You want to work with Instagram influencers but you don’t know how to find them? In this post, I will explain how to find them easily.
Influence marketing – or working with influencers – is becoming more and more popular and can be totally beneficial for your brand today, provided you master a few points.
Today, I will focus on the search for an influencer on Instagram, a very popular social network that is constantly growing and constantly innovating.
Whether you have a small budget to invest or a larger budget, influencers are a solution to quickly develop your online business.
But before contacting them, you must first find them…
Read on, I’ll explain everything to you!
Several methods to find Instagram influencers
There are a multitude of methods to find them. Indeed, this new market has seen the emergence of tools whose purpose is to put you in touch with the best influencers.
These are paid tools BUT what interests us is how to get in touch with them for free. However, before talking about strategies and tricks, it should be understood that there are several types of influencer profile.
3 types of influencer profiles
In fact it’s simple, there are mainly 3 types of influencing profiles, 4 for some.
Nano-influencers, which correspond to a relatively small audience of 1,000 to 10,000 qualified followers. They are interesting because they offer a very low or even free cost.
However, they must be multiplied if we are to have a strategy that works effectively.
Then there are the micro-influencers, which are more interesting because they have an audience of between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. They also offer a very low or even free cost.
Finally, the macro-influencers have a larger community ranging from 100,000 to more than one million followers. They are very much in demand by brands and very often offer more expensive prices…
I can also tell you about mega-influencers but I think it’s useless because they are out of reach for the vast majority of e-commerce activities. I work mostly with micro-influencers, because their communities are very close-knit with a higher engagement rate.
Here is a computer graphics to summarize all this:
If you notice that the engagement of an influencer is very low, it is in this case a poorly qualified audience or a fake audience. I will detail below how to recognize this type of community.
And now, how do we find these famous influencers?
Search for influencers on Instagram
Of course, one of the first reflexes to adopt when looking for influencers is to go directly to the place where they are present, that is to say on Instagram.
However, there are disadvantages to searching for them directly on the social network. It is certainly the cheapest method, but it is also the most daunting and time-consuming.
Here’s what you can do to find influencers directly on Instagram!
#1. Take a look at your followers
If you want to work with Instagram influencers, it’s probably because you already have a page with a certain audience. People who follow your page, brand or company are probably interested in your content.
So go through the list of your followers to see if any of them have a big community, it will most likely be in the same theme as yours.
Maybe even some of your followers want to promote your products. If someone interacts regularly with your page, you will notice it soon enough.
To work with influencers, it is important to know if they have a community of appropriate size and especially real.
I personally take into account profiles that have more than 5,000 followers. So if you have noticed some interesting profiles that follow you, write them down on an Excel file to find them easily.
However, there are other more effective methods.
#2. Use the Instagram search engine
To deepen your research, you can of course use the research tool included in Instagram. So how can it be used properly?
You can start by typing keywords related to your niche and see the profiles that are displayed. You can also search by Hashtags.
To find them in the theme of your niche, you can use different free tools… There are several of them, I use TagsFinder and Picpanzee for personal use.
These two tools have one thing in common, they will allow you to quickly find popular or not popular Hashtags in your niche. To use them it’s very simple – Type a Hashtag in the field that interests you, for example #food…
Here is the result on TagsFinder:
Or the same search on Picdeer….
To know the potential influencers, look at the top publications and the engagement rate of the publications present on the Hashtags. The more likes and comments the posts have, the more interesting they are!
#3. Use free and paid tools
The vast majority of tools to find influencers are not free, but some tools offer a free version that will at least allow you to find influencers.
Among these tools are BuzzStream, Buzzsumo or Klear, which also allows you to review your Instagram profile.
If you want to discover more tools, I invite you to check out this very interesting blog article on 17 tools to find and contact influencers.
Make your own list of Instagram influencers
Did you find any interesting profiles? Great, then just list them.
To find them easily, list them in an Excel or Sheets table with:
- The profile URL
- The user name
- His email address if it has been entered
- Or his phone number
It will be easier for you to contact them later!
Evaluate your list of Instagram influencers
Unfortunately, Influence Marketing has also created an opportunity for fraud.
In the list you have made, there may be people who say they are influential with, say, a community of 10,000 followers when in reality, there are only 1,000 relevant and qualified…
This happens when Instagram accounts decide to buy followers. Most of the time, these are ghost accounts that will never interact with the content proposed by the influencer.
Fortunately, we’re on the Internet and it’s pretty easy to find them. A tool to know the growth of an account like HypeAuditor allows you to see the earnings of followers too fast of an Instagram account.
If this is the case, it means that the account buys followers… It is also possible to buy likes and comments.
And again, it is very simple to see if those of a publication are purchased or not. If there are many likes and very few comments, it is likely that they will be purchased.
In addition, if the publication contains a lot of comments, it is enough to see if they are relevant and mean something.
If they are purchased, you will always find the same type of commentary like « Beautiful publication! » or « Nice photo! ».
Get in contact with the influencers
The most important step is of course to contact the selected influencers. You can contact them by email or directly on Instagram, the approach will be the same.
You have to remain professional when you contact the influencers, I propose the following editorial plan:
- Presentation: Who are you and what does your brand represent?
- Choice: Why do you contact him?
- Gain: What will the influencer gain from working with your brand?
- Process: How does the partnership work?
All you have to do is answer the questions asked while remaining professional to send a message or DM to influencers.
The message must be as personalized as possible so that influencers feel valued as much as possible. This is very important!
Finally, don’t expect answers from every influencer. In fact, the response rate is low.
They are solicited by many brands and some are not interested. You will therefore need to contact a large number of them and through the different communication channels if you want to maximize your chances.
You are now able to search, list and evaluate influencers.
Now all you have to do is apply to refine your strategies, find your own tools and maybe find partners and brand ambassadors with whom you can work over the long term.
Good luck in your research!
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