Most articles on how to find micro influencers for your brand have tons of expensive options or a multi-step process for connecting with smaller creators.
The good news? It doesn’t have to be that complicated. In this article, we’ll explain:
- What a micro influencer is
- Why hiring a micro influencer is the best option for your brand
- How to find micro influencers for your brand– with free and affordable options
- Our team’s recommendations (and a bonus for sticking to the end!)
Don’t pay thousands for expensive products. Read this article instead, and let us help you save thousands of dollars - literally! 💸
What is a micro influencer?
If you Google “What is a micro influencer?” you’ll find a hundred different answers.
So, for this article, we’re defining micro influencers as social media users with 1,000 to 50,000 followers or subscribers. These numbers apply mostly to Instagram and TikTok, but they also work for YouTube.
We didn’t pull these numbers out of thin air– they’re based on our experience with actual micro influencers. Some brands like to distinguish between nano influencers (1,000 to 5,000 followers) and other micro influencers. If that helps you, feel free to do the same.
Why do brands prefer micro influencers in 2024?
Brands often prefer to work with micro influencers– that’s not a secret! While this may seem confusing at first, it’s a good choice for the following reasons:
They’re more engaged
Small brand owners often fall into the trap of thinking, “That influencer has so many followers, they’ll get me tons of sales!”
In reality, it doesn’t work like that. We’ve seen tons of sales generated by small and engaged influencers, while bigger influencers failed to get the same results.
There’s a simple reason why: If an influencer has fewer followers, that’s usually because they’re more niched, and those followers are more engaged with that influencer. This translates into more awareness and potential sales for your brand.
You’ve heard the saying, “Less is more?” It applies here.
They’re more authentic
The word “authentic” is overused (especially in social media marketing), but when it’s used about micro influencers or UGC creators, it’s spot-on.
Here’s why: Micro influencers stay true to their audiences. They don’t advertise products outside of their niches, and they provide real insights into what they promote. That’s one of the reasons brands LOVE working with them.
Are you taking advantage of the fact that the trends are shifting toward micro influencers? Maybe it’s time to ditch expensive influencers and agencies and go micro.
They’re more affordable
If you’re blown away by influencer fees, you’re not alone. Many brands (even big ones), raise their eyebrows when influencers charge sky-high prices.
The good news? Micro influencers are 3x more affordable than other influencers– so one campaign isn’t going to break your budget.
Ready for even better news? Some products (like Social Cat!) even come with licensing included in their pricing when you work with their influencers.
Bottom line: before you spend a small fortune on big influencers, work with micro influencers first. You can thank us later. 😉
How to find micro influencers for your brand
Money counts – but so does time, especially if your business isn’t huge.
You don’t have time to chase down influencers, hoping and praying they’ll respond.
That’s why, before we talk about free ways to connect with influencers, we’re bringing up the most efficient way to find micro influencers: Social Cat.
Why are we saying Social Cat is the best way to find micro influencers? We’re glad you asked! It’s because…
- We focus exclusively on micro influencers- 96% percent of our influencers have between 1,000 and 50,000 followers, and we have over 30k of them on our platform.
- We manually vet each influencer. You won’t find accounts with fake engagement, fake followers, or follow-for-follow loops on Social Cat.
- Influencers apply to work with you. You don’t have to search for them, DM them, or email them. Instead, you start a campaign and influencers come to you. This saves SO MUCH time and energy.
- Advanced filters are available. If you want to find them for yourself, you can search through our database using advanced filters like their location, gender, age, and more.
- Social Cat is an end-to-end platform. You can find influencers, communicate with them, set up campaigns, and get content uploaded to the platform– all without leaving Social Cat. If you’ve ever run across annoying products where you need to export email addresses to contact influencers– don’t worry. You can skip all of that because you have Social Cat now.
- Many features for a low price. In addition to all of the benefits we’ve already listed, you’ll also get metrics directly from Instagram or TikTok, including influencer portfolios, reviews, and much more.
If you’re still on the fence, don’t worry. We have a free, no-commitment trial where you can test it out. Get started for $0 today.
How to find micro influencers for FREE (and why we don’t recommend it)
If Social Cat isn’t for you, or if you’d like to try a free method first – we got you! Here’s our 3-step process for how to find Instagram micro influencers (or TikTok micro influencers). Whichever method you choose, we recommend also running the micro influencer's name through a free people finder tool so you can find all their social media and contact info at once, as well as any possibly damaging info about them before you offer to partner
How to find micro influencers on Instagram
On Instagram, you can find micro influencers for free. Here’s how:
- Go to the "discovery" tab and use the search function. Type in hashtags related to your brand. The results will show you a ton of users who are posting with that hashtag.
- Next, check each post and decide which ones: 1) Match the kind of content you’re looking for and 2) Were created by micro influencers.
Keep track of that profile when you find something that matches– you’ll need it for step 3. Then, repeat.
This is the hardest part of this process. It’s tedious and takes a long time. You’ll need to repeat these steps using multiple search terms and hashtags, so be prepared to spend several hours before moving to the third step.
- Reach out to influencers. Once you’ve found influencers you’d like to work with, it’s time to reach out! Get ahold of their email address, or DM them on the platform. Do this process for a bit and let us know: Do you think it’s worth it? We’ve done the same thing before, and we can tell you: We don’t think it’s worth it. It takes a lot of time, energy, and attention– and we haven’t even mentioned the fact that influencers usually have a less than 5% response rate.
In other words – if you send 100 DMs, you can expect to hear back from approximately 5 influencers. Maybe.
The best part about this method is that it’s free– that’s why we highlighted it in the title. But if you’re serious about wanting to get into influencer marketing, you’ll be better served to check out the bonus below.
PS - this method doesn't work if you're looking for content creators.
How to find micro influencers on TikTok
On TikTok, we can use the same method to find influencers for free.
- Go to the "Search" tab and use the search function. You can type in the hashtags you use on Instagram or other hashtags related to your brand.
- On TikTok, you'll sometimes see a "Shop" section that appears at the top of the search. You can ignore that and search for posts related to your hashtag. You're looking for the same thing: posts relevant to your niche (most of them will be since you use hashtags) and micro influencers.
- Keep track of the profiles you find. This is the same as on Instagram, so you might want to consider some sort of list to keep track of. Most of the time, Excel or AirTable will do it.
- However, contacting them is different from using Instagram. TikTok doesn't allow you to message a user unless you follow each other, so direct messages here won't work. Instead, consider these options: comment on their posts to get in touch or get their email or bio if they have it. You can also try the TikTok creator marketplace, but from our experience, it's not the best.
So, on TikTok, the process is the same as on Instagram, but you can't send messages directly. So you'll need to use some workarounds like the ones we mentioned.
A bonus from our team
The FREE method will take you so much time– time that, as a business owner, you don’t have. Your other work will suffer while you chase down micro influencers, or you’ll give up because it’s “too much of a hassle.”
We have good news. Since you’ve read to the end, we have a bonus for you: 50% off of your first month on Social Cat.
Interested? Then start a free trial, and use the code MICRO50 as checkout.
It doesn’t get better than this: A free trial AND 50% off your first month. Make sure to book the free trial onboarding call with one of our experts so they can show you around and answer any questions you have about micro influencer marketing. But, FYI– our platform is super easy to use, so you won’t need to talk to us to get started.
We can’t wait for you to discover the best way to do influencer marketing.
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