How to Find Instagram Influencers for Shopify

Finding the right Instagram influencers can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, but partnering with the right creators can completely transform your Shopify store’s growth. This guide breaks down exactly how to discover, vet, and collaborate with influencers who will genuinely connect with your ideal customers and drive real results. We'll cover everything from defining your goals to crafting the perfect outreach email.

Define Your Goals and Find Your Niche

Before you even open Instagram, it's essential to lay the groundwork. Jumping into an influencer search without a clear plan is a recipe for wasted time and money. Take a moment to answer these foundational questions - they will guide every decision you make.

What Are You Trying to Achieve?

What does a successful campaign look like for your Shopify store? Get specific. "More sales" is too vague. A clear goal will help you identify the right type of influencer and measure your return on investment (ROI). Common goals for e-commerce brands include:

• Driving direct sales: Using affiliate links or discount codes to track purchases.
• Increasing brand awareness: Getting your products in front of a new, targeted audience.
• Building social proof and trust: Having a trusted voice in your niche validate your products.
• Generating high-quality content: Repurposing influencer photos and videos for your own social media, ads, or website.

Your goal will shape the entire campaign. If you want direct sales, you’ll focus on influencers with a proven track record of converting their followers. If you want beautiful content, you’ll look for creators with top-notch photography or videography skills.

Understand the Different Tiers of Influencers

Influencers are typically categorized by their follower count. Each tier offers unique advantages, and for most Shopify stores, the magic often happens in the smaller categories.

• Nano-Influencers (1k - 10k followers): These creators often have hyper-engaged, niche communities. Their recommendations feel like advice from a trusted friend, leading to high trust and conversion rates. They are also the most affordable, often willing to work in exchange for free products.
• Micro-Influencers (10k - 100k followers): This is the sweet spot for many Shopify stores. Micro-influencers have established a dedicated audience around a specific topic (e.g., sustainable living, home decor, gluten-free recipes) and strike a great balance between reach and authentic engagement.
• Macro-Influencers (100k - 1M followers): These are established social media personalities who can generate significant awareness. Campaigns are more expensive and may feel less personal, but they can be effective for reaching a broad audience quickly.
• Mega-Influencers (1M+ followers): These are celebrities and major public figures. Working with them requires a significant budget and is typically managed by agencies. For most growing Shopify brands, this isn't a practical starting point.

Our advice? Start with nano and micro-influencers. Their cost-effectiveness and authentic connection with their followers often provide the best ROI for e-commerce businesses.

4 Actionable Ways to Discover Instagram Influencers

With your goals and ideal influencer type in mind, you're ready to start the search. Here are four proven methods for finding the perfect partners for your brand, starting with the easiest and most affordable options first.

1. Mine Your Own Community

Your best advocates might already be following you. Finding influencers within your existing customer base is the holy grail of influencer marketing because their love for your product is completely genuine. These partnerships feel less like an advertisement and more like an authentic recommendation.

How to do it:

• Scan your followers: Manually look through your followers list. Look for individuals who have a complete bio, post content relevant to your niche, and have a follower count in your target range (e.g., 1,000+).
• Check your tags and mentions: Pay close attention to who is tagging your brand in photos or mentioning you in their stories. Anyone taking the time to feature your products organically is a warm lead for a potential partnership.
• Look at your customers: If you recognize a name from your Shopify order list, that's an even better sign! Reach out to them personally and thank them for their support before pitching a more formal collaboration.

2. Master Hashtag Research

Hashtags are Instagram's built-in search engine for finding creators in any niche imaginable. The key is to think beyond broad, popular tags and dig into the specific phrases your ideal influencer - and their audience - is using.

How to do it:

• Brainstorm niche hashtags: Move beyond generic tags like #fashion or #beauty. Instead, think more specifically. If you sell sustainable activewear, search for tags like #ecofriendlyfashion, #slowfashionmovement, or #sustainableactivewear.
• Explore community hashtags: Look for hashtags that describe a community or a lifestyle, not just a product. For a children's clothing brand, that might be #momlifeisthebestlife, #toddlerfashion, or #documentyourdays.
• Analyze the "Top Posts" section: When you search a hashtag, Instagram shows you the "Top" performing posts. This is an excellent way to quickly identify creators who generate high engagement in your niche. Browse through these accounts and see if their content aligns with your brand.

3. Check Out Your Competitors

One of the quickest ways to find proven influencers is to see who your direct competitors are already working with. If an influencer is successfully promoting a similar brand, it’s a strong sign that their audience is a perfect match for your products, too.

