Search by hand

You can find strong creators without paying for anything. Here are the manual searches worth running, in order of how useful they tend to be.

• Google: search "best [niche] influencers" or "top [niche] creators on Instagram" to find ready-made lists and standout profiles.
• Social media: search hashtags like #skincaretips, browse the Explore page, then open a creator you like and look at the "suggested" or "similar" accounts.
• Competitor posts: see who your competitors tag, and who comments on or posts about them. Those creators already work with brands like yours.

There's one catch with searching by hand: you can't see a creator's real numbers just by looking at their page. A free browser extension called SocialiQ solves this.

Install it once, and it shows the profile's overall engagement rate, the engagement on each individual post, and a quick snapshot of the account, right on the profile while you browse.

That means you can find and check at the same time. As you click through profiles, the weak accounts give themselves away, and you skip them before they ever reach your list.

Manual search is a great start, but running it for thirty or forty creators is slow going. When you need more names and better filtering, a discovery tool takes over the heavy lifting.

• Google, social search, and competitor posts find creators for free.
• The free SocialiQ extension shows real engagement right on the profile, so you find and vet at once.
• Manual search doesn't scale past a few dozen creators — that's when a tool helps.

Next: Use a discovery tool →