How to Compile a List of Influencers to Work With

If you’re not among the 74.5% of marketers using influencer marketing today, don’t worry. There’s no shortage of influencers to work with when your brand is finally ready to jump in, and you can learn a lot from the brands who have paved the way through trial and error. Influencer marketing allows brands to reach target audiences through trusted, authentic voices, which typically boosts engagement, trust, and brand awareness. To get you started, we’re sharing tips on how to compile a list of influencers to work with. Whether you’re performing this vital step manually or using an influencer marketing platform, consider these important factors when selecting content creators for your upcoming campaigns.

Start with a clearly defined target audience

Before searching for influencers, you’ll need to know what criteria to use. Much of this will come from your brand’s buyer persona, a profile of a typical person representing your key audience.

A few questions to ask your team when defining your target persona to help inform your influencer choices are:

Platforms and peak hours online: Where and when does our audience hang out online?
Demographics: How old are they? Are they primarily male, female, or nonbinary? Are they married with kids? Do they have a dual income with plenty of disposable income? Do they own or rent? Do they live in small towns or big cities?
Lifestyle: Are they risk-takers? Family oriented? Career driven? Do they travel frequently, play golf, or do meal prep?
Buyer motivation: Do they look for promo codes? What pain points drive them to make a purchase?
Values: Do they look for eco-friendly products? Are they invested in human rights, animal welfare, or fair trade?

Once you’ve outlined a clear target persona based on data, you’ll know what audience to seek when filtering influencers.

Filter influencers by relevance, reach, and resonance

One of the most important lessons to take into your initial search for content creators is that when it comes to the number of followers, quality trumps quantity.

This is true for several reasons, the most basic being that mega-influencers typically can’t come close to the engagement of nano and micro-influencers. In addition, some celeb influencers charge as much as $1 million per post, with no guarantee of ROI.

Instead, your focus should be on:

Relevance: a shared industry and target audience
Reach: the number of (targeted or niche) followers that the content could be seen by
Resonance: potential engagement created with the influencer’s audience

Remember, not only do niche and micro-influencers tend to have followers that are more engaged, loyal, and trusting, but they also tend to charge brands less for campaigns, significantly lowering the risk to your campaign—and your marketing budget as a whole.

You can start by looking for influencers on the platforms you plan to use for your first campaign, and narrowing down the search with industry hashtags. You may also want to check for potential influencers among your brand’s followers.

Research your shortlist

With a handful of potential influencers on your list based on relevance, reach, and resonance, it’s time to dive deeper into each.

Comb through some of their most recent content, including paid and organic content to ensure their followers are interested and engaged. Do the posts fit your brand’s values, humor, and quality? Have they worked with any of your competitors? Do they follow FTC guidelines for disclosures on paid and sponsored posts?

Be sure to do some background research into the influencers as well to ensure there aren’t any past or current controversies or red flags that could harm your brand’s reputation, should you choose to partner with them.

Expedite your influencer search

If manually searching for influencers among your brand’s followers or on major platforms like TikTok and Instagram feels time-consuming, you may want to consider an alternative.

Free and affordable influencer databases like IZEA’s Creator Marketplace® let you search creator profiles, including the number of followers, platforms, engagement rate, per-post rates, topics they post about, and audience demographics.

In addition, features like Casting Calls allow brands to solicit pitches from content creators. Armed with tools to filter and qualify results, the right influencer database can help you quickly narrow down prospective creators to only the best matches for your brand.

Although it may feel like a lot of legwork to research and compile a list of influencers to work with your brand, consider your time investment. Finding the right content creator for your next campaign could be the turning point in your newly developing influencer marketing strategy. And with a shared target audience, good engagement, and great content, you may discover that influencer marketing provides an impressive ROI and opens new avenues to reach your ideal customer.