In the last few years, TikTok has grown rapidly, especially among Gen Z and young Millennials. What’s its secret? TikTok content is relatable, unique, authentic, and prone to go viral. The platform’s users are considered the most engaging, with 92% of them liking, sharing, or commenting after they are exposed to a video. 61% of TikTok users have discovered a brand on the platform, plus, they are the most tolerant when it comes to ads.
As TikTok transforms social media, so are micro-influencers gaining popularity among brands. These creators have a following of 10K-50K and are becoming a key component of many marketing strategies. Despite their smaller reach, they generate the highest engagement rates and are perceived as more authentic by users than celebrities and macro-influencers.
Even though all these sound promising, a lot of businesses are still hesitant to work with micro-influencers on TikTok. Content on TikTok differs from other social media, it has its distinctive style, culture, and audience landscape. Several brands find it hard to adjust to TikTok’s quickly emerging trends and challenges. Others with an experience in traditional advertising fear their content will come off as inauthentic.
Interestingly, micro-influencers may be the solution to these challenges and uncertainties. Their creativity, credibility, and approachable personality can lend brands a human characteristic. This article will show you and your team numerous tactics to locate them. We will mention numerous methods on how to find micro-influencers on TikTok and how to identify them outside the platform.
Find micro-influencers directly on Tiktok
Use TikTok’s search function
Like all popular social media platforms, TikTok’s search bar enables you to look for TikTok micro-influencers by hashtags, keywords, and brand mentions.
Conduct a hashtag search
Many influencers use specific hashtags associated with their interests, expertise, or hobbies. If they are knowledgeable in your niche, they use hashtags you are likely to use. Hashtags related to your industry, services, challenges, and core values will lead you to potential TikTok content creators. Scan through these profiles and look for those that have a few ten-thousand followers and a decent engagement level. TikTok’s algorithm checks video captions and descriptions, creator bios, and comments for tags.
Find TikTok influencers by keywords
It is worth giving a shot to check keywords as well. Some hashtags are keywords by themselves but several influencers on TikTok use key phrases in their content too. Your keyword search will display influencers who use important keywords in their username, captions, bios, and video overlay texts.
Uncover TikTok creators by brand mentions
You may be surprised how many people mention your brand’s name on social media. A mention search will help you discover TikTok users who talk excitedly about your brand and, even better like and use your products. Many micro-influencers use their social media channels to recommend businesses, products, and services to their followers. And the cherry on top? These endorsements are all genuine and will reach interested audiences. Alternatively, you can monitor your competitors’ brand mentions as well, but we’ll discuss this option in detail later.
Apply TikTok’s search filters
Word is out that TikTok is becoming a search engine. 40% of the young generation, the top users of the platform, already use it as a search engine. A few years ago TikTok introduced search filter capabilities. They help you narrow down your search by numerous factors. Videos can be filtered by like count, relevance, and posting date. Luckily, you can refine your search for users as well by the number of followers a user has or whether the account is verified or not. What does this mean to you? Once you do keyword research you can fine-tune your results by applying TikTok’s filters and determine the audience size.
Explore TikTok’s For You page
The For You page on TikTok curates content based on the videos you create and upload, the videos you engage with, and the users you follow. So if you view many videos about cooking and follow food TikTokers, the algorithm will display more videos by users who create content around cooking and recipes.
You can manipulate your feed by continuously watching and interacting with content that is relevant to your industry. Thus, TikTok will show videos by various people who are immersed in the subject. This enables brands that collaborate with small influencers on TikTok to discover new faces besides those they already know.
Can businesses find micro-influencers on TikTok Creator Marketplace?
While the TikTok influencer marketplace simplifies for businesses to connect with over 800,000 influencers, unfortunately, companies that are looking for small influencers won’t find it useful. To join the marketplace, content creators need more than 100K followers, which immediately excludes nano- and micro-influencers. Therefore, companies who look for micro-influencers on TikTok have no choice but to use the above-mentioned methods or external search solutions, which we’ll discuss in the rest of the article.
Identify TikTok Micro-Influencers Off-Platform
Leverage an influencer marketing platform
The most efficient way to uncover relevant micro-influencers is to use an exhaustive platform like HypeAuditor. Its database has expanded to over 137 million influencers, from which 69 million (half of it!) are TikTok content creators. HypeAuditor offers several methods to identify TikTok influencers from filters to trending accounts.
Let’s see how many options you have!
How to find TikTok influencers with filters?
You can search across five platforms including TikTok with the discovery tool. Start by selecting the platform and determine the influencer’s size. You may choose one of the 5 influencer types - in this case, micro-influencer - or determine a custom follower range. Once you established these two you may set additional filters.
All the filters you can apply in HypeAuditor’s Discovery tool to find influencers on TikTok
By all means, pick the influencer’s category so that they align with your niche. Apart from this you should set the influencer’s location and describe your target audience by selecting their age, gender, and location as well.
