How to Filter Influencers by Niche and Location

Finding the right influencers for your brand can feel like searching for a needle in a digital haystack. You need creators whose audience actually cares about what you sell, and it’s even better if they’re in a location that matters to your business. This guide breaks down exactly how to filter influencers by niche and location, so you can stop scrolling endlessly and start building partnerships that get real results.

Why Filtering by Niche and Location Is a Game-Changer

Before getting into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Targeting everyone is targeting no one. When you connect with an influencer in a specific niche, you're tapping into a pre-built community that trusts their recommendations. Their followers aren't just random people, they're passionate fans of everything from sustainable fashion to small-batch coffee.

Location is just as important. For brick-and-mortar businesses, partnering with local influencers drives foot traffic and builds community recognition. For e-commerce brands, targeting specific regions can support sales goals, shipping logistics, or market-specific campaigns. It makes your brand feel relevant and accessible, not like a faceless corporation. Precise filtering saves you time, cuts down on wasted outreach, and leads to campaigns that feel authentic and drive genuine engagement.

Manual Search Strategies: The Art of the Sleuth

You don’t always need expensive tools to start your search. With a bit of strategic digging, you can uncover hidden gems directly on social media platforms. It takes more time, but these methods are free and highly effective for building an initial list.

1. Master Niche and Location-Based Hashtags

Hashtags are the original search engine of social media. The key is to think like a local and a niche expert. A generic tag like #foodie will give you millions of posts, but #chicagofoodblogger or #torontovegan narrows the field immediately.

• Combine Niche + Location: Mix your industry with a city, state, or even neighborhood. Examples: #austinfitness, #nycfashionstylist, #londonbaker, #lapetblogger.
• Explore Related Hashtags: When you find a good hashtag, both Instagram and TikTok will show you related ones. Clicking through these can lead you down a rabbit hole of highly relevant creators.
• Check "Top" and "Recent" Posts: The "Top" tab for a hashtag shows you content with high engagement, which often features established influencers. The "Recent" tab is great for uncovering up-and-coming micro-influencers who might have super-engaged communities.

2. Use Platform Geotagging and Location Searches

Most social platforms allow users to tag their posts with a specific location, from a country down to a single coffee shop. This is a goldmine for finding local creators in their natural habitat.

On Instagram, for instance, you can search for a specific city, landmark, or business. Tapping on that location tag in a post will show you a feed of all public content tagged there. Browse through the feed to see who is consistently posting high-quality content from areas that are relevant to your brand. Do you own a cafe in Brooklyn? Search your cafe’s location page and see which local creators have already visited and posted about you organically.

3. Power Up with Google Search Operators

Sometimes, searching on Google can be more powerful than searching within the apps themselves, especially if you know a few tricks. Search operators are simple commands that help you refine your queries.

To find influencers, use the site: operator to limit your search to a specific social media platform. Combine it with keywords for niche and location.

Example Search Queries:

To find fashion bloggers in Miami on Instagram:

site:instagram.com "miami fashion blogger"

To find tech YouTubers based in the UK:

site:youtube.com "uk tech reviewer" OR "uk tech unboxing"

To find food photographers in San Francisco with a blog:

site:linkedin.com/in/ "san francisco food photographer" "blogger"

Play around with different combinations of keywords. This method can help you find influencer profiles, media kits, or blog posts that might not surface easily within the platform itself.

Using Influencer Discovery Platforms for Efficiency

Manual searching is effective, but it’s definitely a grind. When you’re ready to scale your influencer marketing, dedicated discovery platforms can save you hundreds of hours. These tools are massive searchable databases of influencers, equipped with powerful filters that let you pinpoint the perfect partners in minutes.

What Are Influencer Platforms?

Think of them as LinkedIn, but purpose-built for creator partnerships. Platforms like Grin, Aspire, or Upfluence ingest massive amounts of public data from social media and organize it so you can search for influencers using dozens of criteria. While they come with a subscription fee, the efficiency they offer can deliver a significant return on investment.

How to Filter Effectively Using Platforms:

The real power of these tools comes from combining filters to create a highly specific search. Here’s a typical workflow:

1. Start with the Niche: Don't just select a broad category like "Beauty." Use keyword filters to get granular. Instead of "Beauty," search for an interest like "cruelty-free makeup" or "Olaplex dupe." This ensures the influencer’s content truly aligns with your brand.
2. Layer on Location Filters: This is where things get interesting. Most platforms let you filter by the influencer's stated location (e.g., "based in Los Angeles"). But the best platforms also allow you to filter by the influencer’s audience location. This is crucial. An influencer could live in Paris but have a majority audience in the U.S. Knowing where their followers are is far more valuable than knowing where the influencer lives.
3. Refine by Audience Demographics: Go a step further by filtering for the influencer’s audience age and gender. If you’re a menswear brand, you can filter for creators whose audience is "80%+ male" between the ages of "25-45."
4. Set Performance Metrics: Finally, add filters for key metrics like follower count (e.g., 10k-50k for micro-influencers), average engagement rate (a good baseline is 2-3%), or average video views. This weeds out inactive accounts or those with low-quality engagement.

By layering these filters - niche, influencer location, audience location, demographics, and metrics - you can turn a list of millions into a highly targeted shortlist of a few dozen ideal candidates.

Vetting Influencers After You Find Them

Finding potential influencers is just half the battle. Now you need to vet them to make sure they're a good fit. A quick look at their profile can tell you a lot.

1. Analyze Their Content and Tone

Scroll through their last 20-30 posts. Does their content quality, aesthetic, and communication style align with your brand’s values? An authentic partnership feels natural. If their content is edgy and full of memes but your brand is serene and minimalist, the collaboration will feel forced to their audience (and yours).

2. Read the Comments (Not Just the Likes)

Likes and followers can be bought, but a genuine community can’t. Look at the comments on their recent posts. Are people having real conversations? Are the comments thoughtful, or are they a bunch of single-word replies and emojis from bot-like accounts? The quality of the comments tells you far more about an influencer's true connection with their audience than their follower count.

3. Check for Audience Authenticity

Do a quick health check. Are there any red flags, like a sudden, massive spike in followers overnight? Does their engagement rate seem suspiciously low or high for their follower count? Disreputable influencers sometimes purchase followers or use engagement pods to inflate their metrics. While no method is foolproof, looking for consistency in their growth and engagement can help you screen out low-quality partners.

Final Thoughts

Pinpointing the right influencers comes down to starting broad and methodically narrowing your focus. By skillfully combining niche hashtags, location-based searches, and the powerful filters in discovery platforms, you transform a daunting task into a strategic process that yields high-quality, relevant partners.

Once you’ve found the right creators and your amazing collaborative content starts flowing in, the next challenge is managing it all. As our team at Postbase built our platform, we focused on making that part simple. After all that hard work finding partners, we make it easy to schedule all that great content across your social channels from one visual calendar, ensuring your campaigns go live without a hitch.