How to find Twitter (X) influencers: helpful tips and top 7 influencer research tools
Article summary
Influencer marketing is gaining momentum on different social media networks. Twitter is not an exception. In this article, we collect tips on how to find Twitter influencers and helpful tools to speed the search up.
Influencer marketing is not a new concept for social media marketing. In fact, it’s been around for so long that no one even doubts its efficiency.
Influencer marketing started with celebrity endorsements: famous people wearing expensive watches, drinking Pepsi, and talking about their alleged personal skincare.
At some point, influencer marketing turned to experts: 9 out of 10 dentists recommend Colgate… You know how it works.
And then, some of that celebrity and expert craze moved to social media. Some social media influencers nowadays have more followers than celebrities!
How did this happen?
Firstly, social media took over all other forms of entertainment: we spend more time on social networks than on watching TV or searching the web.
Then, the number of social media influencers grew exponentially. Anyone can become a social media influencer if they have a following on social media. YouTube pioneered that idea and other social networks followed.
Finally, people trust social influencers more than they trust TV stars and sportspersons.
Influencers’ lives are more transparent — at least, they seem more transparent — than the lives of celebrities. Influencers reply to followers online, take part in social media conversations, talk a lot about their lives. They explain why they choose to wear Urban Outfitters or advertise oat milk.
Influencers are often more relatable. They exist in every niche and can be of any age, race, gender, and socio-economic status. They don’t have to be pretty or rich. Being an expert in whatever it is that some people are interested in or being sociable/interesting/talented is enough. Although that still sounds like a lot of work.
Moreover, you need to be smarter to find influencers. Since there are many niches and many types of influencers, it's much more difficult to discover the right one.
It’s also important to say that social media influencers and viral internet celebrities are different kinds of social media phenomena. In terms of marketing, this means that you usually can’t just offer some money to an influencer so that they say something good about your brand (you can do that with internet celebrities).
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Social media influencers are all about their reputation: they care a lot about what their audience thinks of them and will find it risky to lie or mislead their followers.
There’s a lot to learn if you decided to start working with influencers.
As I mentioned, influencers exist in every niche. Moreover, there are different kinds of influencers. They differ in terms of the size of their audience, their approach to marketing, and their personality. In the ocean of social media and the influential people of social media, it isn’t always easy (to be fair, it is almost never easy) to find the right influencers.
So, how do you do that? How do you find influencers that fit your brand perfectly?
Influencers exist on every social media network. But this post is about Twitter influencers: finding influencers on Twitter in every industry and of any sort.
We will explain how to find influencers on Twitter, but the first thing you’ve got to do is identify the type of influencer that would fit your brand.
Decide on your “perfect influencer”
Deciding on your perfect Twitter influencers is a lot like coming up with your buyer persona.
Try answering questions, such as:
- What is the influencer’s ideal age, gender, location?
- How does the influencer deliver information to his/her followers?
- How active is he/she on Twitter?
- How large is their following?
- How engaged are their followers?
- What is the demographic of their followers?
Use Twitter search
The easiest way to find Twitter influencers simply using the local search is through the hashtag search.
Choose the hashtags most popular in your niche (use hashtagify.me if you don’t know any), and search the hashtags in the Twitter search bar. The ones that will appear will be the ones that have gotten the most attention from Twitter users thus the posts are likely to belong to Twitter influencers.
Look through the authors that have used the hashtag and have a lot of retweets to find the most popular Twitter influencers. The accounts that have more followers than the others will probably be the ones to focus on.
Attend Twitter Chats
Twitter Chats exist in some niches. The goal of Twitter Chats is to connect people in one industry. They are usually led by influencers and have influencers as guests and active participants.
Twitter Chats are about hour-long live conversations that happen regularly at the same time. People follow them by using a common hashtag. A Twitter Chat implies that there’s a specific topic of discussion, a host, a guest, and a follow-up Q&A.
It’s a great place to meet influencers, form connections, and choose the right people to work with. As a bonus, you can get more Twitter followers if you actively participate.
As a quick point, there is an audio version of Twitter Chats — Spaces where you can talk and listen to their hosts in real-time mode. For now, a lot of influencers use this feature.
Use the right tools
Finally, there are Twitter tools that turn the search of Twitter influencers into an easy and pleasant task. Here are my top picks:
1. Awario
Yes, as corny as it is I’ll start with our own tool — Awario.
Awario is a social listening tool and it does much more than just finding Twitter influencers. It monitors all major social networks, news sites, blogs, forums, and the web, and finds influencers on all of these platforms.
