Businesses and entrepreneurs strive daily to build and maintain an engaging audience, get new customers, and make massive sales. However, getting new customers can sometimes be challenging.
Influencer marketing is a great way to solve this challenge. Businesses can build their own audience out of an influencer’s existing audience. Influencer marketing has continued to see a steady rise with the popularity of social media especially Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat.
Partnering with the right influencer is a very effective marketing strategy as it lessens the stress of scouting for followers from the scratch and gives you ample time to focus on promoting your content. The only hiccup to getting a great result is researching the influencers that fit your brand or business. But then, it isn’t as hard as it seems.
You can opt for tools specifically designed to find, analyze, connect, conduct, and manage influencer research. Listed below are a series of the best influencer research tools suitable for you irrespective of your line of business.
Best influencer research tools in 2020
1. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is ideal for building business relationships. While surfing the web, BuzzStream allows you to research regular websites through its offer of a browser extension.
It allows you add popular blogs in your niche to your list. You can as well get relevant information about the owner of the blog.
BuzzStream also allows you to find influencers related to you and your niche through the use of keywords, giving you detailed information of the influencer’s social media presence and website, and the ability to sort them into filterable prospect lists.
You can dispatch personalized emails and automated follow-ups, and view data on your outreach once in possession of your prospect lists.
BuzzStream also helps you manage your entire influencer marketing process. The platform is mainly supported on blogs but can be used to list blog influencers on social media.
Pricing
BuzzStream has a Starter plan which begins at $24 per month and accommodates up to 2 users. It doesn’t have all the features but has some key ones.
To access its entire features, you will subsequently have to opt for its advanced payment option.
You also get 14-day free trial to see if the solution works for you.
2. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a neat tool that performs influencer research in different ways. The tool can help you find competitor’s top-performing content as well as renowned content for specific topics. This further helps you connect with the creators of these unique posts.
More so, BuzzSumo also has a great research tool that allows you to identify relevant Twitter influencers using both its bios and shared content.
Its Type filters allow you to perform filters irrespective of the type of influencer such as an individual, a blogger, company, or an influencer.
Platforms that support the use of BuzzSumo are just Twitter and blogs.
Pricing
BuzzSumo offers a free version that allows you to make limited searches. But if you are looking out for unlimited searches and other features, NinjaOutreach plans start at $99 per month.
3. NinjaOutreach
This is a full-service cloud-based influencer research tool which allows you to search for prospects in its database. NinjaOutreach offers a browser extension that displays information about a website while you are browsing – quite similar to BuzzStream.
While BuzzStream is primarily focused on websites, NinjaOutreach allows you to add tags to filter. You can filter by articles, companies, bloggers, and influencers. You can also directly search Twitter and Instagram for their influencers.
It tracks details on clicks, replies, and emails. The emails open to show the effectiveness of your outreach effort. Furthermore, NinjaOutreach helps you send automated follow-ups and personalized emails to followers on your list, in the event of the acquisition of your prospect lists.
Unlike BuzzStream which only permits you to automate your follow-ups, NinjaOutreach allows you to program your email sequence, including the initial email.
Platforms that supports the use of NinjaOutreach includes Twitter, Instagram and blogs.
Pricing
Unlike BuzzStream which starts at $24 per month, NinjaOutreach’s cheapest plan begins from $69 per month. This is quite pricey. Not recommended for beginner bloggers or marketers.
NinjaOutreach offers a 14-day free trial. You get the opportunity to sign up and play around it without before you decide to take the leap or not.
4. Hunter
This tool may be quite complicated for marketing newbies. It does not help you target influencers, rather it can help you directly contact the influencer using their actual email addresses.
It is solely focused on finding email addresses and allows you to send outreach emails.
Pricing
Hunter tool is free per month for up to 100 email searches.
5. Pitchbox
Marketed mostly for SEO teams and supported by blogs, Pitchbox is an influencer outreach and research tool which is ideal for blog outreach.
Using a simple keyword search, it lets you find potential influencers.
Its integration with some SEO services helps you filter these influencers to identify the ones with the most influence and send personalized outreach emails and automated follow-ups.
Pricing
Pitchbox pricing is on the high side, doesn’t reflect on their website anymore, and is not feasible for solo bloggers.
6. Awario
This tool is often referred to as a “web monitoring and social media tool”. It allows you to search for people or influencers who have mentioned your brand or related topics, thereby acquainting you with influential influencers posting your brand and niche.
This in turn enables you to monitor these influencers in order to reach out to them and build a mutual business relationship over time. Using Awario, you can consistently monitor certain and identify influential accounts related to a topic through an influencer report.
Awario also helps you with guest blogging. Isn’t that great?
Platforms that support the use of Awario are Facebook, Forums, Twitter, Blogs, Instagram, amongst others.
Pricing
Awario pricing starts at $29 per month but get 2 months free if you pay annually. Cool, right?
7. Followerwonk
Followerwonk is a free influencer marketing tool where you can find influencers on Twitter t promote your products. This tool is ideal for bloggers on a budget who are in search of influencers on Twitter. Followerwonk is free but its features are not as solid as the paid tools mentioned above.
Just like NinjaOutreach, it helps you find Twitter influencers in your niche. In addition, searches Twitter bios using keywords to compare with other users. Followerwonk is great simply because of its free tool that just its job.
Its Analyze tool help create segments of Twitter users and includes other features for Twitter analytics. These features may not really meet your influencer research needs but it’s a good place to start.
8. GroupHigh
This tool focuses on finding blog influencers and sometimes Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube influencers.
It allows you to filter to find influencers by either ad networks or location. GroupHigh lacks some automated features readily available in other paid influencer research tools. However, GroupHigh has an influencer CRM aimed at managing your connections.
Platforms that support GroupHigh are blogs, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
9. Dovetale
This tool offers two neat ways to help find influencers related to your brand.
It has the “discover” module where influencers are researched using keywords and filtered using total reach and location. It also has a Monitor feature which lets you track and see influencers engaging your competitors. This is great for SEO and can function for influencer outreach.
Dovetale helps you manage your prospects with lists and is supported by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. If you’re doing paid influencer marketing, it allows you to manage payments and collect tax details from its interface.
Pricing
Its payment plan starts at $199 per month.
Conclusion
The first thing to consider is your budget and objectives.
- Buzzsumo and Followerwonk are ideal if you are interested in Twitter influencers.
- NinjaOutreach is great for link building and SEO. Pitchbox is also a great option, but you will need a demo to reveal its exorbitant pricing.
- BuzzStream is ideal for bloggers as it’s within budget and still offers great services.
- If using social media monitoring to connect with influencers, Awario is right for you.
- Followerwonk and Hunter may be free, but they offer limited services.
- GroupHigh’s coverage is good, while Dovetale has good monitoring features.
The good thing is that you can try these influencer research tools before paying for any of the services. So give them a try and see which one works best for you.
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