TikTok has quickly become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion active users. This is becoming a worthy marketing channel to reach a younger audience and beyond. In addition to running your own account, it’s worth having brand ambassadors.
But how do you find TikTok influencers for your brand? There are so many content creators on TikTok, who will be best for your brand? In this article, I will answer these questions and provide the best free methods and tools to find them!
Why finding the right influencers is so important?
Finding the right influencers is crucial for brands that want to succeed on TikTok. There are a few factors that will make your campaign hit or miss, which are dependent on the influencer.
Audience fit
The most important factor when selecting an influencer should be his audience. They will consume the content created by him. And it should be important for your brand to target its potential customers. There needs to be some overlap between these two groups. Try to find influencers who attract people who are in your target audience!
Credibility
Influencers must inspire trust. When he has a good reputation his recommendation will be credible and your brand will benefit from it. Influencer liars can contribute to spoiling the reputation of your brand as well!
Reach
Influencers can have masses of followers. Depending on which one you choose you will reach such a wide audience. Of course, it is better to present in front of a group of potential customers than a mass of people who are not interested in your product.
But how to find TikTok influencers for free?
Let’s dive into the main part of this article and answer the question of how to find TikTok influencers! I will show you powerful methods that you can do yourself to find them. You will discover tools that will help you in your search. And I will tell you the secret of clever methods to find the best influencers for your brand. Let’s go!
TikTok’s Search Function
TikTok provides many tools for searching content and users. That’s a nice feature. Unfortunately, these tools are only available on the mobile app. You will need to use your phone for your searches. The manual search may be longer, but it’s free and gives you the opportunity to better understand how the platform works.
Exploration of TikTok search function
Let’s go to TikTok search.
- Click on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner of the Home screen.
- You now see a text field. Type something related to your industry.
- You will be redirected to the main search screen.
This is where the fun begins. I will now describe each of the tabs:
- Top Here you will find the main results of your search, mainly videos, and users but also Others searched for a section that will give you a list of sub-keyboards, that users also searched for(this is mega useful to inspire).
- Videos There are videos that the TikTok algorithm has recognized as matching.
- Users In this section you will find users(TikTok influencers) who have a name but also a description related to your keyword.
- Sounds Here are the sounds, it will be useful for looking for trends.
- Live Section will show the currently running live.
- Places Here you will find places with this name, and by clicking on a place you can see TikTok videos recorded in this place.
- Hashtags In this tab you will get a list of hashtags associated with your keyword, when you click on one, it will display a list of videos that have added this hashtag in the description.
Play around with it a little bit to get familiar. Here you will find many opportunities to find creators and content that your brand can use. In the next section, I’ll describe incredible strategies you can use.
Steps to find influencers using TikTok search
Let’s get to the practice. To find TikTok influencers for free you need to have good methods!
Generate keyword
The most important thing in the searches is to prepare a list of words called keywords, by which we will try to find TikTok influencers. We want to find creators who belong to our niche.
Consider who you want to find, a person who uses a product like yours, a reviewer who tests products, or a person related to your industry who, for example, educates people.
Prepare about 10 keywords for the start, from general one-word phrases to those composed of 3-4 words. Phrases that are too long can make searching difficult, so try to stop at 4 words. As you search, you will probably come up with new ideas to add to the list.
With such a list, you can proceed to search by specific sections.
Video Research
The easiest part of the search is browsing TikTok videos. After typing in a keyword, browse and look for one that you find interesting, that is charismatic and knows how to engage users. And, of course, is related to your niche.
You can use filters in this section but they don’t seem useful except that you can sort videos by Relevance or by Like count.
Once you find a video you like, it’s worth reviewing the influencer’s profile to see if all of his or her work is valuable, more on that in the next section.
User(TikTok Influencer) Research
Moving on to the user section. In searching for influencers, one-word keywords will be more useful. It is possible that the phrases you are interested in will be in the name or description of the creator. For example, in the fitness industry, people often have fit in their nicknames.
Here you can also use filters. You can filter by the number of followers, by profile type, and there is an option to search by nickname only.
When reviewing user profiles, it’s worth checking:
- Check all the creation if it focuses on the niche that interests you
- The average value of views and likes of their video
- How often their content goes viral
- Followers count
- Check if they interacts with the audience
- Read the comments under the videos, what people say about them
- Or even search Google for information about it
If an influencer performs well in all tests it is worth considering him as a brand ambassador.
Hashtag Research
The most effective method is to search by hashtags. The best because TikTok suggests other useful phrases. In addition, we have information about the number of videos with these hashtags. This is a great opportunity to find micro-influencers when we check less popular phrases.
Place Research
This option is useful when you want to find local TikTok influencers who are associated with a specific city/region. All you need to do is search for popular spots in the region or places specific to the industry in that city. For example, for fitness, it would be a gym. It’s worth making sure that the influencer is definitely associated with that location and has not just been there on a trip.
Sounds Research
Maybe you noticed a sound related to your industry? It’s a good idea to search for TikTok videos with that music. It will help you find TikTok influencers from your niche. The sounds are often related to specific social groups on TikTok.
Unfortunately, most industries do not have the privilege to have their own trends with their own sounds. But when one happens, it is essential to use it.
Scrolling TikTok
What if you don’t do the normal research, and instead just scroll through TikTok as long as the perfect influencer comes along? 😉
Let TikTok algorithm do the work
If you scroll through TikTok long enough, engage with content related to your industry, and skip others, TikTok will start showing you only that kind of content. This is certainly a pleasant way to search.
A tailored algorithm will give you the latest and best content related to your niche. This is the perfect environment to choose the best TikTok influencer for you. It will also display TikTok videos of smaller creators that have just been uploaded. This is a huge opportunity to find micro-influencers.
Expand your existing partnerships to TikTok platform
Another idea to extend your marketing campaign to the TikTok platform is to check if the influencers you work with don’t post there. And the chances of that are high, most influencers are multiplatform. Using trusted influencers will be good to start with. They are already familiar with your brand.
Platforms for finding Influencers on TikTok
The easiest and least time-consuming way to find an influencer is through a platform specifically designed for this purpose. Such applications have a huge database of influencers, which we can filter and find the best TikTok influencer for our campaign.
Free TikTok influencer search and audience analysis platform
I was able to find one app that has some of the features free. Check out Tokfluence, TikTok influencers search apps, they do a good job and will help you in your searches.
Brand Monitoring Tools (SMART method)
There is a method we can use in a clever way to find an influencer who already knows and uses your product. An influencer who uses your product and recommends it, without a partnership, will be an authentic brand ambassador.
What is brand monitoring?
Brand Monitoring is the activity of gathering mentions and discussions about your brand. From Instagram to TV ad spots, this includes all social media and more.
They generalize, Brand Monitoring is data about how your brand is seen online. Who, when, where and how mentioned your brand.
How to use Brand Monitoring to find TikTok influencers
When we have data on who is speaking positively about our products. All we need to do is filter them for influencers with large communities. A person who already likes your product will be very eager to work together and will sincerely recommend it!
Brand Monitoring tool
There are many great monitoring tools out there. Unfortunately, there is no free tool for that. We don’t have our own article about paid apps for Brand Monitoring yet, so I’ll recommend this post about the best Brand Monitoring tools.
Summary: how to find TikTok influencers, free search tools and methods
You have learned a couple of ways to find TikTok influencers for your TikTok campaign. You can use manual methods by using TikTok search and you have also discovered tools that can make this task easier for you. I hope this knowledge will be enough to find a perfect influencer.
If you want to measure the success of your campaign check out our article on KPIs.
Good luck with your future marketing campaigns!
