Ways To Find Instagram Influencers (Free & Paid)

The number of choices out there makes finding just the right Instagram influencers for your brand somewhat of a serious task. Nowadays, Influencer Marketing on Instagram is one of the digital habits that connects your target audience with brands in building awareness and sales. Therefore, Instagram hosts many influencers within several industries due to its high user base and excellent display features. Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, a proper collaboration with the right influencers can get your brand the exposure and build credibility that it needs. But how exactly we can find the perfect Instagram influencer in free or paid ways?

In this article, we will be showing some methods to find Instagram influencers or how to find influencers on Instagram. We will be walking you through step by step from the manual ways to the premium ones where you can hook up with the right influencers matching your business goals.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a practice in which brands partner with effective people on social media to promote their products or services. An influencer is an individual with a powerful following and whose opinion can be used to influence the perceptions and actions of his followers. On Instagram, influencers provide content, review products, and interact with their followers.

Influencer marketing works because it engages with both the trust and connection an influencer has with their target audience. Rather than traditional advertising, perceived often as intrusive, influencer marketing leverages authentic recommendations and content that resonate more naturally with potential customers.

Free Ways to Find Influencers on Instagram

You don’t need to spend one dollar on finding influencers on Instagram. How you find the perfect Instagram influencer using free methods is shown below: 

1. Leverage Instagram Search and Explore Features: 

So, Instagram has an in-built search which can actually be a real treasure for finding influencers in your niche. Here’s how you can make the best use of it:

• Search by Keywords: Enter some relevant keywords or hashtags in the search bar that have relevance to your industry or product. Being a skincare brand, for example, you may want to look for terms like #skincare, #beautyroutine, or #skincareaddict. Instagram lists posts using such hashtags most, and accounts along with them show you influencers active in the skincare community.

• Explore Page: One other valuable asset is Instagram’s Explore page. It showcases posts and accounts trending or popular for similar interests among users. On this page, one can scroll a lot to find out which influencers are gaining speed and resonating with the audience in the target market.

2. Competitor Influencer Collaboration Analysis

Looking at your competitors’ influencer partnerships may provide you with some valuable points for your Instagram SEO strategy:

• Identify Competitors: Just point out your major competitors and see how their Instagram profiles look. See with whom they collaborate, and have a peek at the engagement rates. It might help you make a list of influencers who have already done it in your industry.
• Review Tagged Photos: Check the profiles of competitors, then review tagged photos. Many times, you will find influencers who have promoted their products or services. Make sure to take notes of any influencers’ audience sizes, engagement, and quality of content to see if they might be one of the best fits for your brand.

3. Influencer Discovery Tool Leveraging

A number of free tools and platforms can help you find Instagram influencers:

• Social media monitoring tools: Tools such as Google Alerts help in tracking mentions of a brand or keywords related to an industry. This monitoring helps one to figure out the influencers that are already discussing your niche topics.
• Influencer databases: HypeAuditor and even other platforms have the ability to use their free features by filtering influencers with keywords and hashtags. While most of them carry premium options, the free varieties can also be of good use.

4. Join Instagram Communities and Groups

Instagram is not a site for uploading content; it’s a pretty interactive community of users who share interests and passions.

• Join Relevant Groups: Be on Instagram groups and forums of your industry. The interaction with such communities helps in discovering influential voices while getting in touch with a number of potential Instagram influencers.
• Follow and Engage: Follow the influencers whose brand values align with your brand; comment on their posts and engage in discussions, which may lead to influencer collaborations.

5. Hashtag Research

Hashtags are sometimes much more than just a means of labeling content; they’re often a gateway to finding influencers.

• Research Trending Hashtags: Within your industry, find the trending hashtags. Influencers might use popular hashtags so that their posts come into view. You will most likely find influencers who participate in such conversations once you study those hashtags.
• Hashtag analytics: Some apps will be able to provide you with free analytics for hashtags; these are where you will see which ones generate more engagement. Such information may be helpful when finding influencers using those hashtags efficiently.

