Finding TikTok influencers is not an easy task: there are over 1 billion active TikTok users worldwide! How to find TikTok influencers for your brand? Here’s our guide to finding the right creators! 👇🏼
1. Searching manually on TikTok
2. Using a TikTok influencer search tool
3. How to choose TikTok influencers?
The importance of TikTok influencer marketing
Engaging TikTok creators is one of the biggest trends in influencer marketing. For a reason: not only is it one of the fastest-growing social media platforms out there but also 49% of users said TikTok has helped them make purchase decisions. In 2022, the number of TikTok users passed Google’s – and indeed, the young generation is using it as their main search engine. Short and straight-to-the-point videos are just so much easier to consume than long SEO-optimized articles (like this one).
If your customer is using TikTok, you shouldn’t ignore TikTok marketing – and oftentimes, working with influencers is the fastest way to reach your target audience! Even if TikTok is not your main channel, it makes sense to support your other influencer campaigns with TikTok collaborations.
Before you start with TikTok collaborations..
We recommend creating a TikTok account for your brand right away – even before you start with any influencer collaborations.
Firstly, it helps you to secure your username. Secondly, it makes it possible for the influencers to tag your account when they do videos about your brand – as a collaboration or not – and that helps you to start growing your follower base. Thirdly, you can train the algorithm to show the most relevant TikTok influencers in your feed – we’ll explain that in detail a little later!
Additionally, you can start leveraging TikTok’s Creative Center which can greatly enhance your brand’s presence by providing you with valuable tools and resources to create engaging and captivating content for your TikTok collaborations.
We are on TikTok as @promoty – come to say hi 👋🏼 🤍
1. Searching manually on TikTok
First, you can try finding relevant influencers manually: it takes a lot of time and effort but might be the easiest way to start, especially if you already have the app on your phone.
1.1. Search influencers by hashtags, keywords, and locations
In the TikTok search, you can write anything that comes to your mind: keywords related to your field or locations you’d want to find influencers. For example, if you’re selling leggings, you can search for leggings, fitness, training at home, bodyweight training, gym schedule, gym outfits, gym fashion, and other related keywords. The options are basically endless!
On the desktop, you’ll see top content, accounts, and videos only. On the phone, you can also search for sounds, and hashtags, and see LIVE videos. That’s the first reason why we recommend using the TikTok app on your phone when searching for TikTok influencers!
Additionally, when using the phone app, you can also set filters for the search. If you’re looking for influencers with a bigger following, select “Users” in the top menu – and use the filters to see profiles with over 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 followers. You can also set the profile type to “verified” to see celebrities and international companies.
1.2. Check if any of your existing influencers are active on TikTok
If you’re already doing influencer marketing on Instagram, Youtube, or any other social media channels, make sure to check if they are also active on TikTok. We can say the chances are pretty high for that: nowadays, most creators have discovered the power of TikTok.
1.3. Let the algorithm know what you like
On the For You page, you can see TikToks that the algorithm thinks you’d like – the tip is to like or even comment on the creators’ videos that seem like a great fit for your brand. The more you interact with a TikTok (or a certain TikTok influencer), the more clear it is for the algorithm what kind of content you’re interested in. This way there’s a higher chance that you’ll see creators that you could work with directly on your feed.
On the desktop, you can see accounts that TikTok is suggesting for you based on the TikToks you mostly watch, TikTok accounts you follow, and where you’re located at. Make sure to check that, too!
Here’s also a short but insightful video with some tips that we didn’t bring out on how to boost your influencer marketing by finding TikTok influencers👇🏼
2. Use a TikTok influencer search tool
Using Promoty’s TikTok influencer search tool, you can search from our influencer database of 64 million TikTok creators – filtering them by interests, location, audience size, audience demographics, engagement rate, and other search criteria.
If you’re looking for creators in a specific niche, it’s so much faster and more effective than searching for influencers manually. Let’s see how it works!
Searching for Spain-based creators on TikTok influencer search tool
▸ Filter by location – or their audience location
Should you set a filter on the influencer’s location? Well, it depends on your influencer marketing strategy! If you’re looking for local creators, you should definitely use the “Location” filter. This way, you can find influencers who are based in a certain country or a certain city.
For example, if you’re planning a TikTok marketing campaign for a restaurant in London, there is no point in working with international influencers – you need London-based bloggers who could actually come to visit your restaurant and create videos of their experience.
If you’re looking for influencers with an audience in a certain country or city, scroll down a little and use the audience filters. This way, you could filter out influencers whose followers are based in a certain location.
▸ Filter by followers and number of views
With the search tools, you can set how big accounts you want to see in the results. However, keep in mind that the follower number isn’t the most important search criteria – when it comes to influencer marketing, the audience match is often a lot more important.
Keep in mind that the follower number isn’t always equal to the number of TikTok views. Unfortunately, it’s also possible to buy followers – which is not as popular as buying fake followers on Instagram but might still make TikTok influencers look bigger than they are!
That’s why we’ve also made it possible to find relevant TikTok influencers by views.
▸ Filter by keywords in bio
If you’re looking for TikTok influencers within a specific niche, you can filter by keywords they have used in their bio. That helps you to find the influencers with exactly the right audience!
▸ Filter by audience demographics
Every influencer marketing campaign starts with a customer: who are you trying to reach? If you have a clear understanding of your target audience, you must try out our audience filters! It’s an easy way to find TikToker influencers whose followers have the highest potential to use your product.
