Influencer marketing started as a global phenomenon capitalizing on the immense popularity of social media celebrities and high-profile names from show business and sports. Initially, businesses used influencer marketing like traditional marketing channels; to reach as many people as they could and make their brands known.
However, as the influencer landscape evolved new creators emerged who were experts in specific topics yet had fewer followers. They are micro-influencers with specialized and often local knowledge. They cater to their audience’s interests and manage to build communities on social media. Now more than ever brands try to partner with local influencers to take advantage of their authenticity and targeted reach.
According to businesses, finding influencers is one of the top three challenges of influencer marketing. The question then arises, how difficult is it to find local influencers?
In this blog post, we’ll recount 14 online and offline techniques that enable you to find social media influencers in your area. By the end of the article, you’ll be armed with a variety of methods that help you identify the best-matching creators in your city or other countries.
Read on!
Does My Brand Need Local Influencers Near Me?
Businesses that have a strong physical presence in specific locations, like family-run stores, restaurants, boutique hotels, or event venues are better off with local influencers. Certain industries, such as hospitality, food, and travel brands can benefit from the local expertise of creators. However, global brands shouldn’t forgo the idea of partnering with regional influencers, especially if they want to launch into new geographical territories.
Local influencers develop a close relationship with their audiences because they are familiar with their unique preferences, and cultural nuances, traditions, and happenings. They are highly effective when it comes to reaching tight-knit communities where trust is indispensable. They help small brands raise awareness in the neighborhood and global brands create culturally relevant content and lay the groundwork to break into the new market.
Customers these days want personalized offers and authentic promotions, and they are more likely to engage with brands that understand them. Brands that make the effort to study the cultural backgrounds of diverse customer groups will be more successful with mainstream audiences. In light of this, businesses must decide for themselves whether they are willing to work with local influencers so that they can cater to smaller, regional communities as well.
How to find local influencers: Online methods
1. Identify creators with an influencer discovery tool (and filters)
Major influencer marketing platforms offer an influencer discovery tool. These tools help businesses identify influencers with numerous filters that fit their requirements. It varies from brand to brand and campaign to campaign what these requirements can be. For example, brands can search by influencer size, location, category, audience demographics, location, interest, and various performance metrics.
HypeAuditor Discovery tool
Let us show you how a discovery tool looks at work. Say, you are opening your designer boutique in London and want to find influencers in the city who can raise awareness.
We selected London, UK as the location of the influencer, at least 30% of their audience has to be resided in the city as well and they need to be fashion enthusiasts. We also determined that we are interested only in personal accounts. The tool returned 2.7K results.
The dashboard shows you their follower number, quality audience, ER, brand mentions, whether they provided contact info, platform, main category and how much percentage of their audience is in London. After all this, you can start narrowing down your list by other criteria, such as audience size, ER, Audience Quality Score, etc.
Another search example for creators in the ‘Family’ category in the Philippines. If you really want to focus on just one country or region, you can set at least 50% of the influencer's audience to be in that country. In the above case, at least half of the influencers’ audiences must be located in the Philippines.
Remember to select a suite that has a large creator database and sophisticated filters so that your search will come up with enough candidates. HypeAuditor currently has a 137.5M+ influencer database and brands can search for creators across five social media channels.
Top trending accounts
HypeAuditor accumulates every month a list of top trending TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube accounts. Brand and personal accounts are becoming popular either through a trend or by creating highly engaging content and gaining a significant following within a short time. You can filter them by follower size, account type, and country.
2. Discover similar creators with a Lookalike tool
An Influencer Lookalike tool uses in-depth data and machine learning algorithms to build a lookalike model of a creator you already know. The tool then searches the influencer database and identifies individuals who have experience or expertise in the same niche and have similar audiences, and interests as the source influencer.
What if you know an influencer but they are in another country? With HypeAuditor’s Lookalike tool, you can search for influencers by location.
Once you have a list of identical creators to the one you like or worked with in the past you can analyze their audience, performance, and past partnerships in more detail and create a shortlist of super-relevant influencers. Finally, you may approach them and inquire whether they would be interested in trying out your products or collaborating with you.
3. Find influencers in your area with Google search
This is easy if you’re in the country/area where you’re looking for creators. Type in the location - more precisely the country or city’s name - together with the relevant keyword. For example, ‘Sydney food vloggers’ or ‘Fitness influencers in France’ and you can start browning the results.
Say, you are physically located in the UK but you are looking for influencers in New York. How do you find influencers for your brand in another country with Google?
You can use a VPN that connects to a server situated in New York. This way your search would return locally relevant influencers.
You can select the US as your search location in Google's Search settings. In spite of this, your UK IP may affect your search results.
You use search operators like ‘influencer’ + inurl:new york or ‘mum blogger’ + intitle:new york.
4. Conduct a local hashtag search on social media
You can start your creator search by gathering a few hashtags that include the type of influencer you’re searching for and the specific city or area. For example, if you’re looking for pet influencers, you can type in the hashtag #sydneydogs in the social media channel’s search bar and explore the recent posts that used this hashtag.
One of the many posts featured for the #sydneydogs hashtag on Instagram
You can also find local influencers if you go to the Explore page on Instagram and check the geotags on posts and reels. It is, however, easier if you use a hashtag that contains the country or city you’d like to find creators from. This way, you’ll see content that was created in that particular area.
Recent posts using the Sydney, Australia geotag on Instagram
The geotag search will reveal content that was created on the spot, but you still have to examine the topics of these posts to find your match.
5. Monitor social media conversations
Another set of tools that can help you identify influencers in your area are social listening and monitoring tools or influencer marketing platforms with social listening features. These tools enable you to filter content based on the location. Make sure you monitor posts, mentions, and conversations in that geographic area.
