How to find influencers for your brand

The fastest way to learn how to find influencers for your brand is to stop looking for "influencers" and start looking for proof: creators whose audiences already buy products like yours. A creator who has sold a protein powder, a budgeting app or a skincare serum knows how to talk about one, and you can watch how those posts performed before you spend anything.

This guide covers six ways to find those creators, four of them free, then a five-minute vetting checklist and what to do once you have a shortlist.

1. Start with creators who already promote products like yours

Write down three to five competitors, plus a few brands your customers also buy. Then look for the creators who have promoted them.

• On Instagram, open a competitor's profile and check the posts it's tagged in. Creators who were paid usually tag the brand or add a paid partnership label.
• On TikTok, search the competitor's name together with words like "ad", "partner" or "code". Discount codes are the giveaway: nobody gets a code without a deal.
• On YouTube, search the brand name plus "sponsored" or read the descriptions of videos in your niche. Sponsors are usually listed there with a link.

This is the single best filter you have. A creator who already promoted a direct competitor may be locked into an exclusive deal, but one who promoted something adjacent (a gym app when you sell supplements, a VPN when you sell an eSIM) is often the perfect next partner.

topYappers does this at scale: every creator profile lists the products and brands detected in their posts, and you can search by those products directly. Here's what that looks like for three creators from our fitness list:

#CreatorFollowersEngagementAvg. views

1. 1
   CB

   Chris Bumstead(opens Instagram profile)

   @cbum🇨🇦Canada

   Fitness · Physique

   Has promotedLemonade Iced Tea

   Followers

   25.5M

   Engagement

   38%

   Avg. views

   –

   Followers

   25.5M

   Engagement

   38%

   Avg. views

   –

2. 2
   

   Tammy Hembrow(opens Instagram profile)

   @tammyhembrow🇦🇺Australia

   Glute training · At-home workouts

   Has promotedtammyfitappSelfishSupps

   Followers

   16.4M

   Engagement

   13%

   Avg. views

   189K

   Followers

   16.4M

   Engagement

   13%

   Avg. views

   189K

3. 3
   

   Dayan Kolev(opens Instagram profile)

   @dayan.kole🇨🇭Switzerland

   Jump rope training · Fitness motivation

   Has promotedSwissskip

   Followers

   6.1M

   Engagement

   25%

   Avg. views

   72.5K

   Followers

   6.1M

   Engagement

   25%

   Avg. views

   72.5K

2. Search the platforms directly (free)

Native search is free and surprisingly good if you search like a customer, not like a marketer.

• Use specific phrases your buyers would type: "high protein breakfast", "carry-on packing", "acne routine". Broad words like "fitness" return celebrities.
• Search hashtags in your niche and sort by recent posts. Recent matters: an account that peaked three years ago won't help you now.
• When you find one good creator, check who they follow, who comments on their posts and who the platform suggests next. Good creators cluster.

Keep a simple sheet as you go: handle, platform, followers, average views on the last ten posts, contact email and one line on why they fit. You'll need all of it later. For platform-specific tactics, see how to find influencers on Instagram and how to find micro influencers.

3. Look at your own followers and customers (free)

Some of your best partners already know your product.

• Check who tags or mentions your brand, and who comments on your posts more than once.
• Look through your customer list for people with audiences. A short note to customers ("Do you make content? We'd love to work with you") often turns up creators who'd say yes for product alone.
• Search your brand name on each platform for unprompted reviews. A creator who reviewed you for free is the warmest lead you'll ever get.

4. Use Google (free)

Google indexes public profiles, so you can search across platforms at once. Combine a niche word with a platform and a contact signal, for example:

• site:instagram.com "vegan recipes" "collab"
• site:tiktok.com "skincare" "business inquiries"

You'll also find ready-made lists, like our creator lists by niche, which rank creators by audience, engagement and brand-deal history and are refreshed every month.

5. Try the platforms' own creator marketplaces

Each major platform now runs a marketplace for brands:

• TikTok One includes TikTok Creator Marketplace. Its Creator AI Search takes a plain-language brief and returns a shortlist of up to 200 creators, according to TikTok.
• YouTube Creator Partnerships, formerly BrandConnect, lives inside Google Ads and Display & Video 360 and uses Gemini to suggest creators from the YouTube Partner Program, per YouTube.
• Instagram's creator marketplace lets creators opt in to be discovered by brands for branded content.

They're worth a look, with two limits: each one only covers its own platform, and it only shows creators who are eligible and opted in. Plenty of good creators never join.

6. Use an influencer database

When you need dozens of creators, or creators across platforms, a database saves days. The filters that matter most:

topYappers covers 44M+ creators across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Twitch and newsletters, with the products each one has promoted. If you'd rather not build filters at all, paste your website and it drafts your brand brief and matches you with 10 creators, free.

Vet an influencer in five minutes

Before you message anyone, run this check. It catches most bad fits.

1. Views versus followers. Open the last ten posts. If an account has 500K followers and averages 3K views, the audience has moved on.
2. Engagement and comment quality. Read the comments, don't just count them. Specific questions and replies are good. Walls of emojis and "nice pic" from accounts with no posts are a warning sign.
3. Audience country. Ask for a screenshot of the platform's audience insights. It takes the creator thirty seconds and saves you from paying for an audience in a market you don't ship to.
4. Fake-follower signs. Sudden follower jumps, engagement far above or below similar accounts, and comments unrelated to the post all deserve a closer look.
5. Past promotions. Find two or three sponsored posts. Did they perform close to the creator's normal posts, or did views collapse? Were they clearly labeled?
6. Brand safety. Scroll back a few months. You're not looking for perfection, just for anything you wouldn't want next to your logo.

Reach out (the short version)

Use the email in the creator's bio or channel About page; big creators list a manager. Keep the first message short: who you are, why them specifically, what you're offering and one clear next step. Follow up twice, a few days apart, then move on.

Our influencer outreach guide covers this properly, with follow-up timing and negotiation. If you'd rather not send every email by hand, the topYappers Outreach Agent sends personalized emails and follow-ups from your own inbox.

Track replies and deals

Once you're talking to more than ten creators, a spreadsheet starts losing things. At minimum, track the stage of each conversation (contacted, replied, negotiating, agreed, posted), the agreed terms and the post date.

topYappers includes a creator CRM with a pipeline for exactly this, and account and video tracking that follows each post's views and engagement after it goes live, so you can see which creators to book again.

Free or paid: which method to use

Most brands should start free, find their first five to ten creators, learn what works, and only then pay for scale.