6. User-Generated Content Monitoring

UGC (User Generated Content) will be a real treasure in finding influencers:

• Social Listening – Brand Mentions: Observe the posts tagging your brand or using branded hashtags. Most of these posts have been by users that happen to be fans of your brand, or might also offer your products and services. Of those lovers, a few may be your perfect Instagram influencers.
• UGC Engage: Reach out to and engage with users creating B2B content about or involving your brand. This can help you form a connection with such users, leading to potential influencer relationships in the near future.

Paid Ways to Find Influencers on Instagram

While free methods are effective, paid strategies can offer a number of added values in finding the perfect Instagram influencers: 

1. Investing in Influencer Marketing Platforms

Paid influencer marketing platforms offer some key advantages when it comes to influencer discovery and management:

• Upfluence: Through this platform, you can access the big database of influencers- substantial data about whom comes with detailed profiles and analytics. The Influencers can be filtered based on location, niche, and engagement rate amongst others. It also has tools related to Influencer Marketing campaign management through which performance tracking can be done to optimize your influencer partnerships.

• Aspire.io: Aspire.io is about discovering Perfect influencers and building relationships. It gives access to a network of content creators and automates outreach and management of collaborations. It also provides insight into the performance of the created content and the engagement created.

• Influencity: Influencity boasts cutting-edge filtering during the search for suitable influencers, with a deep analysis of their audiences. Influencers can be filtered per relevance, engagement, or audience demographics. It also helps benchmark and report the performance of your Successful influencer marketing campaigns.

2. Promote on Instagram Using its Paid Promotion Features

The paid promotion on Instagram will also provide a voice to your influencer-hunting effort:

• Ad Sponsored Ads: Target specific ads to represent your brand orInfluencer Marketing campaign. Such ads would draw the attention of influencers and thus showcase what your brand is, adding value to your brand. High-quality ads may attract the attention of an influencer. They might even approach collaboration.
• Influencer Collaboration Ads: Collaboration ads allow brands to partner directly with an influencer on sponsored content. The feature will let you reach the audience of the influencer while you keep control of the content and messaging.

3. Utilize Influencer Marketing Agencies

In this way, outsourcing influencer marketing agencies can ease the process of discovering and dealing with influencers.

• Expertise and Networks: Agencies have different influences in their networks, which they are into and will connect with the one who can fit in with your brand. Agencies can bring influence expertise to create effective campaigns and manage influencer partnerships.
• Campaign Management: The agencies manage your Influencer Marketing campaign all over the world, right from Influencer outreach to negotiation and performance tracking. This might free up your time and ensure the smooth running of campaigns.

4. Run Social Ads

Paid social media ads serve to extend your reach and catch the attention of influencers:

• Target Ads: The different targeting options, such as demographics, interests, and behaviors, should be used through sponsored ads on Instagram advertisement tools. Relevant running of ads to potential influencers increases the chances that partnership requests will come in from people who could be a good fit for your brand.
• Retargeting: It is when retargeting follows the user who has viewed your content and shows them ads. Yes, this includes influencers too, who have shown interest in your brand. Retargeting strengthens brand memory and encourages collaboration.

5. Paid analytics tools should be used

Paid analytics tools dig deeper into influencer performance.

• Modash: Modash is a comprehensive influencer marketing platform designed to help brands find, analyze, and monitor influencers across multiple platforms. It offers in-depth analytics to verify influencer authenticity, audience demographics, and engagement metrics, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions.
• SproutSocial: SproutSocial is a robust social media management and analytics tool that helps businesses streamline their social media efforts. It offers features like content scheduling, social listening, and advanced analytics to measure performance across platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
• HypeAuditor: As mentioned above, HypeAuditor offers deep analytics to check the credibility of influencers and their audience. Invest in its premium version to get detailed information with which you can make strategic decisions.

6. Seek out Partnership Programs

Some brands have partnership programs in place, including financial incentives for the influencers themselves:

• Affiliate Program: It will be great to come up with affiliate programs that will reward each influencer with a commission for sales made through their promotions. It is a better way of getting the right set of influencers who will be motivated by this form of performance-based compensation.
• Sponsored Content Packages: One can also create sponsored content packages and give some incentives to the sponsor, like money or free products. You can advertise your sponsored content packages on Instagram Ads or Influencer Marketing Platforms if you want to attract those influencers who are willing to collaborate.

