Want to find TikTok influencers to promote your brand on social media? TikTok was the most-downloaded app in 2020, and brands have realized the marketing potential that the network offers.
But how can you find the right TikTok influencers to collaborate with? Well, you can’t just select the first one you come across. Finding the right spokesperson for your campaign takes a bit more than that.
Keep reading for some helpful tips about how to find TikTok influencers. For these tips, you could try searching directly on TikTok, but the better option is to subscribe to an influencer marketing platform, as it will give you better flexibility and fluidity in your search.
1. Search for influencers in the same industry or category
What does your brand do? Are you a fashion label? A sports equipment company? Do you run a spa and wellness clinic? Whatever the case, there’s an influencer for you out there.
To find influencers in the same industry as you, think of a list of keywords relevant to what you do. Then, search for them either on TikTok or an influencer marketing platform.
An influencer marketing platform searching for TikTokers who have something to do with makeup.
2. Define your geographical area and find influencers from it
Where do you want your campaign to take place? Think about where your brand already has operations, which areas you may like to try to gain traction, and if there are any geographical regions that are off limits to you due to legal, economic, or other restrictions.
Then, plug your locations into the filters of a search platform. It’s as simple as that!
An example of the location filter on an influencer marketing platform.
If you’re searching on TikTok, finding influencers according to location will be a bit more difficult. You can search for location hashtags, although these aren’t always reliable: many influencers will use those tags when talking about a given country, not because they’re necessarily based there.
3. Search for influencers with high engagement rates
Engagement rate measures how connected an influencer is to their audience. The more the followers trust an influencer, the more likely they are to interact with content. On TikTok, interactions include likes, comments and shares.
With an influencer marketing platform, you can find influencers with a specific engagement range in just a few clicks. Use the engagement filter to set the range you want to search for, and the program will only return those profiles who match what you’ve set. If you don’t have one, searching like this will be impossible.
Average engagement rates can fluctuate depending on an influencer’s follower count, location, and category. So look into benchmarks, and then compare influencers against that. For example, don’t expect TikTok benchmarks to be the same as Instagram ones. Likewise, you can’t assume that a micro influencer, celebrity influencer, and KOL (key opinion leader) will have the same engagement rates.
4. Find someone with a good average video views
Engagement is great, but you also want to make sure an influencer’s videos are getting seen by a decently sized group of people before you invest in a collaboration with them. By looking at the average views per video, you can estimate how many people will see a video created by your campaign.
Not everyone who watches a video will engage with it. The more engagement the better, but it’s also important to check in on views, especially for branding campaigns. Again, with an influencer marketing platform, you can use a filter to search for this. But with TikTok alone, you’ll have to pinpoint influencers and then check out their content to calculate an average.
5. Make sure they align with your mission and values
Finally, when finding influencers, it’s important to go beyond the metrics, too. Healthy performance is important, but so is style, tone of voice, and values. See if the influencer has things in common with your brand. You want the collaboration to come across as authentic, so don’t make followers guess as to what the connection is between you two.
Think about things like:
- Does this influencer have an aesthetic style that’s attractive to or complements that of my brand?
- Is their voice suitable for my message?
- Do they uphold similar values as those of my brand’s?
- Is there any reason to think the influencer wouldn’t be brand-safe?
Conclusion
Finding TikTok influencers is much easier with the help of an influencer marketing platform. Yes, you have to subscribe to use the service. But you’ll end up gaining a lot of new search capabilities and saving a lot of time. Just remember that, however you find influencers, check into their engagement rate and other metrics, and make sure they align with your brand’s interests.
