Finding the right Instagram Influencer

[The_Ireland_Sto]

Hello,

I have recently began building my second store. I closed the first one as I quickly learned that the niche I started was highly saturated and there was no real necessity for what I was selling that a person couldn't just buy at a store. While I did have some sales I used it more as a learning platform.

On to my second store: I am specializing in products affiliated with the country of Ireland. Mostly novelty items to include St. Patty's Day clothing, cell phone cases, a few peices of Celtic Jewelry, etc. Basically, items that people cannot just find at a store and can only purchase online. I have begun searching for influencers related to this topic and am kind of hitting a brick wall. I don't know which direction to take in order to find influcencers that connect with what I'm selling. I've typed everything imaginable related to Ireland in the Instagram search engine and there really isn't anything that is grabbing my attention. It's time to start thinking outside of the box but I really don't know what to do. 

Hoping someone can provide me with some useful insight with this.  

Thanks in advance for your feedback

[Leon]

Hello! 

Leon here from the Shopify Support team. 

There are a few ways to find the right influencer for the product that you're offering, here are a few tips I've picked up. How have you been trying to find one? If you're searching just on Instagram, you may be missing who you're looking for. There are a number of influencer platforms that specialize in locating an influencer for the product you're promoting, which could be a great place to start looking if you haven't already.

If you're new to this process, I recommend having a look through the Beginners Guide to Influencer Marketing on Instagram, and the Shopify Blog topic for Influencer Marketing here. 

I hope these resources help you find the influencer you need! 

Best Wishes, 

Leon 

[Rock_Paper_Copy]

Hi there! Maggie, a Shopify Partner here 🙂

This can be very tricky, but your niche sounds awesome. People are passionate about Ireland, as it's a country with a great culture. You definitely need to think outside the box in your case. You need to think from your customers' perspective - who is most likely to be passionate about Ireland? People living in Ireland, people traveling to Ireland for holiday, or Irish people living abroad? In my opinion, the latter is your biggest audience - there's plenty of Irish people living in the US and other countries, and they all are passionate about the country. 

Another, more controversial approach is to target people who live in Northern Ireland and want it to become independent from the British Crown - although not sure how likely they are to buy St Paddy key ring 😉

Your best approach is to find an Instagram account about Ireland [culture, music, travels] and analyze their followers. See who are they - people following this particular Instagram profile naturally are interested in Ireland, therefore they are likely to be your target audience. See which of them are active on Instagram and post about Ireland. Make sure they have a large following themselves [2k +] in order to qualify as a potential Influencer for your brand. Make sure you repeat this process a number of times until you gather at least 20 profiles, then reach out to them with the compelling offer and see if you can work together. This is how I run Influencer Marketing campaigns. Feel free to give me a shout if you had any questions, and please check few helpful sources below:

How to find Instagram Influencers [video guide]

A complete beginner's guide to Influencer Marketing

How to get more Instagram followers [video tutorial]

Maggie Tuczapska

Ecommerce Expert at Rock Paper Copy

http://www.rockpapercopy.com

maggie@rockpapercopy.com

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Create a Shopify Store today! #ad

[The_Ireland_Sto]

Thank you both for your responses - these are awesome ideas! 

[dariadaria]

Hi there!

There are so many tools to help you with search, but they do not do all the work for you and yes, you need to pitch influencers and agree on conditions on your own. You also need to pay for them, and let’s be honest – you don’t need those tools every single day. The only I’d recommend you is ninjaoutreach. If you’ve decided to use a software tool in your arsenal, let it be this one.

But you could also search for influencers on Instagram for free. Be ready to spend a month in your research, but you will know that this person is a true influencer and can help you.

Follow Hashtags

You know the brands that are your competitors, right? Here we are, just follow their hashtags to define who they pay for and how effective their budgets are spent.

Scroll down and check on posts and engagement under them. In such a way, I easily defined 3 potential influencers for my yoga clothes brand.

How do I contact them? Tap on their profile and click on email. If you need some email samples to reach out to influencers, let me know in comments and I’ll create a cheat list for you.

Here is a complete guide on what influencers you should focus on, examples of visuals and best ideas of collaboration with them in case you don’t know how to start: How To Use Micro-Influencers to Spark Sales

[DearMishuDad]

Yes yes yes (and definitely pay them) only that the ninja tool is still not matured for specific searches...maybe end of the year it will?

[Bloombe]

If you need to add more functions to your instagram, you can always try https://zen-promo.com/view_likes_on_instagram for free trial and check it's functions as auto comment with original comments and managing your subscribers and followers

[hbogard]

Imagine the kind of ideal influencer you want promoting your products. Think of the kind of words they use to describe themselves, or ones they use in their posts/picture captions.

Now there are two ways of putting these words to use:

Finding them by keywords in their bio: https://www.searchmy.bio/

Or using Google using custom search queries like these: site:instagram.com INFLUENCERKEYWORD "k followers"

The K followers bit works only sometimes and reports results that have followers in the thousands.

Pretty soon, Facebook is going to be launching their own Influencer search tool so you can look forward to that and not invest in other paid tools in the meantime: https://www.withintheflow.com/facebook-branded-content-matching-leaked/

[SarahAtCarro]

Hi, 

I think you could find great success with partners like Irish cultural centers. A few searches and I was able to find the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library in Phoenix, AZ, the United Irish Cultural Center of San Francisco, and the Irish Center of Southern California (in Glendale). All of these centers may have email lists that could recommend your store. You could also identify influencers, then scroll through their feed to March to see if they celebrated or posted about St. Patrick's day. These influencers would probably prefer to work with you seasonally, but would still be able to drive a lot of traffic in the month or so prior to St. Patty's. 

Also, once you have some sales to your store, you can use the Carro: Influencer Marketing app to identify past customers, email subscribers, and social followers who are influencers and already love your product. 

Good luck!

[declanlawton]

Hi,

According to me, you can Identify key figures and follow hashtags to find popular content creators in your niche. This will definitely help you find the right Instagram influencer for your brand. Let me know if you find any way which works best for you.