How to Find Reliable Instagram Influencers for your Business in 3 Steps

Hi everyone, Instagram influencer marketing is probably one of the most used methods of promotion by eCommerce businesses & brick and mortar businesses alike.

Today, we will answer some of the important and most asked questions “how to find Instagram influencers for my niche?”, “how to design an Instagram marketing plan?” and “how to do successful Instagram shoutouts?”

To answer these questions we have put together a step-by-step guide to get you the most relevant Instagram influencers for your business.

How to Find the Best Instagram Influencers in 3 Easy Steps

Researching the best Instagram influencers to market your products to large audiences is a simple process.

You don’t require an expensive tool to find you the best Instagram influencers for your target niche. All you need is a simple internet browser and an Instagram account.

Advanced Method to Find Reliable Instagram Influencers

We prefer the Advanced (Primary) method for researching influencers on Instagram, however, we have also provided you a simple manual step-by-step method as well.

Here’s an advanced method that will help you find the right influencers for your business. You don’t have to go around sniffing each influencer’s profile individually because by using this method, you can actually find the influencers that are right for your business and that have enough engagement an activity going on.

Step # 1 — Google Search 

First of all, do a Google search with ‘site:instagram.com “niche keyword”?’ – Use our keyword in there. In addition to all the hashtag pages, Google will also show you a few profiles that have your keyword included in their bio.

Additional benefit: The Google search results will also show you the exact number of followers and published posts for each individual account.

Step # 2 — Analyze Influencer’s Content Performance 

Use the WEBSTA-Instagram Analytics tool to check what the top content is for each Instagram profile. There are two things you should focus on, their top-performing content and also their recently best-performing-hashtags.

If their top content includes relevant hashtags to your niche (i.e. if your keyword is toys for dogs and their most used hashtags include stuff about dog-related activities) then you are good to go.

Step # 3 — Check Engagement Rate

Go to Phlanx Engagement Calculator and run each profile through this tool to see if their posts get enough engagement or not.

This will give you a rough idea of how many people out of their entire following are actually paying attention to their posts and content.

You can use this data to determine how much you can pay for a sponsored post or video to any particular Instagram Influencer depending on their engagement and activity rates.

Manual Method to find Instagram Influencers

Step 1. Let’s get started by going to Instagram’s website. Next, search for your relevant keyword in the search bar.

We are searching for “Cats”. As you can see below, you can choose from a selection of the best Instagram influencers for cat products & services.

In the search results you will notice a mix of posts including those with photos, videos and text. Click on one of the suggested video posts and observe its views, something above 10,000 is huge.

You will notice that some of the profiles will mention if they allow partnering and advertising products to their audiences.

Step 2. Once you have started identifying the best Instagram influencer profiles, it’s time to maintain a proper sheet with the details of these influencers.

Create a Microsoft Excel or Google Sheet. Just copy the profile links and number of followers, and add these in the sheet.

Step 3. Next, we look at suggested profiles from our search results. From the searches, pick a top rated profile then click the drop down arrow next to the follow button and it will display all top similar profiles for that industry. Here is an example:

Add these Instagram profiles with massive following to your sheet. Be careful, some profiles may just be unrelated so remember to leave them out.

Step 4. You can keep repeating steps 1 to 3, daily or weekly to discover new influencer profiles. Your priority should be profiles with a massive following.

Keep adding these influencers to your sheet, then sort them by number of followers. Another criteria for preference can be if the influencer offers advertising on their profiles.

Reaching Out to the Influencers

Once you are done researching (use any one of the above-mentioned methods) and have a steady list of influencers related to your niche. It’s time for reaching out to them and letting them know what you are offering in return for their shoutouts.

The ideal way to contact these influencers is either by email or following them and sending them a direct message. You can take this opportunity to tell the influencer where you are, what you do, pitch your products to them, negotiate terms of advertising, etc.

Here are some sample templates you can use to approach influencers to buy shoutouts and posts:

Sample 1

“Love your IG! My company offers new lines of clothing that I think your followers will love!

I would love to work with you and share some awesome content with your followers too.

What are your rates for Ad style posts?

What would your rate be to add a link to the product into your bio for 24 hrs?

I look forward to working with you and hopefully build a long term partnership!”

Sample 2
“Hi ??

I run the account [enter account name here] and was wondering how much it would cost for an 8 hour shout out? And can I pay via PayPal? We’re just starting out and looking to drive traffic to our page and website.

I really enjoy your page and would love to work with you! Hope to hear back soon! ?”

You can also follow our exclusive Instagram Influencer research video guide.

Important Tips to Approach Influencers

When approaching influencers with a huge following, it is essential to observe:

1. The engagement on video posts – denoted by the number of likes on the content

The number of comments on video posts

Top Instagram Tools for Instagram Influencer Research

A great tool to see the engagement rate of any Instagram profile is the social analytics tool Social Blade. The service compiles data from YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram to create the meaningful analysis of data (example in the image below). Data is represented through graphs, numerical charts, and trend lines to make sense of social statistics easily.

See You Again Soon

Do like and share this article if you found it helpful, and leave feedback for improvement. Until next time, see you again soon we hope our guide to research the best Instagram Influencers was resourceful and helped you find ideal Instagram marketers for your niche.

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If you have any further questions, remember to drop a message in the section below. If you need advanced guides for influencer marketing, SEO, content and other aspects of business do get in contact.