💬 Trying to find the 'best' creators/influencers on Instagram for your brand can be a time-consuming initiative and it can be expensive in terms of tooling and time spent for staff/contractors.
It's an area that often comes up with clients/companies I advise - "Hey Dan, do you know any good ways and methods for finding great influencers and creators?"
So today,I decided to share some effective methods that have worked well for me, whilst being conscious on costs/time investment.
💬 Here in this checklist below are both paid and free methods for finding great Instagram influencers for those in eCommerce, SaaS or B2B (regardless of growth strage), to collab with - includes some tools/platforms I like (and have had success with), and some low-hanging fruit ideas to try.
To find a lot of great quality influencers on Instagram faster, I certainly recommend to look at existing influencer tools on the market.
Not only for the databases, but it saves a huge amount of time when it comes to assessing, as most come with analytics features where you can measure engagement rates, etc.
I even wrote a guide on the best influencer marketing tools to help you source good candidates.
My personal faves are Heepsy and Upfluence.
One of the better opportunities to recruit top-performing Instagram influencers is sitting right in front of you... your own followers. It's a low-hanging fruit opportunity to engage the right influencers as they would know your brand (assuming that's the reason they're following) and are more likely to wanting to promote your brand.
It can be a bit tedious to find them organically (especially if you have a lot of followers), so consider using a platform like Hypeauditor or Iconosquare to find them (and also view their analytics).
Another quick win is asking existing ambassadors/influencers that you're already working with for any recommendations of those in their respective networks that would be keen to collab.
Whilst I'm not suggesting you blatantly ask your followers "who should we get as influencers for the brand?" - but what I am suggesting is being clever when it comes to content you promote.
For instance, you can run polls on "what are your favourite influencers?" in certain industries as an Instagram poll - just comes down to the angle.
Another way to know which influencers you should engage more of is from your existing engagement metrics of the influencers you're working with already.
Somewhat stating the obvious here, but one of the quicker ways to see the types of influencers you're wanting to engage (and how to reach out to them), is looking at your competitors' accounts.
Use one of the above tools I've mentioned (or through my other guide) and put in your competitor's account to see performance.
Related to the above with competitors, another organic competitor strategy is, when you click on influencers that your competitor has engaged with, you can then view other recommended profiles - which means there are other similar people to research. Quick win this one, and it's worked well for me in the past.
Instagram's search function has certainly improved, and is a great organic way of sourcing influencers (whilst keeping costs low).
Hashtags can still be effective, although you do have to filter through a bit (depending on the popularity of the hashtag). For this, you can do it organically, but using a tool/platform can help save time.
Now this is dependent on the niche and FB groups available (and level of engagement/activity), but it might be worth just asking/posting about looking for IG creators and those who work with other brands already.
Another quick win is just by asking your existing brands you've partnered with, or even reaching out to other complementary brands (if they're using potential influencers you're keen to engage with).
A more obvious strategy here is to attend relevant events - however, it's more powerful and better cut-through if you run your own exclusive events.
Consider running your own or even co-brand with other complementary brands/influencers, where they can invite their audience. A great way to network at scale and have the right people in the room where you can communicate why they should work with you.
