How to Find the Right Influencers for Your Brand: 4 Ways and a Checklist (2026)
Short answer: There are four ways to find influencers for your brand: search Instagram and TikTok yourself, hire an agency, use a search tool, or let creators apply to a campaign. Whichever route you take, one thing decides whether it works: the creator's audience has to match your customers. This guide shows how to find them and how to vet them before you send anything.
Start with what you want to get out of it
The right influencer depends on the goal. Decide it before you start looking, or you will end up choosing on gut feeling.
Visibility and trust: the creator shows your product to their followers. The audience matters most. This is classic influencer marketing, often a PR package.
Content for your own channels: you want photos and videos for ads or your website. The creator's followers matter less; this is UGC. Read more in UGC vs influencer marketing.
Sales: the creator gets a personal discount code and commission on what sells. You want an audience that buys, not just likes.
Four ways to find influencers
1. Search Instagram and TikTok yourself
Free and a good way to learn who exists in your niche, but it takes time.
Search hashtags and words your customers use, such as #skincareroutine or "weeknight dinner".
Look at who already tags you or your competitors. People who already like the category are the easiest to win over.
Use locations and local hashtags if you sell locally.
Open a good profile and check the suggested similar accounts.
The downside: you can't see the audience's age, country or gender without asking, and cold DMs often go unanswered.
2. Hire an agency
An influencer agency picks creators, negotiates and runs the campaign for you. It suits brands with budget that want to skip the work. You pay for the agency's time on top of the creators' fees, so ask for a quote that shows both. Remember that you as the brand are still responsible for the ads being labelled correctly, even when an agency handles the contact.
3. Use a search tool
There are databases where you filter creators by niche, followers and audience data. They save time, but most charge a monthly fee and you still do the outreach yourself. There is no guarantee the creator wants to work with you.
4. Let creators come to you
Instead of chasing, you publish a campaign: the product, what you want, how many spots and the profile you are looking for. Creators who like the offer apply with a short pitch. You choose among people who already want to, and you don't have to guess who will reply.
That is how Unwrappa works. More on that below.
How to vet an influencer before you send anything
Go through these points for every creator. It takes five minutes and saves both products and money.
The audience: ask for a screenshot of their insights. Country, age and gender should match your customers. If you only sell in Sweden, an audience that mostly lives abroad is wrong, however good the content is.
Engagement: calculate it yourself (see below). It is a better measure than follower count.
The comments: read them. Real questions and conversations are a good sign. Only emojis and "nice!" from accounts without photos is a warning sign.
The follower curve: sudden jumps of thousands of followers without a viral post can mean bought followers.
The content: would you be proud to share it? Light, tone and style say a lot about how your product will look.
Past collaborations: does the creator label ads clearly? That is your shared responsibility. See our guide to ad labelling.
Values: would the rest of the creator's content sit well next to your brand?
Tax: ask whether the creator has F-skatt (Swedish business tax registration). It affects whether you owe employer contributions, even when you only send products. See the tax guide for brands.
How to calculate engagement rate
Add up likes and comments on the latest 10 to 12 posts, divide by the number of posts, then by the number of followers. Multiply by 100 for a percentage.
Example: 12 posts with 4,800 likes and comments in total gives 400 per post. With 8,000 followers that is 400 / 8,000 = 5 percent.
For comparison: Buffer analysed more than 27 million Instagram posts in 2025 and found a median of 4.3 percent. Accounts with 1,000 to 5,000 followers averaged 4.6 percent and accounts with 100,000 to 500,000 followers 3.5 percent. Buffer also counts saves and shares, which you can't see on other people's accounts, so your own calculation will usually come out a bit lower. If someone is far below their size group, take a closer look.
How many should you start with?
Five to ten creators in the first round rather than a single one. You get several pieces of content to compare, see which kind of profile gets results and spread the risk. Go back to the ones who delivered best in your next campaign.
How to find influencers on Unwrappa
Unwrappa has 650+ manually verified creators, and 81 percent of them have under 10,000 followers. In other words, it is a place for micro and nano influencers.
Publish a campaign. Choose the product and its value, number of spots, deadline and the profile you want, for example a minimum follower count and the audience's country and gender. The free plan covers one active product campaign with up to three spots.
Receive applications. Verified creators apply with a pitch. You see the pitch, niche, country and follower count straight away. You open the full profile, with links and media kit, with Plus or Pro, or with your free unlock.
Browse and invite. Every brand can browse creators and filter by niche, followers, country, gender, age, audience age, gender and country, and distance from a city. With Plus or Pro you open full profiles and invite creators directly, 30 or 100 a month.
Approve the ones who fit. The address is shared automatically when you approve, so you can ship straight away. Once the creator has posted, they add the link to the post in the app.
Unwrappa is not a party to the collaboration. What you agree on, and labelling the ads correctly, is up to you and the creator.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find influencers in my city?
Search local hashtags and location tags on Instagram, or filter by distance from a city if your platform supports it. On Unwrappa you can choose 10, 25, 50 or 100 kilometres from a city.
How can I tell if an influencer has bought followers?
Look for low engagement compared to their size, comments that are only emojis from empty accounts and sudden jumps in follower count. Ask for a screenshot of their audience insights.
How many followers does an influencer need?
There is no minimum. For product collaborations, accounts with a few thousand engaged followers in the right niche often work better than big accounts with a broad audience. Read more in the guide to micro-influencers.
Should I contact influencers by DM or email?
Email if it is in their profile, otherwise DM. Keep it short and concrete: what you offer, what you would like and why that particular creator. Generic messages rarely get a reply.
Does it cost anything to find influencers on Unwrappa?
No. Publishing a product campaign, receiving applications and browsing creators is free. Plus (399 SEK a month) unlocks full profiles, direct invitations, chat and paid collaborations.
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