How to Find Influencers in Your Industry

Finding the right influencer feels like a game-changer because it is one. But sifting through millions of creators to find the handful that can genuinely connect with your audience can feel overwhelming. This guide breaks down the process into simple, actionable steps, showing you how to discover, vet, and partner with influencers who will actually drive results for your brand.

Before You Start: Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

Jumping into an influencer search without a clear goal is like going on a road trip without a destination. You’ll spend a lot of time and money going nowhere. Before you even open Instagram or TikTok, take a moment to define what success looks like for your brand.

What Do You Want to Accomplish?

Your goal will dictate the type of influencer you need. Are you trying to boost brand awareness, generate leads, or drive direct sales? Each objective requires a different strategy.

• Brand Awareness: Your goal is to get your brand name in front of as many relevant people as possible. Here, you might look for influencers with a broad, yet engaged, reach in your industry. Their primary job is to create talk-worthy content that introduces your brand to a new audience.
• Lead Generation: You want to gather contact information from potential customers. This often involves working with influencers who can drive their audience to a specific landing page to download a guide, sign up for a webinar, or join an email list. Authenticity and trust are paramount here.
• Direct Sales: The objective is straightforward - sell products. For this, you need influencers whose audience trusts their recommendations implicitly. They are masters at creating content that showcases a product’s value and often use exclusive discount codes or affiliate links to track conversions.

Who is Your Ideal Influencer?

Once you know your goal, outline the characteristics of the creator who can help you achieve it. Think beyond simple follower counts and consider the following:

• Audience Demographics: Who does the influencer actually talk to? Don't assume. Look for creators whose followers match your target customer profile in terms of age, location, interests, and income level. An influencer with 500,000 followers is useless if none of them are your potential customers.
• Platform: Where does your target audience spend their time? If you're a B2B software company, LinkedIn and YouTube might be your best bet. If you sell direct-to-consumer lifestyle products, Instagram and TikTok are likely the places to be.
• Content Style &, Vibe: Does their aesthetic match your brand's? A brand with a polished, minimalist vibe probably shouldn't partner with an influencer known for chaotic, high-energy comedy sketches. The alignment should feel natural, not forced.

The Action Plan: Where and How to Find Influencers

Now that you have your blueprint, it's time to start the search. The best influencers aren't always the most obvious ones. Digging a little deeper often reveals hidden gems who can become powerful advocates for your brand.

1. Start with Your Own Community

Your most powerful potential partners might already be in your backyard. People who already follow, love, and post about your brand organically are your warmest leads. They don't need to be convinced of your value, they’re already fans.

• Check Your Followers: Manually scroll through your followers on your primary social platforms. Look for people who have a significant following themselves and whose profiles align with your brand. Their follower count might be smaller (think nano or micro-influencers), but their endorsement will be incredibly genuine.
• Scrutinize Your Tags and Mentions: Who is already tagging you in their posts or Stories? Look through your tagged photos and mentions for high-quality content from creators. These are people actively using and loving your products. Reaching out to them for a formal partnership is a natural next step.

2. Master Hashtag Research

Hashtags are direct pathways to influencer communities, but you have to use them strategically. Generic, high-volume hashtags like #fitness or #foodblogger are too broad and saturated.

Go for Niche Community Hashtags

Think about the specialized terms and phrases your ideal customers use. For example:

• Instead of #skincare, try #Kbeautylover, #cleanbeautyroutine, or #acnepositivity.
• Instead of #travel, try #solofemaletraveler, #vanlifeadventures, or #digitalnomadlife.
• Instead of #homedecor, try #modernfarmhousestyle, #maximalistinteriors, or #apartmenttherapy.

Browse the "Top" posts for these niche hashtags. You'll find passionate creators who are deeply embedded in those communities and respected as trusted sources.

3. Analyze Your Competitors' Collaborations

Your competitors have already done some of the work for you. See who they’re partnering with to get a sense of who is active in your space. Don't just look for sponsored posts, look deeper.

Who’s Tagging Them?

Go to your competitors' Instagram profiles and check their "Tagged" photos section. This is a goldmine of user-generated content and potential influencer partnerships. You can see who is talking about them, what they’re saying, and how their audience is reacting.

