Is it possible to find influencers for free?

There’s no need to explain why social media are such a powerful tool. Everybody uses it, people spend lots of time scrolling through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feeds. It’s almost 100% that every reader of this article has an account in at least one social media. This means there is no need to convince you that your business needs an influencer marketing campaign in one or multiple social media.

Good, let’s go further. After deciding you need a campaign and defining what would you like to see and read about your brand, you come to a problem of an executor. This problem is especially harsh if your budget is small. Not everyone could effort spending thousands of dollars to be mentioned in a worldwide celebrity’s post. And you know what? You don’t really need to spend money at all, only some time and efforts. There’s nothing impossible, just follow the guide.

Hunt your influencers down

Start by defining what, or more precisely, who are you looking for. You can’t pick an average Instagram user and ask him to be your influencer. To be fully accurate — you can, but the result won’t be at any distance close to your expectations. So, there are some criteria for an ideal influencer:

This person should have at least 1000 followers

Don’t think it is a small number — it took lots of work to interest and gather these people. Why work with micro-influencers? There are several reasons. Firstly, their connection to the audience if bigger than middle-influencers and celebrities have. The smaller audience — the more time to answer all the questions and speak with followers. Secondly, they just start their influencer career and won’t mind working for a small revenue or even for free. Thirdly, they are much easier to find and negotiate those social media superstars.

The influencer has to match your niche

That’s simple — if you sell watches, you won’t hire an influencer that has a channel about diving. Except you make waterproof watches. Look for influencers that talk about brands similar to yours or events, relevant to your business.

An influencer has to like your brand very much

If that influencer loves your stuff it would be really easy to negotiate with him. It is possible that he is already promoting your brand without any efforts from you. If not — try to make him love your product. The best content is created by people who really love what they are doing.

Where to find them?

Your own followers

Look at your account followers list. Those people already like you. Go through it — there may be a few persons who would gladly cooperate with you. There also could be people who are not influencers by now but could become ones if you help them. Those will be the most devoted to you and could promote your brand without any payments.

Brand hashtags

Looking for influencers start searching for your brand’s hashtag. Those who already use it (and that is not you) — are ideal candidates for negotiation. They already use your product and will continue to do so. Collaboration with such influencer will be the least effort-consuming.

Relevant hashtags

The next step is to search relevant to your business hashtags. You, probably use them too, to make it easier for the audience to find your posts and your brand. Be ready that there will be LOTS of posts matching the most popular hashtags — you’ll have to find in that crowd micro-influencers and filter everyone whose audience is too small or too big.

What to afford them?

That all will be a matter of negotiation. If an influencer likes you, your brand and the way you talk with him — he won’t inflate the price for his service and will more tend to agree with your proposals. Actually, there are some variants of revenue that won’t harm your budget.

Barter

You give an influencer the products you make and he writes posts about them. You can give your influencer the freshest novelties that didn’t hit the shelves yet — such a privilege is a worthy proposal. If an influencer is already your fan — such variant of cooperation will fit both you and him.

Collaboration

You repost and promote the influencer in your account and he, in exchange, do the same for you. It is a great opportunity for beginner influencers — such kind of promotion expands not only your reach but your influencer audience too.

Affiliation

You give an influencer affiliate link to your website and make a deal that he will gain some little profit from every customer that will use that link for purchase. The more clients — the more profit. This way of cooperation allows both you and your influencer control the number of interested in your brand users.

You can sufficiently reduce the cost of your advertising campaign if spend some time and efforts. It won’t be easy to find free influencers, but your work will give you fruitful results in future.

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