How to do it:

• Visit your competitors’ profiles: Go to the Instagram pages of 3-5 brands you compete with.
• Check their "Tagged" tab: This is a goldmine. The "Tagged" section of their profile shows all the public posts where other accounts have tagged them. Scroll through this feed to see which influencers are featuring their products.
• Look for "Paid Partnership" labels: Scan their main feed for posts with the "Paid partnership" tag. This explicitly tells you which influencers they've hired for a campaign. Add these creators to a list for further vetting.

4. Use Influencer Discovery Tools

For brands ready to scale their efforts and with a bit more budget, influencer discovery platforms can accelerate the search process. These tools allow you to filter through a massive database of influencers by niche, location, engagement rate, audience demographics, and more. A few examples include Upfluence, Grin, and AspireIQ. While powerful, these tools come with a monthly subscription and are often better suited for when you have a dedicated person managing your program.

How to Vet Influencers (Don't Skip This Step)

Building a list of potential influencers is just the beginning. The most important part of the process is vetting each creator to make sure they are a good fit and can deliver real value. A large follower count means nothing if their audience isn't engaged or their followers are fake.

Step 1: Analyze Their Audience and Engagement

A pretty feed is great, but you need to look deeper. The quality of an influencer's community is more important than its size.

• Read the comments: Are people having real conversations in the comments section, or is it just a string of generic Emojis and "nice post!" comments from bots or other influencers? Genuine questions and discussions are a great sign.
• Look for audience alignment: Would their loyal followers be genuinely interested in your products? If an influencer posts about outdoor hiking gear, their audience probably isn't the best fit for your luxury skincare line.
• Demand transparency: An influencer with a healthy, authentic following should have no problem sharing a screenshot of their audience demographics from their Instagram insights. This lets you verify their followers' age range, gender, and top locations. If an influencer is hesitant to share this, consider it a red flag.

Step 2: Calculate Their Engagement Rate

Engagement rate shows you what percentage of an influencer's audience interacts with their content. It's a much better indicator of influence than raw follower count. Here's a simple formula to calculate it:

((Total Likes + Total Comments) on a post ÷ Total Followers) x 100 = Engagement Rate %

Calculate this across their last 5-10 posts (excluding Reels, which can skew the numbers) to get a reliable average. Good benchmarks to aim for are:

• 1k-10k Followers (Nano): 4% to 8%+
• 10k-100k Followers (Micro): 2% to 4%
• 100k+ Followers (Macro/Mega): 1% to 2%

Anything significantly below these ranges might indicate poor content or a high number of inactive or fake followers.

Step 3: Check for Brand Alignment and Content Quality

Finally, ask yourself if this person is truly a good ambassador for your brand.

• Aesthetic match: Does the visual style of their feed - their photography, color palette, and overall vibe - complement your brand's aesthetic? Their content will become associated with your brand.
• Value alignment: Look through their past captions and comments. Do their values and communication style align with your own?
• Professionalism check: How do they handle other sponsored posts? Do they seem thrown together, or are they creative and seamlessly integrated into their feed? You want to partner with someone who treats collaborations with care, not someone who posts one #ad after another.

Crafting the Perfect Outreach Message

Once you’ve found a creator who checks all the boxes, it's time to reach out. Your first impression matters, so avoid generic, copy-and-paste messages. The goal is to start a relationship, not just a transaction.

• Be personal. An influencer’s DMs and email inbox are crowded. Stand out by mentioning a specific post or Story of theirs that you enjoyed.
  Instead of: "Hey, we love your account."
  Try: "Hi Sarah, I loved your recent post on composting tips - I'm a big fan of how you make sustainable living so approachable."
• Be clear and direct. Briefly introduce your brand and explain why you think a partnership would be a perfect fit. Get to the point quickly, respecting their time.
• Explain what's in it for them. Clearly state what you are offering. Is it a free product, a flat fee for a specific set of deliverables, or an affiliate partnership? Ambiguity only leads to confusion.
• Make it easy to say yes. Outline exactly what you’re looking for (e.g., "1 Instagram post and 3 Stories") and ask if they would be open to discussing the idea further. Keep the initial email concise and focused on starting a conversation.

Follow a simple DM with a request for their email address, where you can then send a more detailed partnership proposal. Professional influencers prefer handling business over email.

Final Thoughts

Partnering with the right Instagram influencers is a powerful way to grow your Shopify store. By setting clear goals, finding creators through smart research methods, thoroughly vetting each candidate, and creating a personalized outreach, you set yourself up for successful collaborations that genuinely drive sales and build your brand.

Once your influencer campaigns are launched, tracking the buzz and connecting with new followers can be a full-time job. We created Postbase to simplify exactly that. Our unified social inbox brings all the comments and DMs from new followers into one place, so you never miss a chance to engage. Meanwhile, our intuitive analytics dashboard lets you measure the impact on your engagement, helping you get a more complete picture of your campaign’s success.