6 Free Tools and Methods to Find Creators [2023 Update]

Over the past decade, content creators have become increasingly present in everyday life for consumers. And with the fast growth of the creator economy, the power of creators has been made clear. People love, trust, relate, and listen to them.

Because of this brands seek creators to leverage this power to influence to promote their products and services.

But creators are also consumers themselves and have needs of their own. Namely tools and services that will make their careers as creators easier. So creator-focused companies also need to find creators to fill that demand.

This article will show you six completely free tools and methods to find relevant creators to your business whether you’re a brand looking to promote, or a company looking to acquire!

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FindCreators is a free Instagram creator discovery tool that you can use to find relevant creators based on keywords in their Instagram bio, and their number of followers.

It’s one of the few free creator discovery tools out there, and the only one that you can use for narrow keyword-based targeting.

The feature to search for creators by a keyword they have in their bio is more powerful than many people realize. Sure you can search for “fitness” to get fitness-related creators, but you can also go way deeper than that.

You can try some very niche keywords to further narrow your search. For the fitness example, you could use “IFBB” if you’re looking for only professional bodybuilders, or “certified trainer” if you’re looking for coaches.

If you were a supplement brand, then you could take it one step further and find all the creators that are sponsoring your competitors by searching for “Gorilla Mind” or “Ryse” (both popular supplement brands).

NOTE: Creators tend to list their sponsorships + a discount code in their bio!

Instagram Creator platforms

Creator or influencer marketing platforms are great tools for brands that want to do small scale collaborations. But they’re generally very expensive, and it’s impossible to go large scale with them.

Luckily I took the time to look through every one of these platforms and pick out the ones that have free trials, so you can take advantage of them without paying a dime! Trial hopping 101.

• Lxrmarketplace
• Buzzsumo
• Pitchbox
• Tribe Dynamics
• Influence.co
• Influencify.com
• Julius with HYPR
• Trend.io
• Socialbook.io
• Kolsquare
• Embold
• Onalytica
• HyperAuditor
• BuzzStream
• PopularPays
• Influencify.co

Hashtags

Using hashtags to look for relevant creators is pretty simple, and you don’t need to use any tools.

• Start by creating a list of hashtags that are relevant to your brand (10-15 is a good number to start with)
• Go to each hashtag on Instagram, and look for creators in the top posts
• Once you find a creator you like save their information in

The email field is the most important one if you plan on reaching out to them. This is how you find it:

• Not every profile will have a publicly available email address, only “business profiles”
• To find a creator's email address simply go to their Instagram profile and look for an email button or a written address somewhere in their bio.

If you can’t find it then the profile is set as a personal profile. But most creators use business profiles, so you’ll be able to find an email address 9 out of 10 times.

Another important field (for brands looking to collaborate with creators) is the engagement rate. To find out the engagement rate of a creator on Instagram simply use this

Now we have that out of the way, all you have to do is repeat this process of looking through hashtags until you find creators you’re happy with.

Look For Creators Using a Chrome Extension

Once you find at least one creator you like there’s a good chance that other creators from the same niche follow them. So searching through the followers of creators is a great place to, well, find more creators!

To do this (without spending your whole day looking through each follower) use this to scan any profile and get a list of everyone that follows them. On that list the follower count of each of the followers will be displayed.

That way you can skim through the list and pick out the accounts that stand out as creators, after which you can save them in your spreadsheet.

The main drawback to this strategy is that it puts your Instagram account at risk of being banned by Instagram, as scraping is against their terms of service. So create a dummy profile and use a free VPN while using the addon.

Google Search Operator

Traditionally using Google search to find creators is super easy. But it won’t get you too far. You’ll just find list articles with the same big, generic creators that everyone else sees.

A better way to search for creators on Google is to use Google search operators. That way your searches can be based on certain relevant keywords. This is how it’s done:

• Create a list of keywords that are closely related to your brand
• When searching on Google, write - “site:Instagram.com” followed by one or multiple keywords from the list you built
• The results will show you Instagram profiles that have those keywords mentioned somewhere on their page (their bio, name, or username)

You could also add a location to your search to further narrow it down. This is especially useful when you are looking for local creators that you want to work in person with.

Examples of good search queries:site:Instagram.com ifbb site:Instagram.com certified coach site:Instagram.com fitness

Examples of bad google search queries: Fitness creator Fitness creators near me

Instagram Suggestions

The Instagram recommended feature is perhaps the simplest way to look for relevant creators, although it can be time-consuming.

When you visit someone’s Instagram profile from mobile, in our case a creator's profile, you will notice a little button on the right side right next to the email or message button.

After you click it, Instagram will show you suggestions of similar profiles to the one you’re on now. Then you can go ahead and click on “See All”.

After that, you’ll be presented with a list of similar accounts that you can look through until you find creators you like. Then just save their information in the spreadsheet I provided earlier.

A Few Extra Tips

When searching for creators:

• Check if their content is in line with your brand
• Glance at their posts and see whether their audience is engaging
• Don’t underestimate micro creators - they have higher engagement rates compared to bigger creators

To Conclude

By now you should be able to find all the relevant creators you need using either one of these free tools and methods. Your best bet would be to use all of them to ultimately build a big list of creators, that you can later use to do your outreach faster and more efficiently!