How to find TikTok creators worth pitching

Finding creators is easy. Finding the twenty who fit your product, have an audience that buys, and will answer an email is the part that takes a week by hand.

This is the order of work. It is the same order the tool runs in, because it is the order that throws away the most creators for the least effort.

Start with the words, not the names

Search by what a creator would actually say on camera, not by the category they file themselves under. Somebody demonstrating a recipe is a food creator whether or not the word "food" appears anywhere on their profile.

Two or three phrasings of the same idea will find different people. Write them down before you start searching, and keep the list, because you will want to run it again next month.

Rule people out on the cheapest signal first

Every check costs something, in time or in money. Do them in this order:

1. The caption. Free, and it removes a surprising share of a list. If the caption makes it obvious the account is a reposter, a compilation page or somebody else's content, stop there.
2. Follower and engagement numbers. Still cheap. A large account with almost no comments is usually bought.
3. What they actually say in a video. This is the expensive check, so it goes last and only on the people who survived the first two.

The order matters more than the thresholds. Doing the expensive check first is how a creator shortlist turns into a week of watching videos.

Decide what "right" means, in writing

Before you look at anybody, write down the two or three things that make a creator wrong for you. Not what makes them good, what makes them wrong. It is faster to answer and far more consistent.

For most products it is some combination of these:

• the audience is in the wrong country
• the creator already promotes a direct competitor
• the content is a category next door, not yours
• the account is not really a person

Read the comments, not just the video

A creator's comments are the closest thing to free customer research you will get. The questions under a video are the questions your own buyers are asking, in their own words, and they are usually better than anything you would have written yourself.

This is also the fastest way to tell a real audience from a bought one. Real audiences ask specific questions. Bought ones post emoji.

Then, and only then, write to them

A first email that mentions one specific thing from one specific video outperforms a good template that could have been sent to anybody. You cannot fake that at scale by hand, which is the whole reason for doing the work above in the order above.

If you would like the same order of work run for you, that is what Influencer Detective does, and the pricing page explains what it costs.