As another option, gather a few hashtag or keyword combinations that include a relevant term and the name of the region or country you want to find creators. For example, if you want to locate fashion influencers in Rio, you may use the #riofashion hashtag or the ‘Fashion in Rio de Janeiro’ keyword. Set up alerts so that you’re notified whenever these keywords and hashtags are used in discussions.
HypeAuditor’s social listening tool listed the accounts that used the #riofashion hashtag in the last 90 days.
6. Analyze your competitors’ network
If your physical store is located in a specific area or you operate in one country you probably are aware of your major competitors. Regularly monitor their social media accounts, websites, and blogs whether they mention any notable individuals. Review if any influencers or users with a large following mention your competitors’ names, products, or stores on social media or tag their shops.
See the content type they posted, and find out what occasion prompted them to post. Were they publicizing a store opening, giving away products, or promoting discount codes? Evaluate the follower size of these influencers and the engagement metrics their posts received. Once you have several top creators who worked with your competition, you can search for similar ones with a lookalike tool.
You may track your competitors manually, however, if they are present on numerous social media channels plus if you monitor their website that will take a lot of time and effort. It saves a lot of time if you use social listening tools or a competitor analysis tool.
7. Check your social media following
Followers can be a treasure trove of enthusiastic and devoted people. They might be your brand’s biggest advocates within their communities, so don't let this opportunity pass you by. By checking the Analytics data on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter you’ll be able to see the cities and countries your followers come from. Focus on locations where you have a store or where you want to expand.
As a next step, assess which content received the most likes, comments, shares, and views. Find users who engage with your top-performing posts and have a notable follower base. Check their profiles and bios if they and their followers have any relation to your shop’s location. Analyze what they publish on social media and how active they are.
As another option, you may check your business account’s top followers. The list features users who interact with your account - and content - the most.
8. Attract creators near you with your influencer program
Creating an influencer or ambassador program and letting potential creators find you isn’t a novelty anymore. Many companies do it - even big names - because it ensures that only very interested people will apply for such programs. If international companies can recruit influencers this way, so can local, smaller businesses. They just need to raise awareness of their program a bit differently.
Of course, you must plan your program carefully and create a page where you display the guidelines, all the requirements, and incentives. One of the criteria in this case is that the influencer must live in or be familiar with the region. Spread the word in local media, online forums, and social media groups. You may as partner with other businesses complementary to yours and promote your events and programs through them.
9. Explore local blogs, websites, forums, and social media groups
In the previous point, we already mentioned local forums, groups, and blogs. These pages aren’t only good for promoting your company, you may find authoritative voices who regularly participate in the discussions or leave valuable recommendations.
Good Eats Austin is a Facebook Group where local people recommend restaurants, cafés, and bars for visitors. In addition, restaurants can also advertise if they follow the guidelines.
If you’re opening a café or restaurant in a particular city you should check Facebook. There are many foodie groups on the platform and some of these may include residents who live in that specific area and regularly leave recommendations.
How to find influencers in your area: Offline methods
10. Attend local industry events, conferences
Although the world is becoming more digital and relationship building is shifting to social media, there are still plenty of offline opportunities where you can network and get acquainted with influential voices in your niche. Industries like hospitality and tourism have trade shows and events in many big cities.
Explore the list of presenters and speakers. They may be professionals who have a high credibility in the field. Use these occasions to meet these attendees, and get to know other exhibitors and small business owners. It’s worth checking the vent organizers as well since they may have direct connections to local subject matter experts and influencers and can help you connect with them.
11. Recommendations from your network
Your professional network includes your employees, industry peers, customers, and business partners. If your business has offices and shops in multiple locations, these people’s knowledge can be a tremendous help. They are aware of local influencers, events, and habits that come in handy when you try to appeal to local audiences.
Ask around your employees who work in distant regions whether they follow content creators in your niche in a specific geographical area. Or launch an employee advocacy program and motivate your colleagues to become your brand’s influencers.
Industry peers and vendors may collaborate or at least know content creators who could be a good fit for your company.
Survey your customers, whether they know any big industry names who could become your potential influencer partners.
12. Work with influencer marketing agencies
The marketing agencies in your city or the country in which you want to expand have established good relationships with local influencers. They know the local influencer landscape and can provide you with some market and competitor insights as well.
To succeed you must discuss your campaign’s details, needs, and expectations with them and let them do the search, based on what you shared with them. You may team up with them for only influencer discovery and vetting or you let them help you with the planning and managing of the whole campaign.
13. Participate in community initiatives
You can connect with creators by sponsoring, organizing, or participating in local initiatives. Attend charities and fundraisings, these events often attract influencers, who can often serve as hosts or promote the cause if it is about something they are passionate about.
Community service programs like planting trees in parks and cleaning up neighborhoods will appeal to environmentally conscious creators. If these initiatives fit your brand values, you and your colleagues can participate in them and network with passionate advocates at the same time.
Fitness brands can sponsor sports programs and teams. An event like this is a stellar opportunity to meet athletic content creators. Moreover, you grow your positive reputation if you support young talent or locally important issues.
14. University and college programs
College and university students are a wide audience segment and more and more brands turn to them if they want to reach their peers. The young generation is less accepting when it comes to traditional marketing and listens more likely to people their age.
From food and beverage companies to tech brands, numerous businesses can benefit from working with students because they are tech-savvy and skilled in content creation. They understand student life with its challenges and funny sides and they can bring new energy and perspective to the promotion.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are multiple roads you can take when it comes to finding local influencers and our article hopefully helps you specify the methods that will work for you. Local influencers enable you to drive awareness and engagement at a local level. Instead of sharing general promotional messages, content created with local influencers will ensure that you tap into highly interested niche audiences and tie your relationship closer.
