How to Find TikTok Influencers

Finding the right TikTok influencers for your brand can feel like searching for a needle in a digital haystack, but it's one of the most effective ways to connect with your target audience. Instead of just randomly scrolling, you need a clear strategy to discover authentic creators who will get real results. This guide breaks down exactly where to look, what to look for, and how to spot genuine talent that aligns perfectly with your brand.

First, Define Your Goals and Ideal Influencer

Before you ever open the TikTok app, the most important work happens away from the screen. Jumping into the search without a clear plan means you'll waste time and likely end up with partnerships that don’t move the needle for your business a single inch. You need a map before you start the journey.

Know What You Want to Achieve

What does a successful campaign actually look like for you? Your goal will completely change the type of influencer you should be looking for. Get specific here:

• Brand Awareness: Are you a new brand simply trying to get your name out there? You might want to partner with a macro-influencer (100k-1M followers) with broad appeal in your general industry to reach as many eyeballs as possible. The primary metric here is reach and views.
• Driving Sales: If your main goal is to sell a specific product, a smaller micro-influencer (10k-100k followers) with a deeply engaged, niche audience might be your best bet. Their followers trust their recommendations implicitly, making them powerful sales drivers. Success here is measured in conversions and clicks on an affiliate link.
• Promoting a New Feature or App: Need people to take a specific action, like downloading an app or signing up for a trial? Look for creators who are great at making clear, educational, and exciting tutorial-style content. Their ability to explain and demonstrate is more valuable than their follower count.

Your goal shapes the conversation, the call-to-action, and the criteria for your entire search.

Build Your Ideal Influencer Persona

Think about your perfect influencer partner as you would a target customer. This goes way beyond simple follower counts, which are often just vanity metrics. Ask yourself these questions to build a clear persona:

• Niche and Content Pillars: What do they talk about every day? Are they the go-to source for sustainable fashion, meal prep hacks for busy parents, or hilarious remote work commentary? Their niche needs to align directly with what you sell.
• Audience Demographics: Who is watching their videos? Are they Gen Z students, new homeowners in their 30s, or C-level executives? Don't just guess - you'll want to verify this later. If an influencer's audience doesn't match your target customer, the partnership won't work, no matter how great the creator is.
• Tone and Style: What is their vibe? Are they sharp and witty, comforting and educational, or quirky and artistic? Their personal brand should feel like a natural extension of your own. A mismatch here will make the sponsored content feel forced and inauthentic to their audience.

Free and Organic Ways to Find TikTok Influencers

You don’t need a huge budget to start influencer discovery. Some of the most authentic and effective methods are completely free - they just require your time and strategic attention.

Scour Your "For You Page" Strategically

Your For You Page (FYP) is an incredibly powerful discovery tool, but you have to teach the algorithm what you're looking for. Don't just scroll passively. Turn your FYP into an influencer-sourcing machine by actively engaging with content related to your brand and industry.

Start by searching for relevant keywords and hashtags. Is your brand in the skincare space? Search for terms like "glass skin routine" or "#skintok." Then, do this:

• Follow creators in your niche who are getting good engagement.
• Like and Comment on videos that fit your brand's style.
• Save or Favorite videos you think are particularly effective.

Within a day or two, TikTok's algorithm will start serving you a curated feed of creators and trends that your target audience is already watching. It's like having a focus group hand-deliver potential partners to you.

Master TikTok's Search Bar

TikTok is just as much a search engine as it is a social network, and its search bar is an absolute goldmine. Go beyond just searching for broad topics. Get creative and type in the kinds of things your ideal customer would be searching for.

Let’s say you sell high-quality, sustainable cookware:

• Search by Keywords: Look up phrases like "nontoxic pans," "easy one-pot dinner," or "cooking for beginners." This will show you the exact videos - and creators - that are showing up at the top of the results for these topics.
• Search by Hashtags: Explore both broad and niche hashtags. Start with something big like #cookingtiktok, then narrow down to #healthydinners or #mealprepideas. Filtering by "#" gives you a direct look into a specific conversation happening on the platform.
• Filter Your Search: After you search, use the tabs at the top to filter results by "Users," "Videos," "Sounds," and "LIVE" to find exactly what you’re looking for. The "Users" tab is especially helpful for finding creators who position themselves as experts in that niche.

