

This method often uncovers influencers who have detailed media kits and clear partnership information right on their websites.

Level Up Your Search with Discovery Tools

Manual searching is effective but can be time-consuming. When you're ready to scale your efforts, influencer discovery platforms are the next logical step.

These tools are powerful databases that collect information on millions of influencers across various platforms. Instead of manually digging, you can apply filters to narrow down your search based on specific criteria:

• Niche and Keywords: Find creators who consistently post about topics relevant to your brand.
• Audience Demographics: Filter by the influencer's audience location, age, gender, and interests to ensure a perfect match.
• Follower Count &, Engagement Rate: Set a range for both to find influencers who fit your campaign tier and performance standards.
• Platform: Search for creators who are strong on the specific channels you care about most.

While most of these platforms come with a subscription fee, the time they save and the quality of data they provide can easily justify the cost for businesses serious about influencer marketing.

The Vetting Process: A Checklist for Finding True Partners

Finding a profile is easy. Qualifying a partner is hard. A high follower count can be misleading. A thorough vetting process separates authentic creators from those with inflated numbers and poor alignment. Create a shortlist and run each candidate through this checklist.

1. Check for Audience Authenticity

The first step is to screen for fake followers and engagement. Red flags include:

• Generic Comments: Look at their posts. Are the comments genuine conversations or a sea of "Great post! 🔥" and "😍"? High-quality influencers spark real discussion.
• Low-Quality Followers: Click on a few of their followers' profiles. Do they look like real people, or are they accounts with no posts, generic profile pictures, and random usernames?
• Suspicious Follower-to-Following Ratio: Be wary of accounts that follow thousands of people but have a high follower count. This can be a sign of using "follow/unfollow" tactics to inflate their numbers.

2. Analyze Engagement, Not Just Followers

An influencer with 500,000 followers and 500 likes per post is less effective than one with 20,000 followers and 1,000 likes per post. Engagement rate is a much better indicator of influence. A decent engagement rate is generally considered to be between 1% and 3%, but this can vary by niche and platform.

You can calculate it manually for a few recent posts:

(Total Likes + Total Comments) / Follower Count * 100 = Engagement Rate %

3. Review Their Content and Brand Alignment

Deep-dive into their feed. Does their content align with your brand's values and aesthetic?

• Tone of Voice: Is their communication style similar to your brand's? Are they funny and informal, or more polished and professional?
• Visuals: Do you like their photography and video style? If they created content for you, would it look right on your own social media feeds?
• Values: Do their expressed opinions and values align with your company's? Check if they’ve posted anything that could be controversial or off-brand for you.

4. Look at Past Partnerships

An influencer's history with sponsored content tells you a lot.

• Do they work with competitors? It's usually best to avoid someone who promoted a direct competitor last week.
• How often do they post ads? If their feed is wall-to-wall sponsored content, their audience may have ad fatigue, and their endorsement may not feel authentic.
• How do they present sponsored content? Look for creators who seamlessly integrate sponsored posts into their regular content, rather than posting something that feels like a generic ad.

Organize Your Outreach

As you find and vet potential influencers, keep your findings organized in a spreadsheet. This simple step will save you countless headaches later on. Your spreadsheet should include columns for:

• Name &, Handle: e.g., Jane Doe (@janedoesmarketing)
• Platform(s): Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
• Follower Count: Update this periodically.
• Average Engagement Rate: Your calculated estimate.
• Niche/Topics: What they post about.
• Audience Location (if known): Key info on where their followers are.
• Contact Email: Usually found in their bio or on their website.
• Status: (e.g., Shortlisted, Contacted, Negotiating, Declined, Signed).
• Notes: Any qualitative observations, like "great video editing style" or "previously worked with Brand X."

This database becomes your single source of truth for influencer marketing, allowing you to track relationships and build a community of creators over time.

Final Thoughts

Doing a proper influencer search is less about discovering hidden superstars and more about a methodical process of alignment. By starting with clear goals, understanding the right influencer tier for your needs, and rigorously vetting candidates for authenticity and brand fit, you can build partnerships that drive real results.

Once your influencer campaigns are running, managing the deliverables and measuring their impact alongside your own scheduled content can quickly become complicated. With Postbase, we built a simple, visual calendar so you can see your entire content schedule in one place. It helps you smoothly integrate influencer content into your strategy and see a complete picture of your brand’s performance across all platforms.