Who’s Engaging with Them?

Pay attention to the comments on your competitors' posts. Are there specific creators who consistently leave thoughtful comments? These are people who are highly engaged in your industry and may be open to collaborating with a different brand (like yours!).

4. Use Platform-Specific Search Tools

Social media platforms have powerful built-in search functions if you know how to use them.

• TikTok Creator Marketplace: For brands with a TikTok Business Account, the Creator Marketplace is a powerful, free tool. You can filter creators by country, topic, audience size, age, gender, and more to find the perfect fit.
• Instagram Keyword Search: Instagram now lets you search by keywords, not just hashtags or usernames. Searching for "gluten-free baker Chicago" will bring up accounts, content, and Reels related to that specific topic, often surfacing local micro-influencers.
• YouTube &, Google Search: Sometimes, a simple search is the most effective. Use descriptive search terms on Google like: "best sustainable fashion blogs" (for sustainable fashion bloggers)
"review of Oura Ring vs Whoop" (to find tech/health reviewers)
"top New York interior design YouTubers" This will help you find influencers who create long-form content like blog posts and detailed video reviews.

Vetting Your Shortlist: How to Choose the Right Partner

Creating a long list of potential influencers is easy. The hard part is narrowing it down to creators who will be a safe and effective investment for your brand. This vetting stage is where you separate professional, impactful creators from risky or ineffective ones.

Look Past the Follower Count

A huge follower count is a vanity metric, engagement is what truly matters. An influencer with 500,000 followers but only 500 likes per post provides terrible value. In contrast, a micro-influencer with 15,000 followers who gets 1,000 likes and 100 thoughtful comments per post has a highly dedicated and trusting audience.

Calculate Their Engagement Rate

You can do this manually for a quick gut check. A healthy engagement rate is typically between 1-3%. Anything higher is fantastic.

Here's a simple formula:

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

Grab the numbers from their last 5-10 posts (excluding any obvious outlier viral posts) and find the average. This gives you a much better picture of their typical performance than a single post.

Audit Their Audience Quality

Unfortunately, fake followers and engagement pods are still a reality. You need to be able to spot red flags to avoid wasting your budget.

• Check the Comments: Are the comments genuine conversations? Or are they filled with generic one-word responses like "Amazing!", "Wow!", or strings of emojis? Genuine communities have back-and-forth conversations between the creator and their followers.
• Review Their Follower Growth: Use a third-party analytics tool (some have free versions) to look at their follower growth history. Is their growth steady and organic, or are there sudden, huge spikes that indicate they may have purchased followers?
• Who Follows Them?: Sift through a sample of their followers. Do a lot of the profiles have no posts, no profile pictures, spammy usernames (e.g., a bunch of numbers), or follow thousands of accounts while having very few followers themselves? These are tell-tale signs of bots.

Ensure Content and Brand Alignment

This is arguably the most important step. A partnership will fall flat if it doesn't feel authentic.

• Scroll Their History: Go deep into their feed. Does their tone, visuals, and messaging align with your brand's values? If your brand is all about sustainability, it doesn’t make sense to partner with an influencer who primarily promotes fast fashion.
• Review Past Partnerships: Have they worked with your direct competitors? Working with a competitor isn't always a dealbreaker, but if they promoted a rival brand just last week, their endorsement of your product will seem inauthentic to their audience. Look for creators who are selective about their partnerships.
• Look Beyond the Main Feed: Watch their Stories, Reels, and TikToks. This is often where a creator's true personality shines through. Is their off-the-cuff content a fit for your brand? The relationship needs to feel seamless across all formats.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right influencers comes down to a methodical process of defining your goals, strategically searching for talent, and rigorously vetting your candidates. By focusing on authentic engagement and true brand alignment over simple follower numbers, you build partnerships that are not only a marketing asset but a genuine extension of your brand story.

Once you've built these relationships, managing the content, conversations, and results can become a job in itself. At Postbase, we built our platform to simplify this exact process. You can use our visual calendar to plan when your influencer content goes live alongside your own posts. And with our unified inbox, we make it easy to monitor comments and DMs on sponsored content across all your platforms, so you can track audience sentiment and engage with new followers without switching between a dozen apps.