How to Find Influencers on Social Media?

Did you know?

Influencer marketing is now a billion dollar industry and is not likely to die down anytime soon.

If you just made the “meh” face, you are in for a big surprise.

• 70% of people are influenced by the reviews and recommendations of their peers in making buying decisions.
• ⅔ of social media audiences follow and engage with celebrities and influencers in social media.
• 74% of people have agreed that social networks majorly guide and influence them to make purchase decisions.
• Only 14% do not use ad blockers. It’s no surprise that your ad campaigns aren’t running like they are supposed to be.
• 75% of marketers claim that they’ve allocated a budget for Influencer Marketing.
• Businesses make an average of $6.50 for every dollar spent on Influencer Marketing.

Now,

You might wonder how and why Influencer marketing is gaining power over other marketing methods.

Well, Welcome to the new age of marketing!

Customers are wary and do not trust branded content that they view or hear through any kind of media. Buyers are simply not interested in looking at self-congratulatory or self-promoting ads anymore and marketers must understand that.

To know more about why and how Influencers hold the power of influence over common masses, click here.

So what must a marketer do? How do you get a customer to notice your brand?

1. Just remember that people trust people and not ads.
2. Humanize your brand by starting to connect with influencers who can bridge the gap between you and your audience.
   

Influencer mapping can be a good start to plan your influencer marketing campaign.

67% of marketers report that identifying influencers for their brand is their largest influencer marketing challenge.

And yes, this is where the real struggle lies. But don’t worry, here are a few ways that are guaranteed to help you find the perfect Influencer.

If you don’t have what it takes to read through the whole article, here’s a video that’ll tell you what to do.

Find Micro Influencers among your own fans and followers

You could find micro influencers on Instagram who already follow your brand (It’ll be easy to convince them to work with you as they already follow you, Duh!) by browsing through all your social media followers.

And while you look for micro influencers, remember that they have a more personal connection with their audience than the really popular macro influencers/ celebrities.

It’ll be easier for you to connect with a micro influencer who already knows your brand as you don’t have to waste your time promoting your product.

Also, you don’t have to pay huge sums of money to get your product featured. Some micro influencers are satisfied with discounts or free products while others might do the job for a small pay.

Below is an example of a micro influencer. Pay attention to the highlighted areas.

@ashleerosehartley has 32.5k followers and interacts with her audience personally through the photos she posts on Instagram. The picture below shows one such interaction and also clearly showcases the products as she’s tagged the brands. Her photos are often accompanied with witty captions that the audience are able to relate to. 

Hashtags to the Rescue

Look for influencers by using the hashtags that your brand can relate to or associate with.

Perform Hashtag research to find trending hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, get new ideas and boost your reach.

When you use hashtags to find influencers, you are actually filtering out the ones that are not suitable for your brand. Your contextual needs are fulfilled when you find influencers who can relate to what you do.

Before you start looking for influencers who associate themselves with particular hashtags, make sure that the hashtag you use to search is specific and not generic.

Instagram is a great place to start if you want to find influencers based on hashtags. It is significantly larger and has become more popular than Twitter.

Here’s an example below. @oh_theplacesyoull_glow is a content creator and promotes many organic skin care products on her Instagram page. She is a micro influencer who bases her reviews on her usage of products. All her posts contain specific hashtags like #organicskincare, #greenbeautyproducts, and #organicproducts pertaining to the niche group she belongs to. (I found this micro influencer’s profile by the hashtag #organicskincare)

If you skim through the profile, you can also see that her reviews are honest and her recommendations are based on all her product trials. 

You can also look for social media influencers on twitter as many bloggers use this major platform to share content. Just type in your relevant hashtag in the search bar and you’ll see tweets that contain your hashtag from different profiles along with a list of profiles that contain the hashtag in their bios.

OR, Google the hashtag and you’ll get results from both Instagram and Twitter. Here’s an example. 

Some of the results displayed might be posts from top influencers while a few might be shared by micro influencers.

Google to find local influencers

Before you look for Influencers in your area, Make sure that your company or brand has a profile in all the local review sites. Also, remember to fill out your Google My Business Profile.

Now using keywords/ search terms look for Influencers in your area. These Influencers engage audiences belonging to that area.

For example, if you sell organic beauty products, you’ll find the results to be useful if you narrow down your search by using specific terms like “organic beauty bloggers” instead of just looking for “beauty bloggers”.

Dig into these results and check out the bloggers mentioned to see if what they do matches your brand.

Now, this kind of search for Influencers yields more than you think. If you only cater to a specific geographic area, You get to work with someone who can engage your actual target audience. There is no use in engaging an Influencer who lives far as their audience will be located in an area where you don’t serve.

How to find Influencers for your brand?

Tweeple Search

With Tweeple Search, you can search for your query/keyword in the article content people have shared rather than in their bio texts on Twitter. You can also see the list of article URLs they’ve shared.

This tool then ranks the results by the number of shares an article has got. This means that the Twitter users who’ve shared it have actually influenced a topic as opposed to merely specifying it in their bio text.

Social Animal

You can find your top social media influencer in three different ways using Social Animal.

• First, you can use the regular content research tab (Social Animal is primarily a content research tool) and search for content using keywords. Once the results are displayed, you will be able to click on the “View Sharers” option next to each article.

• Secondly, you can find Influencers through “Insights”, where you’ll be able to view most engaged authors by a network. And when you click on “Explore”, you’ll be able to view all the contributions made by that author.

• The final option is unarguably the most powerful Influencer search option. Use the “Influencers” tab on your dashboard to get a larger list of Influencers based on keywords in the content they share. Here, you can switch between different modes of Influencer search. You can choose to search for influencers based on their Twitter bio or content shared. There is also a ‘Top Authors’ mode which fetches you influential authors writing for publications on your keyword. You can also filter influencer results by name, location, URL, language. Additional filters include sorting results by tweet count, follower count, and the following count.
  

How to find Influencers on Facebook?

Did you know?

According to a study, 49% of Facebook users say that they ‘follow’ or ‘like’ a brand on Facebook, to support the brand they like.

And these are people who want to hear from your brand. Your credibility will only grow if a social media influencer recommends your products/services. And working with Facebook Influencers is one way to do this as this will increase your brand’s visibility.

1. Look at the people or brand advocates who talk about your brand, recommend you to others, leave regular, enthusiastic comments on your posts, or tag your page elsewhere on Facebook. Are these people Influencers?
2. Look up hashtags on Facebook.
3. It is known that Facebook doesn’t use hashtags the same way as Twitter or Instagram, but it’s still worth looking them up to see who uses them.
4. Find out what’s being said about you and by who. How? With social listening tools, you can know immediately when someone says something positive or negative about you, even if they don’t include your social media handle. (Here’s a list of great social listening tools.)
5. You can also use social listening to find what and who your target audience is talking about. This is a great way to find Facebook Influencers.

How to find Influencers on LinkedIn?

1. Try to look up keywords or phrases on the LinkedIn search bar. Pay attention to “Posts” as this is where you’ll find members writing about the topics you’re searching for. This could unearth many top influencers on LinkedIn.
2. If you think you can’t connect straight off, Find the groups the Influencers are in and become an active member. You’ll have to contribute meaningfully to the discussion and follow what they say while you reply and comment on their posts. You must build a genuine conversation before bringing up any kind of business.

It is clear that influencers can deliver great results and Influencer Marketing helps you effectively engage with your target audience while cutting down your marketing costs. The above ways will help you find some of the best influencers to partner with.

But Remember: Always perform thorough research to find the most relevant influencers with a significant number of followers.