The Complete Guide on How to Find Influencers for Your Brand in 2024

Did you know that in 2020 the global reach of influencer marketing grew by 57%? What do you think the reason for the exponential growth of influencer marketing is?

It’s because influencers can connect with their audiences as trusted peers. However, it is not easy to find influencers who are right for your business's influencer marketing.

So, I’ve created this comprehensive guide to help you identify and find influencers for your business.

To make it simpler, I’ve divided it into three parts:

• Why does your business need influencer marketing?
• Where can you find influencers for your business?
• How to collaborate with influencers after you’ve found them?

Let’s explore the detailed strategy to help you find the right influencers for your business.

Excited to find out more?

Keep reading.

Why Do You Need to Find Influencers for Your Business?

Consider the following situations:

Situation 1: You are at a party where you meet someone you don’t know. He tries to convince you to be his friend by bragging about his personality.

Would you even bother to get to know him better? My best guess would be – no.

Situation 2: At a party, your friend introduces you to one of his friends. Do you think you might make an attempt at getting to know this person better?

The chances of this happening are certainly much better than the previous one.

Why?

Because you trust your friend’s recommendation – if he’s already friends with that person, it may not hurt to get to know him better, right?

The human mind works exactly the same way when it comes to influencer marketing. An influencer plays the role of a mutual friend who connects your brand with your target audience.

And that’s exactly why 21% of shoppers turn to social media for research before making a purchase. This number is even higher (31%) for Gen-Z.

So what’s the role of influencers on social media for your business?

• They create content for your business.
• They recommend your brand to their social media followers.
• They immerse themselves in conversations that surround your brand.

Now that we know the role they can play, let’s dive deeper into how to find influencers for your business.

How to Find Influencers for Your Business

Finding the right influencers for your business can be tough, especially given the number of choices you have.

Still, with the help of the tips below, you can find the most relevant influencers for your business.

Ready to learn more?

Here you go.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Audiences are one of three cornerstones of influencer marketing strategies. And, this is where many brands go wrong in their influencer marketing.

They fail to ensure that their target audiences are following the influencer on social media that they decide to collaborate with.

This is why knowing your audience is the first step to finding influencers for your business.

For example, let’s say you have a beauty brand. In order to sell your products, you decide to work with a beauty blogger.

How do you know if you’ve made the right selection?

You need to understand that not every beauty blogger has the same kind of target audience.

• Some may target millennials.
• Others may target moms or middle-aged women.
• Some may have social media followers who prefer organic beauty products.
• Others may have social media followers who are into cosmetic products.
• And so on…

So, what is it that you must check for?

You need to ensure that your target audiences are the same as that of your influencer’s.

This is a must when you want to find influencers on social media for your business because the right ones will ensure that your products are shown to relevant audiences.

Here’s an example of a travel influencer promoting a hotel where she stayed for her travel.

Now, this is a perfect match as the influencer’s social media followers are interested in travel and likely want recommendations for where to stay.

Image via Instagram

2. Vet Your Influencers

In order to find and select the right influencers on social media for your business, you need to first evaluate them.

Evaluation is necessary or else you may end up with the wrong influencers or even fake ones.

Below are the parameters that you must use when finding influencers for your business.

Reach

Reach simply means the total number of followers an influencer has on social media or their blogs.

You need to make sure that your influencer has a decent following on the social media channel where you wish to run your campaign.

It’s one of the most important things to look at when you want to find social media influencers for your business.

Engagement

Perhaps, even more important than the reach is the engagement rates of an influencer.

Why?

Because it is an indication of how many of their followers are truly interested in their social media content.

It is essentially a measure of how much an influencer is capable of influencing their purchase decisions.

So, check the level of engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.) that an influencer gets on their social media posts before making a choice.

Authenticity

If an influencer’s recommendations sound authentic, only then will their followers' trust and follow them.

Their social media posts (especially any brand-sponsored content) shouldn’t look like something they’re talking about only because they’ve been paid to.

