How to Find Instagram Influencers for Your Business

Let’s look at how you can connect with influencers who are eager to promote the products you are selling. There are many ways you can do it, from using a social media promotion service to searching on your own.

Why Influencer Marketing?

A large portion of Millennials and Gen-Z have made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation. Influencer marketing, where a social media account promotes a product or service through content, has emerged as one of the most powerful tools a marketer can use.

It’s simple to understand why. Influencer marketing is similar to celebrity endorsements, where a public figure promotes a certain product or service. But celebrities don’t share a connection with most people.

Meanwhile, a social media influencer is someone a person has followed for a long time. They may make many life updates, giving the follower the impression that they’re close friends. In many cases, the influencer may have even interacted with the follower online. That’s why a business should choose influencer marketing; it’s a great way to build trust.

Another reason is that influencer marketing tends to be niche-focused. A business can find an influencer whose audience and content resonate with the products or services it is trying to sell.

How to Find Influencers

Now, let’s explain how to find influencers.

Don’t Be Afraid to Go Small

When people are hunting for influencers, they may go for accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. Obviously, the more eyes you have on your products, the better. However, large influencers can be expensive to strike deals with. If you’re just starting your business, you may not have enough money to pay a bigger influencer.

Not only that, but larger influencers can have an entire line of businesses and brands wanting to work with them. If you want to start promoting your products or services now, you may not want to go with a big influencer. And because they have so many messages from people eager to work with them, larger influencers may overlook your message.

Therefore, working with micro or nano influencer accounts with smaller numbers of followers may be smart. Not only can they be easy to work with, but they may cover a niche that larger influencers do not.

Search Manually

If you want to find influencers, sometimes all it takes is a bit of hashtag searching. Go to the search bar of the social media of your choice and enter some hashtags and keywords associated with your niche. You may find influencer accounts whose content resonates with your business.

Use Influencer Marketing Platforms

While manual searches can help your brand find influencers who may have gone unnoticed, they can also waste a lot of time. This time may be better spent focusing on other ways to grow your social media.

There are many different influencer tools to choose from. Some of them cost nothing to use, while others may require a fee or keep premium features locked unless you pay. Others may be free or be forums you can use to connect with other influencers.

Study Your Competition

Another way you can find an influencer who’s a good fit for you is to look toward your competition. If you plan on growing your social media brand, studying your competition is already vital. You need to figure out what they’re doing right so you can improve on what they do or find ways to bring something to the table that they’re lacking.

Studying the competition also gives you an idea of what types of influencers they use. Influencers don’t usually have brand loyalty; they’ll promote any product within their niche if the price is right. So reach out and try to make your products look better than your competition’s.

Engage With Them a Little

Reaching out to an influencer isn’t like dating, where you need to spend a long time talking before one of you makes the first move. However, it would be best if you followed the person and engaged with their comment for a few days before reaching out.

Comment on their posts, share them, and like them. Doing so will establish familiarity. Then, you can send them a message and grow the relationship.

Reach Out

An influencer should have some information about where to go for business inquiries, though some may just have a place to message them. Either way, it’s important to reach out and state your intentions. Create a compelling subject line, but also don’t be afraid to get to the chase. State your intentions for a collaboration, your budget, and an idea of what you want the collaboration to be.

Give them a few days to respond, then follow up if you still haven’t received a message. Don’t take it too personally if the influencer doesn’t respond right away; some may be busy. Reach out for a follow-up email a week afterward. If they still don’t respond, don’t get too discouraged; they might not be the right fit for you.

Make Some Magic

Finally, you should create a great collaboration that will get people talking. Again, establishing reasonable deadlines will ensure that you two reach your goals. If there are any delays, be sure to communicate regularly. In fact, regular communication is essential to ensuring that both of you reach your deadlines on time.

Final Thoughts

If you want to grow, you need the help of an influencer who is as interested in your product as you are. Influencer hunting isn’t challenging. For many brands, reaching out and setting up a collab will be the most challenging part. We hope this post was helpful to you.