How to find micro-influencers

What counts as a micro-influencer

Five ways to find them

1. 01

   Start with who already posts about you

   Search your brand name and product names on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and look through your tags and mentions. Customers who already film your product are the easiest yes.

2. 02

   Look at who posts your competitors

   Creators who made videos about a competitor already film products like yours. Open a competitor’s tagged posts, or see them all at once with competitor influencer analysis.

3. 03

   Search the platforms by what you sell

   Search TikTok and YouTube for what a customer would type (“best vitamin c serum for dark spots”, “toddler lunchbox ideas”), not hashtags. Filter to recent videos, and note the creators whose videos have steady views.

4. 04

   Follow the platforms’ suggestions

   Once you follow a few good creators, Instagram’s “suggested for you” and TikTok’s “others searched for” show similar ones. Ten good creators lead to fifty.

5. 05

   Use a search tool

   A tool searches many creators at once by what their videos are about, with followers and views filters. Pozto’s influencer search matches what you type against the brands and words in each creator’s recent videos, free for the first 20 results.

What to check before you reach out

• Typical views, not followers. Look at the median of their last 10–20 videos. A 40K account that gets 30K views is worth more than a 90K account that gets 3K.
• Whether they review products. Some creators only film their life. You want ones who show, explain and recommend things.
• How often they post sponsored content. A few brand posts is normal; every other video an ad means their followers tune out.
• Their comments. Real questions about the product (“does it work on oily skin?”) beat strings of emojis.
• Warning signs. Sudden follower jumps, engagement far above or below their size, comments that don’t match the video.

The free influencer check does most of this from a handle: typical views, engagement, sponsored posts, who they tag and warning signs.

How many to start with

For a gifting campaign, start with 20 to 40 creators. Many won’t post about a gift, and some will post weeks later, so a small batch tells you little. Send to the first group, see who posts and what it gets, then send your next launch to the ones who delivered and a new batch like them. The product seeding ROI calculator shows what a batch needs to return.

Then reach out

Name one of their videos, say what you’re offering, and ask one question. The outreach email templates cover paid posts, affiliate and ambassador invitations; the gifting emails cover a gift from the first message to the thank-you.