It’s clear that Instagram is one of the most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms for brands and influencers, yet it’s a business tool many companies fail to recognize. As with any type of marketing or advertising, it is critical to begin your marketing campaign with research. Spending the time to research who your competitors are working with and what type of content they are posting will make all the difference. Knowing how to find influencers on Instagram is vital for the growth of your brand or business in general.
In this blog, we’ll highlight the proven and tested steps to finding high-quality influencers to help grow your brand on Instagram.
Before we dive in, check out our complete guide on how influencers make money on Instagram!
What Should You Look For When Shortlisting Instagram Influencers?
When searching for influencers or launching your marketing campaign, you must first define your influencer marketing plan and how it fits into your overall marketing strategy. Your objectives may include:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase the rate of engagement
- Increase revenue by creating more content.
- Increase the number of followers
- Increase the number of app downloads
Influencers may help you achieve your objectives in various ways, so you should know what you’re aiming for. You’ll be able to pick the right sort of influencers to assist you in attaining your goals if you first define them.
1. Brand Affinity:
Instagram influencers who you want to work with should complement your brand well. Look through their Instagram feed to determine which niche they fall into. Examine their bio, posts, and captions to get a sense of what they are passionate about. Do they advocate for causes that are important to your company? Do they discuss any topics that you specifically want to avoid?
2. Target Audience:
Who do you define as your target audience? Women? Children? Millennials? Gen-Zs? Elderly? Depending on your Target Audience, your choice of an Influencer has to have an audience relevant or closely relevant to yours.
For example, if you sell medicine you might want to reach out to a healthcare influencer than a beauty influencer.
3. Engagement Rate:
Engagement rates indicate whether Instagram influencers’ followers like and comment on their content. This metric provides insight into the level of engagement that a branded post is likely to generate. Here is a formula you can use to calculate the engagement rate of any Instagram influencer: Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments)/Followers x 100
4. Authenticity:
Genuine influencers have a loyal following. By becoming experts in their field, they gain audience loyalty and trust. They also demonstrate their knowledge by sharing genuine stories and tips. To determine authenticity, scroll through their Instagram posts and look for well-thought-out captions that tell a story.
5. Content Quality:
Working with an influencer makes you give your trust to them to represent your brand. For you to be sure and rest assured that a good job will be done, it is important to check to see if their content is of high quality. How do they structure their content? Is the content informative or excessively promotional? Is the brand mentioned organically? Do you think their content is worth sharing? These are some questions worth asking.
- Do you want to learn how to start a Blog on Instagram and be Profitable? Check this out!
6. Frequency:
How frequent is the influencer? Do they come on and go on long breaks? How often do they post content? This is another important criterion for finding influencers on Instagram. Usually, influencers put up content once every 2 – 3 days.
7. Reliability and Reputation:
Before onboarding any influencer to your brand, you must conduct preliminary research on their reliability and reputation. How professional are they? Will they respond to messages quickly? Do they plan out their work? Do they have a stain on their name or brand? These are among the questions to be asked to verify their reliability and reputation.
Proven Ways to Finding Instagram Influencers
1. Usage of Hashtags
Using the hashtag feature is one of the simplest ways to find Instagram influencers. Each hashtag will display stories and posts related to the hashtag. Going through hashtags that are relevant to your industry and brand can lead you to your goldmine. With this approach, you can easily find IG influencers related to your niche
The best part about this method of finding influencers is that Instagram’s “Top Posts” section is frequently updated. Each time you conduct a search, you will discover new influencer profiles.
- Do you want to learn how you can use Instagram hashtags to build your following on Instagram? Click Here!
2. Checking out your Followers and Tagged Posts
Checking out your followers to see if there’s a relevant influencer is another effective method of finding influencers on Instagram. Influencers who follow you will be excellent brand advocates. They probably follow you because they already enjoy your products or services, so collaborating with them will result in genuine cooperation!
In addition, checking out your tagged posts can be a great way to source influencers for your brand.
3. Using Free and Paid Influencer Marketing Tools and Databases
Influencer marketing tools are tools that let you search through a list of influencers. They gather hundreds of prominent online influencers to create a list of prospective influencers. Using these tools, you can find the perfect fit for your brand or business. Examples are Hypeauditor, Affable.ai, Upfluence, and Storyclash, among others.
4. Checking Out Suggested Profiles:
You might have already come up with potential influencers you want to work with. When you visit their profiles on Instagram, you can use the suggested profiles feature to find similar influencers that might also be a great fit for you
5. Searching on Google
Sometimes, making a Google search might be all the help that you need. Someone out there has done all the research on the top and perfect influencers for your brand or business. A Google search might just save you tons of time and resources
6. Checking Competitor Profiles
Competitor analysis is always an important item across the board. This can help you and give you insight into possible influencers to use by checking out their followers, posts, and comments. You can also get insights into what they’re doing right and wrong.
How to Find Influencers on Instagram FAQ
You can do this by making a search on Instagram based on your location tag and going through the posts you see
I doubt any Influencer would want to work for free, but you can reach out to friends, family, and colleagues to get some help
Here are some techniques for finding Instagram influencers as a new brand:
i.) Use hashtags that are particular to your area or industry.
ii.) Check out the Explore page for influencer profiles.
iii.) Examine the profiles of your competition.
iv.) Invest in a paid influencer database.
v.) Join an influencer marketing platform.
Final Thoughts: How to Find Influencers on Instagram
Knowing how to locate Instagram influencers is critical for your business if you want to experience significant development in 2022. The strategies for finding those influencers listed above are only a handful, but they are among the simplest and most successful.
Be clear on your values, marketing goals, budget, and target audience before you begin looking for Instagram influencers. When reviewing influencer profiles, ensure that you examine them for authenticity, content quality, engagement rate, brand affinity, and the other factors listed above.
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