So, manually check the past brand collaborations and content of an influencer you are interested in.

Personality

Find influencers whose personality and style align with your messaging and brand values. Such resonance will make the content truly appealing and relevant to your target audiences.

Niche

When you’re looking to find influencers on social media for your business, you need to see whose niche aligns with your business, products, or industry.

For example, if you develop tech gadgets, find influencers from the technology niche. Relevance is key when it comes to deciding the fate of your influencer campaigns.

Where Can You Find Influencers for Your Business?

Influencer marketing is certainly not restricted to celebrities. Brands turn to influencers who have built smaller but highly engaged audiences.

So the obvious question is where can you find influencers for your business? Here are some ideas:

1. Search Using Hashtags

Hashtags make social media content searchable and accessible on social platforms. So search for hashtags that may be relevant to your brand. This can help you find influencers for your business.

You can follow these steps to find relevant influencers on the social media platform Instagram:

• Search for #sponsored, #ad, #blogger, or #influencer on the social media platform Instagram and check out the results.

Image via Instagram

• If you happen to come across a social media post that you like, check out the creator’s profile.

Image via Instagram

• If you like their content and aesthetics, check if they’re from the same niche as yours.
• If they also have a decent number of followers, proceed to check their engagement rate. You can use a free Instagram engagement calculator to check engagement rates and get a rough idea of what their influence is worth.

Image via Tanke

• If they fit the bill on all accounts, you can add them to your list of potential influencers for outreach.

Pro Tip: Use tools like HashtagsForLikes to identify the most popular hashtags in your niche. Using these hashtags, you can discover the most relevant influencers on social media for your brand.

2. On Social Media

The easiest way of finding the right influencers for your business is to look for the ones who are already talking about you.

You can find social media influencers for your business by tracking your brand mentions. So, look out for those.

Social media monitoring or social media listening tools can help you find social media influencers who are talking about you or your industry.

For instance, let’s say that someone regularly posts about yoga accessories. If you deal with such products, you should definitely engage with them.

Social monitoring and social media listening tools like Awario, Mention, or Simply Measured can help you track your brand mentions on social media.

You can use them to respond to your customer comments or even find social media influencers who are talking about you.

Image via Mention

3. Google Search Alerts

Google Search Alerts is yet another method to help you find influencers for your business. Set alerts for keywords relevant to your brand.

This will help you find people who write about topics relating to your industry or products.

Doing this can help you find posts containing your mentions. It also allows you to find relevant brand advocates.

Image via Google Alerts

4. Blogger Outreach Platforms

When looking for influential bloggers for your business, read through their posts to ascertain if they write about relevant topics.

Check out their Domain Authority and social media statistics and contact the ones who meet your criteria.

This may sound like a slightly tedious process to find influencers for your business as it’s completely manual.

To simplify it, you can use platforms like Inkybee, BuzzStream, or GroupHigh. These platforms help you find influencers for your business without much effort and provide all the necessary stats as well.

Image via GroupHigh

5. Influencer Marketing Platforms & Agencies

Influencer marketing platforms can help you find influencers for your business quickly and easily.

They allow you to search their databases of influencers and filter by reach, category, engagement, social media platforms, and more. These also help you identify fake influencers and weed them out.

You can conduct efficient outreach and can even run, track, and measure your campaigns using them.

BuzzSumo, BuzzStream, HYPR, and TRIBE are some useful influence marketing platforms you can use.

For more of a full-service approach, influencer agencies like The Motherhood can serve as a great option for both identifying influencers and managing your influencer marketing strategy.

Image via Grin

How to Engage with Influencers?

It’s not enough to just find influencers for your business. Once you have found and vetted them, it’s time to engage with them.

Here are the steps you need to follow for effective influencer outreach:

Get Them to Notice You

Follow them and engage with their posts on social media platforms. Comment meaningfully and show your appreciation of their work. Remember to also share their content in your social media networks.

This will draw their attention and get them to notice you. This, in turn, will help you when you finally reach out to influencers.

