The Best Influencer Platforms To Use for Smooth Collabs

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Karen Lin

Instagram Tips | Jun 26, 2024

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Influencer marketing platforms are amazing tools for finding the best brand ambassadors for your campaign and seamlessly working with them. Because influencer marketing has become such a popular tool on social media, the rise of these platforms is prevalent. If you’re a brand looking to connect with social media influencers (or vice versa), these platforms are perfect for you. But what are the best influencer platforms on the market today?

The best influencer websites today depend on your goals. Are you looking for a program that has an extensive search feature? How about advanced affiliate marketing tools? How can you land as many jobs as possible to secure your place on the map as an influencer?

Whatever it is you’re looking for in top influencer platforms, there are tons of options that will fit your needs. Keep reading to find out which ones might be best for your specific influencer marketing efforts and brand goals.

A female influencer in a fuzzy cardigan positioning her phone, tripod, and ring light to record a video of herself.

4 Features the Best Influencer Management Platforms Have

There is a plethora of influencer marketing platforms to explore out there. But what exactly should you be looking for if you want to work only with the best influencer management platforms? Here are four key features any top-performing platform should be able to offer you as a client.

1. An Extensive Influencer Discovery Process

Influencer networks are popular because of their extensive influencer databases. These platforms can provide comprehensive data about each creator in their network. This includes audience demographics, follower count, engagement rate, niche, previous collaborations, and much more. From this pool of creators, brands can use filters to find the perfect influencer for their campaigns.

Someone looking through an influencer’s aesthetic Instagram feed on their phone.

2. Campaign Management Systems for Organizing Tasks

After signing a contract with an influencer from the network, the platform should have campaign management tools for your project. That means you can organize tasks with your ambassador and communicate about the next steps, all on the platform. These include features like task managers, submission and approval systems, automated post-scheduling, and more. All of these make the project workflow more efficient and transparent between the client and influencer.

3. Easy, In-App Payments

Influencer programs typically allow brands to pay their influencers straight from the platform. They have invoice generation tools, scheduled payments, and even tax compliance tools to make the payment process much easier. It makes paying easier for the client and receiving monetary compensation faster and more secure for influencers.

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4. Comprehensive Analytics Reports on Your Influencer’s Content

Lastly, influencer networks should have analytics tools to help your brand make data-driven decisions about your collaborations moving forward. Some platforms provide analytics reports about how well your influencer’s content is faring, highlighting metrics for reach, engagement, and conversions. From there, you can assess the collab’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, you can use those insights to improve your influencer campaigns moving forward.

A laptop with an analytics and revenue report on the screen.

The 3 Best Influencer Marketing Platforms for Your Brand’s Next Campaigns

Different influencer apps have their strengths and specializations. Depending on your influencer marketing campaign’s goals, it’s important to align your needs with what a platform can offer.

If you’re a brand looking to connect with content creators, your goals might include identifying the best influencers. You also might need a platform strong in analytics or maybe affiliate marketing to drive conversions. If any of these sound useful to you, check out these three best influencer marketing platforms for brands.

1. InfluencerMarketing.ai for Top-Notch Influencer Search

When it comes to influencer search and discovery, no platform has it down pat quite like InfluencerMarketing.ai. This platform has a huge network of over 300 million influencers brands can choose from. You can even filter these names according to their most distinct characteristics and niches.

The platform goes to great lengths to ensure you identify the best influencers for your project. It curates a list of suggested creators, provides detailed information on their audience, and offers contact details per creator.

Of course, they also provide other features to make the influencer project a success. They offer campaign data tracking, analytics reports, streamlined workflows, and more.

2. Influencity for Seeding and Analytics

Influencity is another influencer program that should be on any brand’s radar. This platform also has an extensive pool of content creators you can contact and work with. But aside from that, Influencity specializes in two specific things—seeding and analytics.

Let’s talk about seeding—aka sending free products to brand ambassadors for them to promote on their page. By integrating your Shopify website with Influencity, you can mount end-to-end seeding campaigns to send out gifts to your influencers. Then, sit back and relax as you wait for them to create content showcasing your products.

The platform also shines when it comes to analytics. It crunches the numbers for you and creates easy-to-digest reports with key insights about your influencer content. This allows you to make data-driven decisions about your brand’s influencer efforts moving forward.

3. Tapfiliate for Affiliate Marketing

If your brand’s goal is to drive conversions through influencer affiliate marketing efforts, Tapfiliate is the platform for you. With 1.4 million active affiliates and 4.6 million conversions generated, it’s the program you need to boost your sales.

