Influencer marketing has become an essential strategy for brands looking to reach targeted audiences, drive engagement, and increase sales. Partnering with relevant influencers who align with your brand and content helps boost credibility and trust in the eyes of potential customers.
But finding the right influencers takes work. With new platforms and technologies emerging constantly, brands need the right tools to identify and connect with influencers that move the needle.
What are Influencer Search Platforms?
Influencer search platforms are powerful tools for marketers to find influencers on social channels. These platforms provide comprehensive influencer profiles, including audience demographics, engagement rate, and follower count. With advanced search filters, marketers can easily discover top influencers in their niche and not include those with fake followers.
12 Free Influencer Marketing Tools for Your Brand Success
Now let’s look at these 12 free, handy tools that brands can start using now to unlock influencer marketing success!
Buzzstream
This influencer targeting platform offers prospects the ability to identify key bloggers and social media influencers and has a free trial. You get access to a database of over 500 million websites and social media profiles. Useful features include influencer identification based on location, keywords, and other criteria. For example, a travel brand could use Buzzstream to pinpoint influencers posting popular content around key destinations.
Pros
- Extensive database of sites/profiles
- Solid influencer identification filters
- Easy export options
Cons
- Paid plans limited for larger influencers
- Mostly blogger/site focus
Followerwonk
Part of the Moz suite of SEO and marketing tools, Followerwonk lets you search Twitter bios and profiles to identify key influencers around niche topics and interests. You can analyze profiles for details like location, authority score, followers gained, engagement metrics, and more. Useful for finding micro or nano influencers specific to your target customer base.
Pros
- Specifically tailored to Twitter
- Powerful bio keyword search
- Authority analysis
Cons
- Twitter focused
- Can get overwhelmed by data
- Requires digging for insights
Ninjaoutreach
While focused on blogger and email outreach, Ninjaoutreach also offers an influencer discovery tool with a database of over 1 million influencer profiles across Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Look up influencers by category, location, audience interests, and other filters through the influencer search tool. Makes it easy to create targeted pitches and manage outreach campaigns after identifying relevant influencers.
Pros
- Specialized in blogger outreach
- In-depth influencer profiles
- Campaign management features
Cons
- Blogger focus limits social influencers
- Must manually filter through the database
Buzzsumo
This content intelligence tool provides insights into performing content and key influencers on topics. You can use it to research what type of content does best on specific themes, then identify authors/creators around that content gaining the most traction. Enables brands to spot on-trend influencers to support content promotion.
Pros
- Specialized content focus
- Competitive analysis features
- Highly visual data
Cons
- Article bias/skew with big publishers
- Social limitations beyond shares
Klear
An end-to-end influencer marketing platform, Klear’s core offering is its influencer discovery capabilities. Get access to an extensive managed database of over 100k global influencers. Search for relevant influencers using category tags, engagement data, hashtags, location, and more. Useful for identifying nano or micro-influencers that match your brand’s niche.
Pros
- Solid managed influencer database
- Broad partner integrations
- Campaign insights
Cons
- Pricey plans for expanded capabilities and access
- Primarily Western profiles
Reach365
When it comes to influencer marketing, Reach365 stands out as one of the premier platforms for brands looking to expand their visibility and resonate with targeted audiences. By facilitating impactful collaborations between influencers and brands, Reach365 empowers businesses to craft campaigns that authentically captivate consumer interest. Their expertise spans strategic social media promotions, scaling up enterprises through influencer partnerships, targeted product promotions, end-to-end campaign management, and compelling content creation. Partnering with Reach365 opens up a world of opportunity for brands seeking to boost their presence across social media.
Traackr
With its Influencers Discovery tool, Traackr allows brands to sort through over 100 million influencer profiles from major networks like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, AI, TikTok, Linkedin, and more. Use filters like keywords, geography, demographic info, and engagement metrics. Traackr also offers influencer relationship management to maximize ROI after discovery.
Pros
- Database with 100M+ profiles
- Broad platform/channel coverage
- Relationship tools
Cons
- Potential data overwhelming without filters
- Competitive Pricing
Upfluence
Upfluence provides another dedicated influencer marketing platform, with various tiers and capabilities. Among its features is an influencer discovery engine and search engine to identify relevant creators from among over 600k profiles. Filter by interests, audience demographics, content topics, post engagement, and location. Upfluence also includes marketing campaign management tools to scale influencer partnerships.
