How to Find Influencers On LinkedIn

When you hear the advice "engage with influencers," you might wonder: how, exactly? And which ones? What do you say? Should you engage publicly, privately, or both? If you're a brand trying to recruit micro-influencers for your campaign — how do you filter for the ones who are actually relevant to your company's specific value proposition?

To start, think of it this way: can you name a few people in your niche, without looking them up, whose content you really like? People whose opinion you — and your clients — genuinely trust? If so: great. Those are easy people to start with. But if you can only think of 3–5 people who fit that bill, and you want to build a list of 50, 100, or 250 people to engage with: that might sound like a tall order.

Below, I'll walk you through how to find relevant people, build quality lists, engage them in a scalable way, and — if you're a brand wanting to sponsor them — take those interactions offline.

Should you engage micro-influencers or big celebrity influencers?

If you're looking to build your personal brand on LinkedIn, you might have wondered: should I engage with Justin Welsh and Lara Acosta? Or should I find smaller creators that are up and coming? Or people who aren't professional creators at all, but who are deeply embedded in my industry?

That depends.

Why? Justin Welsh is not going to buy from you. Well — probably not. Neither are his followers. You know why? His followers are all trying to build their own personal brands. They're not budget holders. Enterprise budget holders don't usually comment on "big influencer" posts.

The caveat: if you're purely trying to amass followers and reach as quickly as possible — and you don't care whether those followers are budget holders — you can afford to go big and broad. A good example is if you're an author, you sell a micro-SaaS, you want to grow a large audience so you can sell sponsorships of your own as a creator. In that case, great! Engage with the biggest and largest creators you can find.

What should you say when commenting on posts?

If you engage with influencers by just saying "Great post!" — or worse, spam their posts with your product link — you won't get anywhere. You might even get blocked if you're doing the latter.

Here's a better way.

1. Be yourself. Don't vibe with what the person said? Don't force it. But if you genuinely connect with it, let that show. Enthusiasm is wonderful when it's real.
2. Add to the conversation. "Love this!" doesn't really help anyone. If you agree with a post, say why. If you don't, politely say why as well. If you're reminded of something relevant, share that. Or ask a good question.
3. Use humor if appropriate. If you're funny, great — do it. But don't "try to be funny" if it's not your style, because it'll come off as inauthentic.
4. Show your relationship with the author via your comment. If you're actually friends with someone, write in a way that makes your relationship clear. This lets your network know the OP is trustworthy, and vice versa.
5. Be a little vulnerable. Share part of your story if it makes sense and you're genuinely adding to the conversation.
6. Engage as a community member: to give, not just to get. Don't comment because you'll then feel entitled to receive a response. It's similar to being at a conference — don't corner people and expect them to be ultra-attentive to you just because you showed up.

My influencer sponsorship strategy

Now, let's say you want to not just engage with influencers to expand your influence, but also sponsor them to talk about your product. Let's get into that.

I was asked recently in a group of entrepreneurs: "Anyone run B2B SaaS and successfully used 'influencers'? Or just perhaps any tales to tell about going down the influencer route for B2B?"

I describe this activity as more about making friends than "finding influencers." Here's how I do it:

Become your own influencer.

I start by posting and engaging actively in the industry myself. It's a lot more compelling for people to work with you if you're also active in your niche, and have some of your own social clout to bring with you — which means growing the right connections, not just any connections.

Get a pulse on your industry.

As I post and engage, I naturally come across those who have great content — that's my subjective opinion. I also find who gets good engagement in terms of both quantity and quality, meaning I don't want those with lots of clearly fake-seeming comments.

Transition public to private.

After engaging publicly, I start sending private DMs: something relevant, an insight, a genuine compliment they probably don't get often enough about their actual content. Don't just blend in here and say what everyone else is likely already saying to them.

Suggest a test.

If it feels natural, I introduce an idea — maybe to do some content together like a LinkedIn Live or a webinar, or even a short content recording; and sometimes I also ask casually if they ever work with sponsors directly.

Gauge professionalism level.

Depending on how this conversation goes, it usually becomes clear pretty fast whether they're interested in doing sponsored work (they'll jump on it, have a media kit, have a rate card) or if they're curious and open to it but haven't professionalized that side of the business yet.

Don't spend for mere fame.

Larger influencers who are experienced with sponsorships and have significant audiences — with reach running into 10–50M impressions per year — will rarely go below $2k per post. I generally avoid these unless I have clear data that their audience is primed to buy from us. Mid-size and growing creators with 1–5M in content reach per year (which is the category I myself fall into) are usually the best ROI for effort and money. Smaller ones with under 1M in reach can be great too; you just need more of them if you have a low-priced product that requires a lot of signups to make an impact.

If you're offering rev share, come with data.

We have a thriving affiliate program and five figures of historical payouts, so we can genuinely say "let's look at doing our first post(s) on a rev share or partial rev share model" — and back it up. Sometimes they just don't want to bother with this, and if that's the case I might just do a fixed fee. And in some cases, if I think they'll crush it so much with our affiliate program that I'd rather pay fixed fee, I won't even bring up rev share and will go straight to a cash-up-front offer.

Cap spend on reach, for relevant influencers.

My target is to pay no more than $30–60 per 1k impressions for direct-response influencer posts — meaning posts that showcase our product and have a "sign up" CTA. If I expect a post will get 15,000 impressions, I don't want to pay more than $900 for it if I can help it. That said, our LTV is in the hundreds of dollars. If your average ACV is $10k–$100k+, you can and should stretch this number way up.

Collaborate with them on publishing.

When their post goes up, I do my best to keep engaging with people on it publicly — buddy-buddying up with them on the post itself, so people can see it's not a cold, arms-length sponsorship but a real connection. This is the payoff of treating it as making friends rather than leading with a cash offer: you'll get better content, better rates, and organic goodwill that extends well beyond the paid post.

Monitor post-publish before you expand.

I look for conversion rates and retention from influencer-driven signups at or above our own organic rates before I scale spend with a given creator. Some influencers — particularly the largest and flashiest — have a very low loyal community following, or a following that's loyal but low-income. Using our affiliate management software, I can see from the revenue graph whether their referrals churn at a high, low, or normal rate.

Find your high-quality stable.

Over time, you'll figure out which influencers have the best, highest-quality following. Sponsoring them every 2–4 months — or making appropriate equity offers with vesting if they're super valuable to your business — can work wonders for providing MRR on a CPA basis.