Tapfiliate helps you launch influencer campaigns focused on driving conversions. They provide special coupon codes for your influencer’s followers, enticing them to buy from your brand. The platform then easily tracks every click and sale that goes through each creator’s special links. Plus, you can set up commissions however you want—Tapfiliate makes it super easy and flexible!

The 3 Best Influencer Platforms for Creators Looking for Brand Deals

If you’re a creator looking to partner with brands on campaigns, an influencer marketing program is also a good idea. On these platforms, you can choose which jobs to work on and what brands to collaborate with. You also get a chance to form relationships with marketing teams and agencies.

However, what might be outstanding influencer programs for brands isn’t quite the same for content creators. For brands, it’s desirable to have the largest database of influencers to pick and choose from. But on the flip side, for influencers, it’s best to work with smaller creator platforms. That way, with less competition, you have a better chance of landing the projects and paid partnerships you want.

Are you not sure what influencer networks to use as a content creator looking for work? Here are some of the best influencer platforms for creators specifically.

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1. Aspire for Tons of Job Listings

Aspire is an influencer network that content creators claim they’ve had really good luck with. On this platform, you can apply for ambassador sponsorships or bid on paid projects. For the latter, Aspire suggests a rate for you to propose to increase your chances of winning the project. It’s user-friendly and great for beginners trying to make their mark as an influencer.

Then, when you land a deal, you can message your brand client straight on the platform for negotiations. You also submit all the content you create right on Aspire. Of course, payment comes in through the platform as well, making it super safe and secure.

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2. Activate Social for the Best Workflow Organization

If your main concern is organizing all your influencer projects, try using Activate Social. They’ve created a very user-friendly workflow tool that includes a “Tasks” tab. That way, you can stay on top of all your projects if you have multiple ongoing campaigns from different brands.

The jobs on this site are well-categorized by agency, so it’s easy to establish a relationship with your favorite ones. This increases your chances of landing jobs they post (or even getting direct offers from their brands!).

3. Hashtag Paid for UGC Jobs

If you’re interested in launching a career in user-generated content, head over to Hashtag Paid. This platform has tons of listings for sponsorships, but it also has plenty of opportunities for UGC creators. So, if you’re trying to break out as a UGC star (and earn money for it), this is the network for you.

What’s awesome about these jobs is that you can bid your rates, not just settle for the brand’s offer. You can also liaise with the client on the platform to negotiate your rate and scope of work.

A young female content creator smiling as she records a video of herself with her phone and tripod.

Are There Micro-Influencer Platforms To Help You Connect With Smaller Creators?

Unfortunately, it might be unrealistic to hope for a platform that can connect your brand only with micro-influencers specifically.

We get it—these small creators are some of the most coveted brand ambassadors in social media marketing today. These creators are super effective at engaging their loyal audience, making them the perfect marketing tools on social platforms. According to Sprout Social, their engagement rates go up to around 6%, compared to the average 1.97% macro-influencers get.

These influencers are the crème de la crème of brand ambassadorship despite their small following on social media platforms. However, it’s quite rare to find influencer marketing software focused only on micro-influencers. Instead of hunting for a micro-influencer platform, we recommend working with a bigger platform with advanced search filters.

That way, you can filter your options to show only influencers with less than 100K followers. From there, choose the micro-influencers you want to work with on the platform based on their best fit.

A micro-influencer recording a video of herself with her smartphone and ring light.

Brand Deals Are Great, but Remember To Grow Your Page, Too!

In sum, influencer marketing platforms are incredibly useful for landing collabs and paid partnerships, whether you’re a business or influencer. They let brands find the best influencers for their campaigns, liaise with them easily, and see reports on their work. On the other hand, content creators find it way easier to connect with brands and land jobs through these sites.

Working closely with these platforms makes an influencer marketing campaign much easier. They streamline the work, allowing you to focus on content creation, promotions, and other Instagram tasks that need your attention.

But while landing collaborations is amazing for both brands and influencers, it’s not the be-all and end-all of Instagram marketing. While it’s fantastic working with the best influencer platforms, don’t forget to work on growing your page, too. Unfortunately, these platforms cannot help with that. Instead, enlist the help of a growth service like Path Social.

At Path Social, we use a proprietary targeting tool to promote your page to your specific target audience. As a result, you get tons of new, 100% real followers who love and engage with your content. This kind of growth makes your brand more reputable, making collaborations that much easier. So, grow your Instagram page and gain more authentic followers with our help today!