Pros
- End-to-end campaign solution
- 600k+ database
- Instagram focus
Cons
- Limitations at entry tiers
- Still growing social platforms
Right Relevance
Specifically focused on publisher discovery, Right Relevance indexes millions of mid-tier to long-tail websites. It enables brands to identify relevant blogs, forums, directories, and other sites related to their industry or topics that may be open to syndicated content, guest posts, or partnerships. Useful for content distribution and SEO.
Pros
- Specialized blogger/site discovery
- Results actively managed/categorized
Cons
- Manual filtering/evaluation required
- Focused on sites over individuals
Buzzoome
Designed for Twitter influencer marketing, Buzzoome lets you filter through Twitter profiles using metrics like keywords, engagements, interests, gender split, and more. Analyse community profiles and conversations. Also automatically suggests additional relevant influencers to consider. Useful for identifying on-trend nano and micro-influencers on Twitter around your niche.
Pros
- Made specifically for Twitter influencers
- Conversation analysis features
Cons
- Sole Twitter focus limits the full view
- Still building database breadth
Awario
This social media listening tool tracks brand mentions and keywords across hundreds of millions of public sites, profiles, and posts. Among its capabilities, Awario helps uncover influential authors specific to your industry or topic by analyzing the share of voice, content shares, and engagement. Includes blogger outreach tools once identifying great fits.
Pros
- Powerful data insights from search
- Historical tracking and alerts
Cons
- More passive listening than active discovery
- Requires digesting data
Pitchbox
While created for press outreach, Pitchbox also powers influencer discovery through its database of over 1.5 million media contacts, bloggers and social influencers. Search by beat, location, platform or via keywords to find creator matches for your brand’s niche and campaign needs. Useful for integrated PR and influencer partnerships.
Pros
- 1.5M media/influencer contacts
- Solid press focus
- Website influence
Cons
- Manual filtering through lists
- Public profiles mean competition
Ghost Data
This end-to-end influencer platform also provides its own influencer discovery capabilities, tapping into a managed database of over 500k profiles. Dig into profiles using filters like content topics, engagement stats, gender, location, and more. Ghost Data brings that data into its campaign management tools to simplify influencer activations.
Pros
- 500k+ managed influencer database
- Suite of campaign management tools
Cons
- Platform requires investment for fuller capabilities
- Smaller company
The Future of Influencer Marketing
As influencer marketing continues to evolve into a mainstream channel, authenticity and genuine relevance between brands and creators will be critical for success. We expect more specialty platforms to emerge around influencer discovery and relationship management. Artificial intelligence will also play a bigger role in optimising matches between brands and influencers at scale.
Brands that focus on nurturing loyalty and creativity with their influencer partners will gain an advantage. The companies that invest now into building genuine relationships with creators that truly reflect their values will continue thriving with influencer marketing.
The Most Convenient Solution for Brands and Influencers
Influencer Marketing typically demands a minimum of a three-person team to oversee, inevitably escalating the overall expenses. Consequently, many small and medium-sized businesses shy away from leveraging influencers despite acknowledging the advantages. Enter Influencer Marketplace Agencies such as Reach365, offering brands the opportunity to conserve resources while tapping into the expertise of Influencer Marketing specialists. Through Reach365, both brands and influencers can achieve optimal outcomes while mitigating costs.
How Reach365 Supports Brands
Powered by an expansive network comprising over 25,000 influencers, brands, and industry experts, Reach365 facilitates the identification of the ideal influencer tailored to each campaign’s specific objectives. Beyond influencer matching, our team comprehensively grasps the brand and its goals, crafting customized influencer marketing campaigns and diligently overseeing them until the desired results are attained.
Conclusion
The platforms highlighted above offer versatile, free tools for brands at various stages of implementing an influencer marketing strategy. Whether trying to identify relevant nano or micro-influencers on social media channels, or needing data on mid-tier bloggers that could partner on awareness campaigns, these tools provide targeted discovery capabilities.
Combined with intentional relationship building that considers the unique needs of creators, these tools enable brands to expand reach with new audiences through influencer marketing. Consider testing a few of these players and platforms to determine the right solutions for discovering and managing relationships with credible influencers.