How to Find Influencers on Social Media + Pitch to Them

Collaborating with influencers on social media is a great strategy for increasing brand awareness, growing your following, and generating sales. Wondering how to find influencers on social media and pitch to them effectively? Read on for everything you need to know to get started with influencer marketing.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AN INFLUENCER

NICHE + AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS

Before searching for influencers on social media, you first need to determine what kind of influencer, or the niche, that will best serve the goals of your brand. To do this, identify influencers with a following that matches your target audience. For example, if you’re a baby clothing brand, you’ll want to collaborate with mommy influencers with an audience largely composed of parents that will also express interest in your brand. Overall, take a look at the content the influencer is already posting and ask yourself if your product or service would fit in seamlessly. If yes, you’ve found your niche!

Other factors that may be important to keep in mind include their audience’s age, gender, and location (especially if you’re looking to attract users to a physical storefront). Don’t be afraid to email the influencer asking for their media kit! This document should contain more information about their audience demographics, which is key for influencer marketing.

MICRO VS. MACRO + BUDGET

Once you’ve narrowed down your niche, you’ll need to decide if you’d like to pitch to micro- or macro- influencers. Micro-influencers have a smaller following (typically between 10-50k), while macro-influencers have a larger following. Although content reaches less people when collaborating with micro-influencers, micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates and may even be regarded as more trustworthy than macro-influencers as a result of the close-knit community they’ve built with their audience. 

Your allotted budget may make the decision of working with micro- versus macro-influencers for you. Depending on the size of the influencer’s following, some may charge a fee for their post, while others will be willing to post solely in exchange for the free product. Typically, as follower count grows, so does the influencer’s rates. If you’re unable to provide monetary compensation for content, pitching to micro-influencers will likely be the way to go.

ENGAGEMENT RATE

Engagement is any form of interaction on a post, including likes, comments, saves, and shares. These metrics contribute to the influencer’s engagement rate, which is a percentage revealing the level of engagement a post received from those who saw it. In summary: the more likes, comments, saves, and shares a post has, the higher that post’s engagement rate. 

A solid engagement rate is important for two primary reasons:

• It shows that the influencer’s audience is engaged, meaning the influencer has fostered a genuine relationship with their audience. They are viewed as trustworthy, which can translate to $$$ for your business if the influencer chooses to work with you.

• A high engagement rate signals to the algorithm that the content is valuable and that users enjoyed seeing it. Therefore, the higher the engagement rate, the higher the chance the user’s post will be pushed to more users by the algorithm. You want the content promoting your brand to be seen, right?

All of that being said, it is important to keep in mind that just because a user has a lot of followers does not mean that they have an authentic or engaged following. Two red flags to look out for include: influencers that have purchased followers or participate in engagement pods. 

If a user has a lot of followers but receives a low number of likes and comments on their posts, they likely bought their followers. If you collaborate with them, you’d likely be disappointed by the number of people the content reached and converted. Why? Because the user’s following is largely composed of bots and fake accounts.

If an influencer on social media has an excessive amount of comments (especially from what appears to be other influencers with a similar follower count), be wary that they may be in an engagement pod. Engagement pods are essentially group chats including numerous influencers. Whenever one posts, they’ll share the link in the group chat for the other influencers to go like and comment on the post. This makes the post appear as though it performed really well, but in reality, the engagement was essentially all forced and inauthentic. Because of this, collaborating with influencers in engagement pods is arguably equivalent to collaborating with an influencer that doesn’t receive any (authentic) engagement at all.

To find the engagement rate of an account overall, try out this engagement calculator!

HOW TO FIND INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Once you know what to look for, it’s time to start finding influencers on social media! Here are a few of our go-to ways to scout influencers for our influencer marketing clients:

• Refer to influencer networks

  • Our Social Media Influencer Networks download outlines several marketing platforms that connect brands to content creators.

• Search relevant hashtags influencers in your niche may be using

  • Example: #mommyblogger

• Look at other brands in the industry

  • Who are they working with? Who is tagging them in photos? Who is commenting on their posts?

• Look at past influencers you’ve collaborated with

  • Browse their comments for other influencers to work with

  • Pro tip: Use the “caret” icon next to the follow button on their profile to discover similar pages

HOW TO PITCH TO INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

STEP 1: CREATE A PITCH EMAIL TEMPLATE

First, create an email template to send to influencers that clearly explains your brand, the campaign, and outlines what you are seeking from them. An example could be 3-5 Instagram Stories in exchange for free product valued up to x amount of dollars. 

For more information on what to include in your email template and overall outreach etiquette, check out our Own Your Instagram Online Course! 

STEP 2: CREATE A PITCH PDF

Set your brand apart by attaching a concise, yet visually appealing PDF to your pitch email detailing more information about the campaign. 

Here are a few things to include:

• Your brand name, website, and contact information

• About your brand

• Notable past partnerships

• Detail more about the campaign or the product/service of focus

STEP 3: COMPILE A LIST OF INFLUENCERS

We made this step easy for you. Download our free Giveaway + Influencer Outreach Spreadsheet to track the influencers’ names, handles, follower counts, email addresses, and the status they are in in the outreach process.

STEP 4: REACH OUT & FOLLOW UP

Once hard work is done, you’re ready to pitch! Start sending out those pitch emails and PDFs and make a note to follow up in a week with those you haven’t heard back from.

We hope this blog post was helpful for you in learning more about influencer marketing and how to find influencers on social media and pitch to them! Follow us on the ‘Gram and subscribe to our social media newsletter for more tips.

xx- The Homies