Finding Twitter influencers, as well as finding other influencers, is one of its main analytics features. You get a list of brand advocates if you monitor your own brand, and a list of industry influencers if you monitor your industry.
Besides, you get all kinds of other analytics: growth analysis, competitor analysis, sentiment analysis. You know how much people talk about your brand, where that happens, who the people that mention your brand are, and what they say.
Pricing: Starts at $39/mo (or $24/mo if you buy a yearly plan).
Free trial: You can sign up for a free 7-day trial.
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2. Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is a free dashboard with all Twitter activities that helps you navigate through them and manage them. In one dashboard, you get timeline items, mentions, direct messages, lists, trends, favorites, search results, and hashtags. You can also switch between multiple accounts and schedule tweets.
While influencer search isn’t as straightforward on Tweetdeck as it is in most paid tools, it’s still possible. The best way to find Twitter influencers using Tweetdeck is to search for hashtags and retweets: hashtags will hint at the industry, while the number of retweets will show who has the influence. You can also check whether a specific person is a right influencer or not by looking up the lists he or she is on.
Pricing: Tweetdeck is ever free.
3. Upfluence
Upfluence is a massive influencer database for identifying influencers on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, Pinterest, and blogs. It has over 3 million influencer profiles, so chances are, your perfect one is just there.
You can search the database using as many keywords as you like, assigning a relative weight to each keyword. To find influencers on Twitter, narrow your search to include only Twitter influencers. The tool shows the results in near real-time and categorizes influencers based on their follower count. It also analyses the influencers’ niche, reach, engagement, location, and demographics, and even reveals influencers’ post times and the content they post most often.
Upfluence also has a Chrome plugin to analyze an influencer's profile straight from the browser.
Pricing: You need to contact the Upfluence support guys to get the asking price.
Free trial: No.
4. NinjaOutreach
NinjaOutreach is a platform that lets you find even more influencers on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The tool asks for your niche and location, and provides you with the influencer list based on this information. The tool shows influencers’ engagement rates and, as a bonus point, you get to see how much the influencer charges per post straight away.
NinjaOutreach also has a built-in CRM for you to start with the outreach as soon as you’re done choosing the right influencers.
Pricing: Starts at $389/mo (yearly plans save you 60% of the price).
Free trial: Yes, a free 7-day trial is available.
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a popular content and influencer discovery tool. You can use it to find the most popular content in your niche on Twitter that will show you the most popular — the most influential! — Twitter authors in your niche.
The tool also finds authors with the most engagement on Twitter, as well as on Instagram and Facebook. The final list of influencers is automatically broken down into bloggers, influencers, and journalists.
Pricing: Starts at $99/mo.
Free trial: Yes, BuzzSumo provides a free 30-day trial. Also, you can use a free version with limited access.
6. Social Blade
Social Blade is a research platform that enables you to reveal stats around social handles on Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other networks. Additionally, you can download its mobile apps for Android and iOS or use its browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
This platform primarily helps you analyze influencers' profiles before you reach out to them. Checking a particular Twitter influencer with Social Blade, you get essential stats around his/her profile:
- the number of followers and tweets per day, the last two weeks and 30 days (these data are also available in graphs),
- its followers and tweets ranks,
- the date of the profile created,
- its influential rank.
On Social Blade, you can also find the lists of most followed and most tweeted Twitter accounts (top 50 and top 100 are available for free). Your industry influencers can be there, can’t they?
Pricing: Premium membership plans start at $3.99/mo.
Free trial: No, but you can use the platform (and get a limited amount of the data) for free.
7. Tweepi
Tweepi is neither a classic influencer research tool nor an influencer database. However, you can use it to find brand advocates.
The AI-based tool analyzes Twitter profiles, including those you follow, to reveal the most engaged and relevant users.
Setting up your account on Tweepi, you can choose topics and hashtags you are interested in and pick your language. Additionally, the tool will track people who follow your competitors or use the same hashtags.
Then, Tweepi offers you accounts to follow, reply to, like, retweet, or even unsubscribe. It’s the easiest way to cleanse your following of empty profiles, pages with nasty avatars, and spammers. Moreover, it enables you to gain more Twitter followers quickly. Also, the tool helps you detect Twitter influencers related to your niche or topic.
Pricing: Paid plans start at $10.75/mo.
Free trial: No, but there is a free limited Tweepi package.
Over to you...
Hopefully, this article has enough information for you to start with influencer marketing — at least, with its first part. I promise, this is the hardest one. To know what comes next, check out this quick guide on influencer marketing.