Create a Compelling Proposal

Once you have put yourself on an influencer’s radar, it’s time to send them a winning proposal. Here’s what you need to mention in it:

• Who you are and how you came to know about them.
• Why you are reaching out.
• What you can offer in return.
• How they can take the conversation forward.

There’s no need to go into the specifics of what you can offer. However, you need to make your offer sound lucrative enough to increase your chances of getting a response.

After all, it is one thing to find influencers for your business and a completely different thing to get them to collaborate with you.

You can talk about how relevant the opportunity could be or refer to some of your past successful collaborations.

Don’t forget to mention a clear call-to-action in your email. For instance, you can ask them to reply with a suitable time for a detailed discussion.

Follow Up

Since they get a large number of messages, it’s possible that your email may go unnoticed by influencers.

So wait for a couple of days and send a follow-up email if you still don’t hear from them. Send at least a couple of follow-ups before you move on.

Also, make sure that you nurture your influencer relationships long after your collaboration ends. Influencer relationship management is just as important, as it will help you in the long run.

You can always work with the same influencers again if you both had a good experience while collaborating.

FAQs

Q1. How to find influencers for your business?

A. You can find influencers for your business by searching for them on:

• Your target social media platforms
• Influencer marketing platforms
• Blogging platforms

You can also perform hashtag searches and set up alerts on Google Search for influencers in your niche.

Q2. How to find influencers who want to share and link to your content?

A. You can hire an influencer marketing agency to find influencers who are willing to share and link to your content.

They will not only find influencers in your niche but also ones who fit your budget and location.

Q3. How to find influencers as a new brand?

A. For new brands, it’s best to use influencer marketing tools or agencies for influencer discovery. Using them, you can reduce the risks involved in hiring unknown influencers.

Plus, they also help you with proposal negotiation and relationship management.

Q4. How to find local influencers to boost your brand?

A. There are many ways to find local influencers for collaboration, including:

• Get involved in local events to connect with influential people in your local community.
• Examine your local social media followers.
• Conduct local hashtag searches.
• Use social listening tools to find out who is talking about your business.
• Hire an influencer marketing agency.

Q5. How to find Instagram influencers?

A. To find Instagram influencers, follow these steps:

• Perform hashtag searches for your niche.
• Look up influencers your competitors are partnering with.
• Use Instagram marketing tools for influencer discovery.
• Hire influencer marketing agencies that specialize in Instagram influencers.

Q6. How to find influencers on Twitter?

A. You can use tools like Tweetdeck to search for influencers on Twitter. Look at the hashtags influencers use to dig into the niches they specialize in.

Check out retweet volumes to get an idea about their level of influence.

Q7. How to find influencers on Facebook?

A. Finding Facebook influencers is easy if you follow these steps:

• Use social listening tools.
• Leverage influencer discovery platforms.
• Perform hashtag searches.
• Conduct keyword searches.

Q8. Why does your brand need influencers?

A. Brands need influencers to:

• Boost engagement
• Build authority and credibility
• Narrate brand stories
• Build tight-knit follower communities
• Drive sales and revenue
• Drive website traffic
• Showcase brand personality

Q9. How to find influencers using hashtags searches on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook?

A. You can perform hashtag searches and dig into the top-performing social media posts with your desired hashtags.

Look at the number of comments and reshares made by the top posters. These are your potential social media influencers.

Q10. How to find influencers on Pinterest?

A. Here are some things you can do to find Pinterest influencers:

• Follow public boards.
• Check other social media networks.
• Check out the suggested accounts.
• Use an influencer marketing platform.

Final Thoughts

The right influencers can lead your campaigns to success. You should focus on building long-term relationships with your influencers for the best results.

Provide fair compensation, introduce them to your networks, share freebies, and stay in touch even when you don’t need them.

Such gestures will ensure that the influencers are more invested in your campaign’s success.

Can you think of any other strategies to find influencers for your business? Please let me know in the comments below.