Your marketing campaign’s goals will help you determine what aspects of the influencer’s performance should you consider. If you want to increase awareness or visibility, use the follower growth and average views filters. If you aim to drive engagement and conversions, then narrow down your TikTok influencer search by average likes, comments, and shares.
These micro-influencers on TikTok grew their followers by 30% or more in the last 180 days. If your campaign’s goal is to grow visibility then you should select TikTok content creators who are growing rapidly themselves
Identifying similar TikTok influencers
Say, you have a TikToker that matches your industry, and target audience, and their engagement is exceptional. The only problem is they charge a rate that exceeds your budget or they are not in your location. Don’t worry, that’s one of the reasons we designed our Lookalike tool.
You can quickly look for identical influencers that match the one you like or worked with before. The tool analyzes the source creator’s audience, style, engagement, and topic and scans our database for similar creators. On the top of the list, you can set the influencer size to micro-influencer and determine the location as well.
Trending TikTok accounts
You’ll be able to find plenty of micro-influencers if you check the Top trending TikTok accounts. HypeAuditor accumulates every month a list of social media users who have grown their followers and popularity rapidly within a month. Along with the follower growth rate, we present their ER and AQS as well. You can fine-tune the list by audience location, influencer size, and account type.
For a more comprehensive analysis, click on the user and open the analytical report. There you can evaluate their follower growth and audience quality and select creators who have increased organically their follower base.
Invite TikTok influencers to apply to your campaign
Dedicate a specific website to your TikTok influencer program. Describe the application terms and requirements, such as the creator’s niche, size, location, language, and other factors. Mention the campaign’s purpose, length, compensation structure, and other perks influencers and/or their audiences can earn. Again, HypeAuditor got you covered with its Landing Page creator feature. Customize your page with your logo design and cover image and edit your application form to meet your campaign’s conditions.
Find small influencers on TikTok with social listening
You can do a hashtag, keyword, and brand mention search with social listening tools similar to your search on TikTok. What makes it worth using a social listening tool is that you don’t have to restart your search every day. Simply set up notifications for selected hashtags, keywords, and mentions and the tool will automatically update your dashboard with new videos each day. If you want to see videos posted by micro-influencers, then simply set it in the filter.
Here’s how many times and by who Arcteryx an outdoors and technical outerwear brand was mentioned in the past 90 days
You can get a detailed view of the influencer’s audience and performance if you click on their username.
How to find micro influencers on TikTok through competitor analysis?
You can gather information about your competitors’ TikTok marketing activities manually on TikTok or with social listening tools. As discussed at the beginning of the article, you can track rival businesses’ campaign hashtags, industry-related keywords, and brand mentions on TikTok itself. Once you gather the users who use the pre-determined phrases, tags, and brand names you must analyze the profiles and content one by one. This manual approach takes a lot of time and effort but can yield valid results.
Social listening tools replace tedious work, tables, and spreadsheets. They help you assess performance in greater detail and understand the context these terms were used. Overall, they facilitate the identification of highly effective content and, thus top-performing influencers.
Use Google search
Through Google, you’ll uncover influencer top lists and articles about brands that successfully collaborated with TikTok micro-influencers. Use key terms relevant to your industry and add ‘TikTok micro-influencers’ or micro-influencers on TikTok’ to it. Refine your TikTok influencer search by including a location in the term. Check top lists and other brands’ success stories and look for similar creators on TikTok or with tools.
Check YouTube and Instagram
Even if you've been using YouTube or Instagram and feel that TikTok is something new to you, don't worry. Content creators often post across multiple platforms. The younger the creator, the more likely they are to have a TikTok account as well. So, if you already follow a few names on YouTube or Instagram, view their About page or bio and see if they have a TikTok channel.
Once you find them on TikTok, analyze their follower size, their content style, format, posting consistency, relevancy, and engagement. If they tick all your boxes, you have managed to grow your list of potential TikTok micro-influencers.
Ask for referrals from your network
Your professional connections and customers are also great sources to recommend quality micro-influencers on TikTok. Your employees, social media followers, and clients may follow influential people with vast knowledge in your niche. You can conduct surveys and polls on social media if they have any preferred small influencers on TikTok or who they follow. Simultaneously, you can ask your employees in internal newsletters for referrals.
Asking business partners and industry peers, and participating in online and offline events may provide you with potential TikTok micro-influencers. Fellow business owners, subject matter experts, or conference speakers can become your influencer partners or introduce you to reliable individuals with experience and knowledge in your industry.
Selecting the Right Method
TikTok micro-influencers can be a valuable addition to your marketing mix. With so many methods available, businesses must consider if they want to pursue affordable approaches like finding micro-influencers on TikTok itself or opting for a more data-driven solution like influencer marketing or social listening tools with detailed analytics. Either way, don’t exclude one for the sake of the other. Leveraging external tools, competitor analysis, and using Google and TikTok’s search capabilities will provide the highest possibility of you finding TikTok micro-influencers.
