How to find micro influencers: a step-by-step method with a real example

There is no official cut-off. Most brands and agencies call accounts with 10,000 to 100,000 followers micro influencers, under 10,000 nano and over 100,000 macro, and we use 10K–100K throughout this guide.

Brands look for them because they usually charge less than large accounts, talk to a narrow niche, and are more likely to reply to a small brand. The catch is that followers are a weak signal of reach: in the example below, the creator with the most followers had the lowest engagement and was not in the target country.

The brief: houseplant care products (plant food, potting mix, grow lights) for the US, creators with 10,000–100,000 followers who post plant care tips, tutorials and honest reviews, on TikTok and Instagram. We ran it with Nolyn's influencer search on October 21, 2026 (17:08–17:12 UTC), then asked a follow-up to pull each shortlisted account's recent posts. The whole task used 80 credits (38 for data, 42 for AI) and under 5 minutes of run time.

On TikTok, two keyword searches ("houseplant" and "plant care tips") returned 20 accounts each. 7 had more than 100,000 followers, 24 had fewer than 10,000 and 9 were in range. Opening those 9 showed what search results are really made of:

Follower counts in the search results looked similar; the posts did not. For each account we took its latest videos (15–30) and computed, per video, the engagement rate by views, (likes + comments + shares) ÷ views, and by followers, then the median. On Instagram, where views are not returned for photos, we used likes + comments per post ÷ followers.

Creator A, the smallest TikTok account, was the only one that was US-registered, posting weekly and squarely about houseplants, and it had by far the highest engagement: 7.69% of views and 11 videos in the last 30 days, mostly rare-plant hauls, potting-mix recipes and care routines. Its reach is modest (median 1,450 views; 1 of 29 videos passed 10,000). Creator D had the most followers and the highest median views but the lowest engagement and is registered in Romania, so it failed the brief. Creator B has the strongest sponsorship history (6 of its 15 latest videos asked viewers to comment a keyword for a discount on grow lights, a plant-care app or propagation balls) but had not posted for 14 months.

On Instagram, the single "houseplant" search returned 30 accounts, mostly brands, shops and namesakes; of the 5 profiles checked, 1 was an in-range care creator (Creator E). Its 3 first posts were older posts shown ahead of newer ones, which is how pinned posts appear; with them included the median was 296.5 likes and comments (1.92%), without them 265 (1.72%). Pinned posts are often an account's best ones, so leave them out.

Medians vary a lot by niche and platform, so compare a creator with others in the same niche, not with a global average. As a reference, our October 2026 benchmark of 41 Brazilian micro creators on TikTok found a median engagement of 6.35% of views (counting saves) and 0.96% of followers; on Instagram, 0.75% of followers across 18 profiles. On that same basis (saves included) Creator A above scores 7.96% of views. The niche pages are in Portuguese:

TikTok's user search ranks accounts whose name contains your keyword, which is why our "houseplant" search was full of brand-like handles. Two habits help:

Everything in this guide can be done by hand: search the app, open each profile, write down the last 15–30 posts' views, likes, comments and shares, and compute the medians in a spreadsheet or with a free engagement rate calculator. It takes about 10 minutes per creator.

A tool saves the copying. Nolyn's influencer search runs the keyword searches, opens the profiles and returns a short explained list with the posts behind each pick, using credits per task (new accounts get 100 free). Creator databases such as Modash or HypeAuditor are faster for large programmes but start at monthly subscriptions. Whatever you use, audience location, demographics and rates still have to come from the creator.