Which Is the Best Way to Find the Perfect Instagram Influencer Free/Paid

Whether to go for free or paid methods to find influencers on Instagram depends on your budget, goal, and scale of the Influencer Marketing campaign. Both techniques have several advantages, yet only one can suit your needs best. Here is a breakdown that will go a long way in helping determine which might be best for you:

When to Utilize Free Approaches

1. Limited Budget:

You have a shoestring budget; it would, therefore, be effective to start with free methods

2. Low-Key Campaigns:

Of course, free methods would suffice if you were doing small-scale campaigns or just starting off in the Influencer Marketing on Instagram game; these build a foundation in understanding the influencer landscape in your niche.

3. Organically Growing:

Organic allows the building of relationships and community if that is your goal.

4. Initial Testing:

Organic practices are much better for the initial testing of strategies concerning Influencer Marketing. You will have a chance to experiment with various strategies, hashtags, and methods for engaging with the community before you invest in paid solutions.

When to Use Paid Methods

1. Larger Budget:

With a high marketing budget, one is able to afford paid methods. Paid methods normally come with accompanying advanced tooling and features, making the process of discovering influencers easier. Paid methods have more precision in targeting, which guarantees effectiveness.

2. High-Impact Campaigns:

Paid means of outreach will also allow you to have much more control in searching for precise fits within your most sought-after profiles for high-impact, objective-driven campaigns. Advanced analytics and performance tracking provide ways of optimizing your campaigns, too.

3. Time Scale:

If one wants to speed up such a process, it is possible to resort to paid methods that help identify and reach out to influencers in much less time. Influencer marketing platforms and agencies represent broad networks and a set of tools, which speed up influencer discovery, hence managing campaigns.

4. Deep Data: 

With paid tools, you get deep analytics and insights that will let you understand how an influencer is performing or how effective your campaign is. Information such as that comes in handy when looking to optimize your strategy and make decisions based on cold, hard evidence.

5. Professional Management: 

Should you want to free up more time for other areas of your marketing strategy and find professional management for collaboration with influencers, then agencies and paid platforms will be ready to provide just that, plus added expertise and support.

Our Recommendation: What Way is best to find Instagram Influencer Free/Paid

For a Balanced Approach:

• Begin Utilizing Free Approaches: Start working with free approaches to get an idea of the landscape of the influencers within your niche. Engage with them organically, use Instagram’s search and explore features, then monitor user-generated content in order to find out who to partner with.

• Invest in Paid Platforms and Agencies Where Necessary: The moment all your needs are met, and your budget permits it, you begin investing in paid methods for scaling up your efforts. Certain paid platforms and agencies add great value to your search capability while providing advanced analytics and making campaign management smooth.

What You Are Offering When Finding Influencers on Instagram?

What Are You Offering While Finding a Perfect Influencer on Instagram?

So, when reaching out to any influencer, you do need something to give back in return. Here’s what you may want to consider offering:

Monetary Compensation:

• Paid to post: You will either need to pay a fee for posting sponsored posts, or you’ll collaborate in exchange for money.
• Performance-Based Compensation: Consider compensating based on performance – commissions on sales generated through influencer promotions.

Product or Service

• Products for Free: Give them free products or services in exchange for a review or promotional activity.
• Access: Give them special access to new products or services.

Exposure:

• Feature Their Content: Share their content on your social media platforms or website.
• Joint Campaigns: Execute a collated campaign with them and your brand.

Let’s have a Quick Recap

Whether you try to get in touch with perfect influencers on Instagram with free or paid methods, you will need to do so strategically. You will be able to find the right Instagram influencers matching your brand’s values and goals by leveraging Instagram features for search, competitor analysis, and community engagement. Meanwhile, paid methods will include the use of influencer marketing platforms, investment in Instagram promotion features, and agencies that offer more advantages and simplify the process.

You can combine free and paid ways to ensure the best possibility of finding just the right type of influencers for your brand in order to ensure that marketing is truly effective and efficiently compelling. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)