Explore Competitors' Mentions and Collaborations

One of the smartest shortcuts is to see who your direct and indirect competitors are already working with. This gives you a pre-vetted list of influencers who are not only in your niche but are also open to brand partnerships.

Go to your competitors' TikTok profiles and check their tagged videos (person in a square icon). This is where content they've been tagged in by other creators lives. Look for videos that are clearly marked as ads or appear to be sponsored. You not only find potential influencers, but you can also analyze the type of content that’s already being made in your space.

Find Creators Who Already Love Your Brand

Who better to promote your product than someone who already loves it? Search for your brand name or product names on TikTok to see if any creators have mentioned you organically. These champions of your brand are prime candidates for a more formal partnership because their endorsement is born from genuine enthusiasm. Even if their following is small, their impact can be huge because their recommendation is 100% authentic.

Using Tools to Find TikTok Influencers More Efficiently

While organic methods are effective, they can be time-consuming. When you're ready to scale your influencer marketing efforts, specialized tools can streamline the process, provide valuable data, and save you dozens of hours.

Leverage the TikTok Creator Marketplace

This should be your first stop for a more data-driven approach. The TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM) is the platform's official hub for connecting brands and creators. It’s free to join, and it gives you direct access to a database of thousands of creators who have specifically opted in to be considered for brand deals.

Inside the TTCM, you can:

• Filter Creators with Precision: Search for influencers based on topic, follower count, average views, country, audience age, gender, and device used. This lets you zero in on creators whose audiences match yours with uncanny accuracy.
• View Verified Analytics: Say goodbye to guesswork. The Marketplace provides real, verified data on a creator's engagement rates, audience demographics, and past campaign performance. You can request access to this information directly from their profile.

Explore Third-Party Influencer Platforms

For brands managing larger-scale influencer campaigns, dedicated third-party platforms offer a more comprehensive solution. Platforms like Upfluence, Grin, and Creator.co are essentially powerful search engines for influencers across every social media platform, not just TikTok. These tools often come with a monthly subscription fee but provide an end-to-end management solution, helping with discovery, outreach, contract negotiation, payment processing, and campaign reporting all in one place.

What to Look for Before You Reach Out

Discovering an influencer is just step one. The vetting process is where you separate the good from the great and avoid signing a contract with someone who isn't a true fit.

Analyze Engagement Rate - Not Just Follower Count

A huge follower count is meaningless if no one is actually watching, liking, or commenting. You need to look for signs of a healthy, active community. A simple way to eyeball engagement is to see if the video views and interaction numbers are proportional to the follower count. A creator with 500,000 followers but only getting 10,000 views and 20 comments per video is a major red flag.

Look for genuine conversation. Are people tagging their friends? Asking questions about the topic? Sharing their own experiences? That healthy buzz is the sign of a real community, not a passive audience.

Check Their Comment Section for Authenticity

The comment section is an open diary of an influencer's relationship with their audience. Take five minutes to scroll through the comments on a few of their recent videos. What do you see? Are they responding to questions? Are the comments thoughtful and related to the video's content? Or are they full of generic "nice post!" statements or spammy bot accounts? A good influencer’s comment section feels like a lively dinner party, not an empty hall.

Evaluate Their Past Brand Partnerships

Look for past sponsored content by searching for hashtags like #ad, #sponsored, or #brandpartner on their profile. Watch those videos critically. Did they seamlessly integrate the product into their usual content style, or did it feel like a clunky, out-of-place advertisement? The best influencer content shouldn't even feel like an ad. It should feel like a trusted friend giving a genuine recommendation.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right TikTok creators comes down to a clear, repeatable process: define your goals first, use a smart mix of manual searching and platform tools to build a pipeline of talent, and then vet each potential partner carefully for genuine engagement and brand alignment. Taking these steps sets your campaign up for success before it even begins.

Once you've built a great roster of creators, managing all the excellent content they produce for you across different social networks is the next big challenge. We actually built Postbase because we knew how frustrating it was to manage short-form video in scheduling tools that were never designed for it. You can organize your influencer content in a clean visual calendar, schedule their TikToks alongside your own Reels and Shorts, and track exactly what’s performing - all in one place.