How to find up and coming content creators for your marketing campaigns

While influencer marketing is known to be extremely effective, it can also be expensive and difficult to establish. This is especially true when looking at the most popular creators, who are almost all represented by agencies and charge a hefty sum. Oftentimes, if you attempt to enter influencer marketing from scratch and go straight to the top, you won’t even get a chance to interact with the creators that you’d like for your campaign, only their agents.   

This is why looking towards up and coming talent, rather than the big stars, has become a solid tactic for some companies. Not only can it be cheaper and just as effective, but working with unestablished talent also helps create relationships and can secure your company a very good reputation among content creators. 

Of course, this does present a problem: How exactly do you find up and coming creators? As opposed to simply looking at viewership charts, finding a diamond in the rough can be difficult. There are a variety of factors to consider, from certain statistics, to commitment and account age, and if they’re even a good fit. 

Before you dive into various websites looking for creators, you need to know exactly what to look for. The most important thing to consider are the creators' metrics. These are various statistics that show how their content is performing, covering things like viewership, followers, subscribers, etc. You’ve probably seen them before, usually referred to as KPI’s (short for Key Performance Indicators). Let’s break them down below: 

Most important metrics to consider when looking for up and coming content creators

There are a ton of stats out there for any content creator and they can tell you almost everything about their channels. We’ve already covered some of the most important ones here, although, there are a few differences when it comes to looking for up and coming talent. 

Here are some of the most important stats to look at.

Average (concurrent) viewers trend

Average views, or average concurrent viewers for streamers, is the most important stat that you’ll need to look at. When it comes to influencer value, the main thing that matters is how many people see their content. 

This is quite simple to measure for YouTubers or any other non-live creators, as you can simply head to their page and see the numbers. From there, you need to consider the trend. Are they consistently generating more views, or is their channel declining? 

Things get a little more complicated for live streamers, however, as you need to see how many viewers watch their stream concurrently and how this translates over time. This is something that’s almost impossible to track without some kind of tool - luckily it’s what Lurkit specializes in and we’ll break down exactly how you can do this later on. 

Hours watched

Hours watched is another quite important stat, although, it mainly applies to live streamers. It’s essentially average viewership multiplied by total hours streamed and it highlights the amount of content that’s created. 

The more hours watched the better, and you’ll need to keep your eyes on both this and average concurrent viewers to see the scope of the streamer’s success. It’s also a good indicator of how many hours the streamer spends creating content - you’ll of course want to look for creators who put in the hours. 

Followers gained

Followers are a bit of a controversial statistic. Technically, followers by themselves don’t really mean anything - a creator could have 1 or 1000 followers and still have the same amount of viewers. 

However, there’s still some merit to tracking followers, especially the amount gained over time. You will have to combine this with the other stats in this list, but looking at how many followers a creator gains can give a good idea of their growth and potential. 

If someone is consistently gaining followers then there may be some interest in their content, however, if they’re beginning to plateau, or even fall, in followers, they may have tapped their market or reached their peak already - even if they’re still gaining viewers. 

Stream or upload consistency

Last but not least, you need to check on the creator’s consistency. It’s all well and good for them to be getting a solid amount of views, but if they barely ever create content, they’ll struggle to grow and you won’t get much out of them in a campaign. 

Unfortunately, there’s no magic number when it pertains to uploads or streams, it all depends on the creator and what type of content they create. However, there are some general guidelines. For example, if you’re looking at a casual gaming streamer, you should expect them to stream at least a few times a week, or get at least a couple of videos uploaded a week. 

Meanwhile, if you’re looking at a project creator - maybe someone like a PC builder or tech reviewer, it can take time to create content, so weekly or even biweekly videos wouldn’t be terrible, especially if they keep it consistent. 

Social media 

Social media isn’t a metric per se, but it is still a very important factor that can be quantified with numbers. 

Growing on social media is a huge part of being a content creator and spotting a good up and comer from one that may fail can be as easy as looking at their socials. You want to look for someone who consistently uses social media, has interesting and engaging posts, and is hopefully growing. 

Using social media benefits creators in a ton of ways, so finding influencers who use Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. is always beneficial. 

Now that you know exactly what to look for, it’s time to take a look at how to do it. 

Where to look for up and coming content creators

As we mentioned earlier, finding up and coming influencers through their statistics can be difficult, mainly because those metrics are either hidden or hard to reach. Even when it comes to YouTubers, you might have to scroll through hundreds of channels and compare thousands of videos to see if a creator has potential. 

For the vast majority of companies, that would be a problem. It would take a long time and be quite an expensive process. That’s why alternatives exist, in the form of data curation and influencer analytics websites, such as Lurkit. 

The best way is no doubt to use a platform like Lurkit. We sort through millions of content creator’s data and make it possible to easily analyze and pick out influencers based on a variety of categories. 

If you don’t know where to start, you can easily create an account and start browsing a variety of creators in relevant games. Alternatively, feel free to contact us to find out more about data curation. 

With all that said, there’s also nothing wrong with doing it yourself, and here’s how. Simply head to a relevant website, like Twitch or YouTube, and find some games that are relevant to your eventual marketing campaign. There, you can take a look at influencers of all sizes and search through the channel pages of who you find interesting. 

Some stats may not be available, like average concurrent users over time on Twitch, but you can simply reach out to the creators to find out more about them. This is also a great way to build relationships going forward, with the only real disadvantage being the time investment.