How to Find Social Media Influencers

One way to enhance your social media efforts and get your product seen by more people is to connect with social media influencers.

Are you asking what exactly a social media influencer is, and how you find one? This step-by-step guide will show you how to find social media influencers and why you might want to consider using them in your marketing strategy.

Listen Now

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer is someone obviously with influence, but who has a large community surrounding them. So often an influencer will have one main social media platform that is their ‘base’ and then several other platforms that still have a large following.

An influencer is usually someone famous, a public figure, or a leader in their industry. They would generally have 10,000 followers plus, and sites like FameBit by YouTube require an influencer to have a minimum of a 5,000 person following on Twitter, YouTube and/or Instagram to sign up. A “micro-influencer” is someone who still has a really engaged audience, but who has fewer than 5,000 followers.

*Note that these numbers are not set in stone, it’s to give an example of audience size. There are very likely very influential people on social media who have less than 10,000 followers, this is solely based on information I’ve read and research I’ve done, as well as influencers I have reached out to myself.

Why do companies, brands, and businesses work with social media influencers?

Do you believe every advertisement you see?

Do you believe someone you trust?

As more and more people stop trusting advertising and view ads as disruptive, having someone reach out to your ideal target market, who have already developed a relationship with your target market, is exactly what an influencer does.

When you choose the best social media influencer for your campaign, who truly cares about their audience, and also believes in your product,  you will have a good shot at increasing your brand awareness, as well as increasing your sales to this new, ideal market.

How do I find the right social media influencer?

As I mentioned about, there are sites like FameBit, Unboxed, who deal with micro influencer campaigns, and Phlanx who help businesses connect with influencers. You can try out their free trials (Phlanx offers a free 30-day trial) and then decide after that if you want to continue with a paid option.

You can also use tools to find your own influencers. Using Buzzsumo, you can use their search influencers tool to type in a keyword, and it will bring up influencers based on that keyword.

How to find an influencer using Buzzsumo:

Step 1: Go to https://app.buzzsumo.com

Step 2: Click on Influencers at the top

Step 3: Type your keyword into the search bar and click Search

Step 4: Review your list of potential influencers

I am only using the free version of Buzsumo so can only view the first 10 results, but they do have paid versions.

Using Buzzsumo is great to see their website authority and Twitter details, but you could simply visit their Instagram, YouTube, etc. to see more about their engagement, followers, etc. You can filter your search results, also by people who have an Instagram account, which may be useful to you.

How to Find Influencers on Instagram

When I ran an influencer campaign for a past client, I didn’t use any fancy tools or pay to use a service because I had a limited budget (zero budget). So what I did was use Instagram itself.

The product that I was trying to get more awareness and sales of was a creative children’s toys/craft.

Step 1: Identify your ideal target market.

I knew that the people most likely to buy this product were women, mother’s specifically, who were interested in learning and creative play-based toys for their children.

Of course, dad’s and grandparents could also purchase, but I needed to narrow down who I wanted to reach. You need to do the same so you get very clear on who you want to target in your campaign.

Step 2: Identify your ideal influencer.

Once you know who you want your product in front of, it gets easier to determine the ideal influencer for your campaign.

I decided that my ideal influencer would be a mom blogger, interested in crafts and activities for babies, toddlers and preschoolers and talked about play-based learning toys and resources.

Step 3: Search hashtags on Instagram

Since I knew I wanted to reach mother’s interested in play-based creative toys for their kids, I searched #sahm (stay at home mom) within Instagram and under the tags section come up various hashtags. When I click into #SAHM, look at the tops posts at the top, there are a few great posts to choose from.

I clicked on one with a baby playing to see what kind of engagement the photo received.

From there, I clicked into her profile and although she says she is a nanny, she would make a perfect influencer for the type of product my client needed exposure for.

Step 4: Repeat

This process can take some time, especially if you are trying to target larger influencers who might already be working with big brands.

When I reached out, I found that most people were open to receiving products and posting a photo on their account, tagging my client.

This is just the start of the social media influencer process, there is still developing your message to send to influencers, and how to run contests, promotions, etc. Are you interested in a post like that? Let me know in the comments!