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TikTok is the social media platform of the moment. It seems to have exploded onto the scene and made a real splash in a much shorter space of time than it took either Facebook or Twitter, and Gen Z absolutely loves it.
Although TikTok has traditionally been popular mainly with the youth, 2020 brought an influx of users from all generations to the social media app. As of January 2022, TikTok users are quite evenly distributed among all but the Baby Boomer and older generations. Regardless of age, the average TikTok user spends up to 858 minutes a month on the platform.
Users really get involved on TikTok. The most successful micro influencers on Instagram receive a 3.86% engagement rate whereas, on TikTok, it’s 17.96%—over four times as much.
Now ranked the third largest social network, TikTok just might be the next best platform for you to increase brand awareness among and generate new sales from your target audience.
In this article, we’ll let you know:
- What TikTok is and who uses it
- How to find TikTok influencers for your specific niche
- How to reach out to influencers on Tiktok
What Is TikTok?
TikTok is a social media platform where users share short-form videos with each other.
When it launched, videos could be no longer than 15 seconds. This has changed as users can now record videos up to three minutes long.
To get started on the platform, you need to create a free business account, similar to the other social networks.
To find the type of content you want, use TikTok’s intuitive search tool and subscribe to the Tiktok accounts of your favorite creators to see their fresh videos in your feed.
TikTok also offers a:
- “For You” page: The TikTok algorithm suggests the type of content you might like to see based on how you’ve interacted with videos in the past, your location, and the hashtags you follow.
- “Discover” page: This allows you to discover content that is trending across the platform.
Who Uses TikTok?
Sixty-nine percent of American teenagers use the platform with a third of them naming TikTok as their favorite social media network. TikTok users aged 4-15 spend an average of 75 minutes on the app per day.
Around three-fifths of TikTok users are women. The popularity of the platform seems to be consistent among all household earning ranges.
What Do You Want to Achieve by Working With a TikTok Influencer?
When figuring out how to find TikTok influencers for your campaign, you need to be clear on what you want to achieve.
Most brands want one or more of the following:
- Brand awareness: Make sure that as many people as possible are exposed to your brand name and your products and services.
- Brand discovery: Brand discovery is the next step after brand awareness. You may want to drive people to your website so they can leave their details for follow-up, more app downloads, or more video views.
- Conversion: Particularly important for e-commerce stores, do you want to drive new sales from your influencer marketing campaigns?
TikTok’s campaign reporting tools are updated in real-time so you can continually monitor how you’re doing.
5 Ways to Choose the Right Influencers for Your TikTok Marketing Campaign
We recommend the following five steps for brands when planning how to find TikTok influencers for their campaigns.
1. Search With Hashtags
Most influencer discovery starts with hashtags.
Start searching for users who post about the types of products and services you sell. Most users put relevant hashtags in their bios and on each video they upload to make them easier for other people to find.
When you’ve identified possible partners from your hashtag search, make a note of the number of followers each user has.
2. Consider How Many Followers They Have
How many users do you want your influencer campaigns to reach?
There are four different types of influencers based on their follower counts:
- Nano influencers: up to 1,000 followers
- Micro influencers: 1,000 to 100,000 followers
- Macro influencers: 100,000 to 1,000,000 followers
- Mega influencers: more than 1,000,000 followers
Macro and mega influencers are more expensive to work with but they can expose your brand to very large audiences.
On the other hand, nano and micro influencers can present your brand to groups within a much more specific niche.
3. Look for High Engagement Rates
Follower numbers are just one metric to keep in mind.
On most social platforms, nano and micro influencers have a higher rate of engagement with their followers than the really popular influencers.
An influencer’s engagement rate is the number of likes, shares, and comments their content gets from their followers.
If you had a choice of two influencers with exactly the same number of followers, choosing the one with the higher engagement rate will give your campaign the best chance of success.
4. Determine if Your Content Would Be a Good Fit With Theirs
Now that you’ve whittled down your shortlist even further, you should spend time going through each potential influencer’s content to see if your brand would be a good fit.
Part of the value of an influencer is that their endorsement of your product or service could persuade one of their followers to buy from you.
Do they talk enough about the types of products or services your brand offers to be seen as an expert by their followers?
It’s also important to ensure a good fit between a potential influencer’s values and your brand values. Your target audiences should be able to relate to the influencers you work with.
5. Analyze the Target Influencer’s Content Quality
Do you think the quality of a potential influencer’s videos is high enough?
Are they edited and lit well? Do they get to the point? Do enough of their videos deliver the punch or the payoff that you want at the end to convince you that they consistently create quality content?
If your potential influencer has passed all five tests, it’s worth making your approach.
3 Extra Ways to Find TikTok Influencers
There are three additional methods to add to your plan on how to find Tiktok influencers below.
1. Approach Your Current Influencers
One great strategy to find influencers is to approach the influencers you work with on other platforms to see if they have an account on TikTok.
If they do, explore how you might work together and what you might need to do differently on Tiktok than on other platforms.
2. Search for Top TikTok Influencer Marketing Lists Online
You can use search engines to find potential influencers to work with.
Type in search requests like:
- “Top TikTok beauty influencers”
- “Top Tiktok fitness influencers”
- “Top Tiktok fashion influencers”
- “Top Tiktok food influencers”
You’ll find lots of sites giving you their top list of TikTok influencers. Click on the links to the influencers’ TikTok accounts in these articles and go through the five steps above.
3. See if Competitor Brands Are Using Influencers
Search TikTok by using competitors’ brand names to discover the names of influencers who are or have worked with them.
Often, influencers with experience of working with brands can be easier to deal with first-timers. However, first-timers bring a very high level of enthusiasm and energy to their first collaboration, so please never rule a potential influencer out due to lack of experience.
3 Ways to Reach Out to TikTok Creators
Now you know how to find Tiktok influencers, and next, you need to figure out your outreach strategy.
How do you persuade the influencers you’ve found to work with you? We recommend the following three steps.
1. Make Sure Your TikTok Bio’s Right
Making sure that all the contact details on your TikTok profile are correct is always good practice on social media.
Give potential influencers the chance to get to know you by linking back to your website and other social media channels once you’ve introduced yourself to them.
2. Follow TikTok Users You Like and Engage With Their Videos
One really effective way to introduce yourself to potential influencers is to follow them first and then like, comment on, and share their posts.
As well as improving their engagement rate, many creators believe that a like, comment, and share from a brand enhances their credibility. It also increases the chances of a potential influencer following you back.
3. Get in Touch by Email or Direct Message
You can get in touch with your potential influencer using TikTok’s direct messaging service.
Alternatively, you could make your approach a bit more business-like by sending an email instead. Many TikTok creators list their email addresses in their profiles.
Receiving an email from you with a company-branded message will give them confidence that you’re serious about exploring the idea of a partnership.
Start Your TikTok Influencer Search With Markerly
It’s possible to use a do-it-yourself influencer marketing platform to find content partners. But coming up with a plan on how to find TikTok influencers for your brand takes time and, if you lack experience dealing with influencers, you may end up paying more for your campaign than you need to.
Work with our campaign management team instead.
Let us find the right influencers for your brand. We’ll connect you to the most talented content creators on TikTok who can present your brand and your products and services directly to your target audience.
We then work with you on all aspects of your TikTok marketing strategy going forward so that your campaign meets and exceeds your goals.
For over a decade, Markerly’s digital marketing team has been responsible for launching some of the most successful partnerships between brands and the best influencers. To speak with our TikTok influencer marketing campaign experts, please fill out our contact form so we can start helping you reach your customers and increase your bottom line.