On Promoty, you can also search for TikTok influencers based on their audience demographics: set filters for the audience’s average age, gender, location, or spoken languages.
Searching for US-based creators on TikTok influencer search engine
3. How to choose the right TikTok influencer for your brand?
Choosing the right influencers is not an easy task either: you should consider their content, previous collaborations, TikTok statistics, audience demographics, and other criteria. Here is a list of 7 things you should check before you confirm a collaboration with a TikTok influencer!
3.1. Influencer’s content, story, and values
First, you should check their previous content. Has the influencer previously talked about something related to your product? If not, the collaboration might feel a little random for their followers.
For example, if an influencer is known for buying their daily coffees in single-use plastic cups, shopping in fast fashion retail stores, and never expressing their interest in sustainability, collaboration with a sustainable brand would feel very out of place. As social media users are becoming more aware of that kind of “fake” paid collaborations, it might do more harm than good for the brand.
Here are some questions you may ask yourself before confirming a collaboration:
• Has the influencer previously talked about topics that are important to the brand?
• What kind of lifestyle do they promote?
• What values are they representing?
• Would you like to have that person represent your brand?
On Promoty, you can also see popular posts of every TikTok creator
3.2. Their TikTok statistics
Here’s the main difference between TikTok and Instagram: on Instagram, one’s content is mostly shown to their followers. On TikTok, users can see videos from a other users, no matter if they follow them or not. That’s why the number of views is even more important on TikTok than followers.
Here are some metrics that you should check:
• Views – the number of total views of all of the creator’s videos
• Likes – the number of total likes on all of the creator’s videos
• Average views – the average number of views on one video
• Engagement rate – the average percentage of viewers who also like, comment or share the video
• Followers – the number of people following them
Using Promoty, you can also see how has their following changed over time. That helps you to spot rising ⭐️-s early on!
TikTok profile insights for @khaby.lame, a TikTok influencer with the most followers
3.3. Their audience demographics
Finally, you should do their audience analysis: does it match your target group?
Let’s take the same example of a restaurant in London: if you’re working with an influencer whose audience is based in India, the content won’t be relevant for most of their followers. For the company, it would be a waste of influencer marketing budget as they never reached their actual target group.
This is why you should use an influencer analytics tool. That gives you a detailed report of every influencer, including their followers’ age, location, gender, and language. This way, you could easily identify TikTok creators whose audience matches your target group.
Will Smith’s TikTok profile on Promoty (try it out free)
Additionally, you can see notable followers and similar profiles on Promoty. That also helps you to save time on finding TikTok influencers: if you’ve found one who fits your brand, we will also provide you a list of similar users that you might want to work with!
Bonus tip: give your creators creative freedom ✨
For marketers, this is difficult to deal with: TikTok is so different from all the other social media platforms. What works on Facebook or Instagram, does not work on TikTok.
At the same time, TikTok influencers know their audience: they know what kind of content performs well and what kind of content won’t. When it comes to TikTok influencer marketing campaigns, marketers really should listen to the creators.
For example, here’s a Linkedin post by Lisa Lieke, TikTok creator and a founder of POV agency:
… but make sure they follow the Branded Content Policy of TikTok
Just like influencer marketing on any other social media platform, sponsored content on TikTok has to be marked accordingly.
The legal policy of TikTok defines branded content as “content that promotes goods or services where you will receive (or have already received) something of value from a third party, such as a brand, in exchange for your post, or which you might otherwise need to disclose to comply with laws or regulations.” Therefore, the concept of branded content also applies to PR packages and collaborations where the influencer is rewarded with a product only.
For marking the sponsored content, the creator must enable the branded content toggle when posting sponsored content – unless they are located in a country where it is not available. In this case, the collaboration should be marked with hashtag #advertising or “In paid partnership with…” text.
In case the sponsored content is not marked correctly, TikTok might detect the collaboration content and just remove the content or impose other restrictions. Therefore, as a marketer, make sure your collaboration partners mark the collaborative content as an ad by using a relevant hashtag, for example.
It is also important to pay attention to what kind of music you are using in sponsored TikToks – it has to be a no-copyright sound. When you switch your account to a Business Account in settings, TikTok will automatically show which music is available for collaborations and which is not.
📝 Summary: how to find TikTok influencers for your brand
Influencer marketing might work wonders: if your product goes viral on TikTok, it might reach thousands, if not millions of people. However, it’s not easy to find influencers who’d be a perfect match for your brand – but we really hope that the given tricks and tips will help a little!
When it comes to searching for the right TikTok influencers, you can try searching for them manually on TikTok. In this case, we recommend using the TikTok app on your phone: this way, you can search by keywords, locations, and hashtags, and filter by creator’s audience size. It will take a lot of time – but it’s probably the easiest place to start from!
How to choose the best influencers for your brand? Shortly: you should check their TikTok metrics (views, likes, and engagement), audience demographics (if it matches your target group), and their previous content (to understand their values and what kind of content is their audience expects from them).
If you’re serious about your TikTok influencer marketing, you should use an influencer search tool. This way, you can filter our global database of TikTok and Instagram influencers, see their detailed profile insights, and eventually find the right TikTok influencers for your brand.
Moreover, you can add notes, labels, and comments to each creator – and even chat with them via Promoty! Meaning that you will pay a small monthly fee but you will save hours of manual work. Create a free account to try it out 👇🏼
