Mini-Guide: How To Find Local Influencers for Sales and UGC

If you’re wondering how to find local influencers, we’re guessing you have reasons:

You may need influencers who sound and look like your audience. (It’s awkward if you’re trying to sell to people in the UK with US-based influencers, right?)

Or maybe you need influencers who can film at your brand’s headquarters.

There are TONS of reasons you might want to hire local social media influencers. So, in this article, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of finding and working with them!

What are the best ways to find local influencers?

Don’t worry–there’s no need to wander the streets looking for girls doing photoshoots. You can do your influencer search much more efficiently using the following:

Social Cat

Our database contains thousands of influencers from each country (UK, US, AU, and CA), so using our prospecting tool will make it easy to find them. How?

We ask our influencers to specify where they live (down to the city) so you can filter by country, city, county, or state.

But wait, there’s more! You can filter them by niche, demographics, number of followers, engagement rate, and more AT THE SAME TIME! You can find the perfect local influencer for your brand when you use multiple filters at once.

The filter we see business users using the most is “type of collaboration.” So, if you’re looking for an influencer who does gifted collaborations in Phoenix, Arizona, you can pop your search terms into our prospecting tool and TA-DA! 🎉 A list of local influencers will pop up.

Then, once you find those perfect-for-you influencers, invite them to collaborate on one of your campaigns and start working together!

We’ve created Social Cat to be super affordable and easy to use. Instead of spending HOURS of your life on social media trying to find influencers (like you will if you use the method below), you can sign up for a month of Social Cat and see how it goes. We offer a free trial, and you can cancel anytime–there’s no pressure if it doesn’t work out. But we’re guessing you’ll love our platform and the time it saves you so much that you’ll never look back!

Manual search on social media

If you’re wondering how to find local influencers on Instagram or TikTok for free, your best bet is to use a manual search and hashtags.

Here’s how it works: Open up your Instagram or TikTok app, then use the search bar to find local influencers. For example, if you’re looking for influencers in Michigan, start with the hashtag #michiganinfluencer and go from there.

Simple, right?

But don’t just stop there! Take some time and think through what terms influencers in your area might use (Google can be super helpful!). For the example above, you’d want to plug in related hashtags like #madeinmichigan or #michiganders, but you get the point–keep trying things until you have a list of influencers to contact.

You can also include your niche in the hashtag to narrow your search even more. So, if you’re in the cooking or restaurant space, search for something like #michiganfood or #michiganfoodies.

Once you’ve done all this searching (or possibly as you’re doing it!) and found some excellent candidates, shoot them a DM and an email if their address is on their profile.

However, we recommend only using this if you’re only looking for 2-3 influencers. The problem you’ll find if you use this method is that it’s incredibly time-consuming, and you don’t generate many conversations. Most influencers aren’t good at responding to DMs and emails, so you’ll have to put in a lot of effort even to reach a small number of influencers.

The good news is that there ARE options if you don’t want to spend a ton of unnecessary time on social media trying to chase down local TikTok influencers (or Instagram influencers). Social Cat is one of those options. Here are a few more:

Use influencer marketing databases

Wait… Are we saying to use Social Cat again?

Not quite! All the influencers on Social Cat opt-in–which means they sign up and are vetted by our team.

Influencer databases don’t work that way–they scrape the internet for info on influencers and their profiles. That’s why they have millions of influencer profiles you can browse but no way to contact them.

They have advanced search filters like we do at Social Cat, so they’re a great place to find local influencers who meet your criteria. Plus, they have so many options.

The only problem with using influencer databases as your influencer finder is that you’ll still need to contact the influencers via DM or email… There is no integrated messaging system like Social Cat, where you can contact influencers directly.

And they are expensive, which may also be a problem if you have a small budget.

Use a local influencer marketing agency

If the products mentioned above aren’t working for you and you have a bit of cash flow, consider using a local influencer marketing agency.

Agencies usually have a roster of the hottest social media influencers ready to work in your area. They’ll handle the entire process for you–you’ll just need to review the list of creators they send you and approve the final content.

