Finding influencers for your business.
The question almost always arrives in the same shape: where do I find influencers for my restaurant in Antwerp, my hair salon in Ghent, my shop in Hasselt. This guide answers it by sector and by city, and is honest about what you will have to do yourself.
Door Thierry Fondu, oprichter van Kollaborate · bijgewerkt op
Het korte antwoord.
You find local creators in three places: among your own customers, by searching on location and hashtags on Instagram and TikTok, and on a platform where you post an offer and they respond themselves. For a single-location business, searching by city works better than searching by topic: someone with 1,500 followers who mostly live in your city is worth more than someone with 50,000 spread across the country. Always check that the followers are real before you agree anything.
The three places they are.
In this order, because the first gives the best match and costs nothing.
- 01
Your own customers.
See who already tags your business in stories, who comes in regularly and makes content themselves. Someone who already likes you does not need convincing. This is the most overlooked source.
- 02
Search by location rather than by topic.
Search the location tag of your city and of well-known places nearby, not a niche. Then look at who visited comparable businesses in the area. Anyone already doing local collaborations knows how it works.
- 03
A platform where they come to you.
You post an offer with your budget and payment form, creators in your region and niche see it and respond with a proposal. Then you only have to choose.
By sector: who you are looking for.
The type of creator that works differs sharply per kind of business. This is what we see.
Restaurant, café or chip shop.
Look for food accounts in your city, not national ones. Invite them on a quiet day, pay with a menu, and ask for stories during the visit plus one post afterwards with the location tagged.
Hair salon, nail studio or beauty salon.
Look for creators who already share before and afters, because that format works here. Payment is usually the treatment itself. Agree that you may use the images too, because they are gold for your own page.
Clothing shop or concept store.
Search by style, not by follower count. Someone with a recognisable taste that fits your collection sells better than a larger account with a random audience. A shopping budget often works better than a fixed amount.
Fitness, yoga or sports club.
Look for people who show their own journey rather than professionals. A month’s trial as payment yields content across several weeks instead of a single visit.
Hotel, B&B or holiday rental.
Here image quality weighs more than reach. One night usually yields enough material for a series. Fix how much content that represents, because this is the sector where agreements go most lopsided.
A business without a shopfront, such as a practice or a service.
Harder, because there is little to show. Work with someone who explains rather than shows, and think of a longer collaboration rather than a single post.
By city: where to search.
Kollaborate started in Antwerp and is expanding across Belgium step by step. Where supply is still thin, these search routes help you regardless.
Antwerp.
The largest supply, and where we started. Search location tags for het Zuid, het Eilandje, the Kammenstraat and the Meir, plus the neighbourhood accounts that post about the city.
Ghent.
A strong student and hospitality scene. Search around the Korenmarkt, the Vrijdagmarkt and the university areas, and watch for accounts that post specifically about Ghent.
Brussels.
Mind the language of the audience: a French-speaking creator reaches a different part of the city than a Dutch-speaking one. Choose based on where your customers live, not on reach.
Hasselt, Leuven, Mechelen, Bruges and Kortrijk.
Smaller cities have fewer creators, but the reach that exists is close to your door. Searching the city name as a hashtag and the best-known hospitality spots in the centre works best there.
How to tell whether someone is worth it.
Five checks before you agree anything.
The ratio between followers and comments.
Bought followers do not respond. An account with 20,000 followers and five comments per post is buying followers or has an audience that stopped watching.
Where the audience lives.
Ask about it. A creator can see this in their own statistics. If most of it sits outside your region, you are buying reach that will never walk in.
Does the number come from the platform or from an input field?
If someone can type in their own follower count, you know nothing. On Kollaborate that number comes from the official Instagram connection and the creator cannot change it.
The last twelve posts.
Look at the rhythm and the quality of recent work, not at the best post from last year. Anyone who has been quiet for months will not deliver either.
Earlier collaborations.
If you see paid collaborations that are properly labelled as advertising, you know they understand the rules. That saves you a problem.
How to approach them.
Be concrete in your first message. Who you are, what your business does, what exactly you are proposing and what is in it for them. A message that only asks whether there is interest in a collaboration rarely gets a reply, because it puts all the work on them.
State the payment straight away, even when it is in kind. Dancing around money costs you both time and gives the impression that you do not know what you are willing to pay.
Give a frame rather than a script. Say what you definitely want on camera and why you are asking them, and leave the form to them. Content that sounds like an ad performs worse, and that is exactly what a locked-down brief produces.
And put it in the agreement that the collaboration must be labelled as advertising. That is mandatory in Belgium, even when you only give a free product.
Veelgestelde vragen.
Where do I find influencers for my restaurant in Antwerp?+
How do I find creators for my hair or beauty salon?+
Can I find influencers outside the big cities?+
How many followers should a creator have for a local business?+
How do I know the followers are real?+
What do I write in my first message?+
Let them come to you.
Instead of searching yourself, post an offer with your budget and your conditions. Creators from your region respond, you choose. The first month is free.