But don’t get too excited, okay? Influencer agencies can be SUPER expensive when you add all the agency fees, retainers, and influencer fees. Ensure you know everything involved and can fit it into your budget before signing a contract.

Still, hiring an influencer agency is a great option if you can afford it and want to outsource the effort it takes to run an influencer marketing campaign.

Network in-person or online

If you’re looking exclusively for local influencers, a great way to find them is to get involved in local events organized by or for influencers. They don’t need to be *specifically* influencer events–anything centered around social media marketing should do.

Meeting influencers at these events is a great way to establish a connection. Nothing beats in-person networking.

If you don’t want to wait for an in-person event in your area, you should be able to find Slack and Facebook groups dedicated to local influencers. Those can be a great place to meet influencers in your area!

How do I engage influencers?

If you pick the right influencer platform, engaging influencers is straightforward–message the influencers you’d like to work with directly on the platform! This is what happens on Social Cat.

You’ll need to do influencer outreach via email and direct messages for others. However, it’s not as simple as just sending them a message and hoping for a reply–getting positive replies is an art form. But there’s one thing that helps:

Have a good offer.

If you do a gifted collaboration, include your best product or products–or maybe even a bundle of products. If you’re doing a paid collaboration, pay them more than the recommended price. BTW–Social Cat shows you how much influencers charge, so you’ll never have to wonder about rates!

The idea is simple: Being an influencer is a job. They are professionals. So, if you want to work with influencers, you have to be willing to go the extra mile for the good ones. This isn’t any different than if you were hiring consultants or other top-notch talent.

So, the question isn’t, “How do I reach out?” It’s more like, “How do I get lots of positive replies from them?”

You’ll find that a good offer makes a BIG difference in most cases. 😉

How do I vet local influencers?

Of course, you don’t want to hire just any local influencer who happens to serve your niche. But how can you tell which ones are the good ones? Here’s what to check:

Content quality

First, examine the quality of their content. Check their feed and reels to get a sense of what they create.

For videos: Do they speak in front of the camera with ease? Do they have flow?

For photos: What’s your overall feeling or impression when you look at them?

If you’re on Social Cat, you can see their portfolio and reviews from other brands, so answering these questions is easy.

If you want influencers who will create high-quality photos and videos for your brand (and why wouldn’t you?), checking the content quality is a MUST before you reach out.

Follower demographics and metrics

If you’re trying to reach a local audience, make sure you ALSO look at the influencer’s audience. Are their followers local? Check, too, if the gender split and age are what you’re looking for.

On Social Cat, we import all of this information directly from Meta, so it’s easy for you to spot. Outside of a platform with direct integration, you may need to ask influencers directly or rely on what you can figure out by perusing their followers' profiles.

Also, it’s a good practice to check their engagement rate, average likes, average comments, and other metrics to ensure their account is healthy–so take a peek at those, too.

Audience

This one relates to what we just mentioned, but you want to know that their audience is real and engaged. So, have a look at their posts: Who engages with them? Are they mostly dodgy profiles with 0 posts and little activity?

If so, this is a sign of fake engagement, and you should avoid working with this influencer. After all, if their followers are fake, you won’t see the same benefits as you would from working with a high-quality influencer.

Just look at a sampling of their followers and see if you spot some patterns.

Yes, some tools can look at this for you, but after analyzing them, we realized they’re inaccurate… So, the best way to do this is still manually.

But don’t worry! You’ll develop an eye for this quickly–it’s not hard to recognize fake accounts and followers.

Summary: how to find local influencers

If you need to find local influencers quickly, you don’t need to Google “local influencers near me” and hope for the best. (By the way, we don’t recommend that strategy!)

We have you covered. Start a free trial of Social Cat and filter your search by location and anything else you desire. Thousands of influencers are actively looking for new brands to work with on our platform, so finding the perfect influencers for your brand is possible.

If you’d like to branch out further, attend local events where influencers hang out, spend some time in local online influencer communities, search manually online, and try using influencer marketing databases or local agencies.

From there, you’ll want to figure out which influencers you’d like to work with and then reach out with a great offer. Then, you’ll work together to increase your brand awareness! 🎉

What’s your favorite way to find influencers?