How to Build an Influencer Finder Without Writing Code

TL;DR: Off-the-shelf influencer platforms cost $500-$5,000/month and lock you into their criteria for what makes a "good" influencer. With Make.com (or Zapier), Airtable, and the SociaVault API, you can build your own influencer discovery tool that fits your exact criteria for under $50/month — no programming required. This is the playbook agencies and brand teams actually use.

A friend who runs marketing at a Series A startup recently told me they were paying $1,800/month for an influencer discovery platform. When I asked what it was doing, she explained: it searched Instagram for creators in their niche, returned a list of profiles with follower count and engagement rate, and let her save them to lists.

That's about ten minutes of setup in Make.com plus an Airtable account.

I'm not exaggerating. The influencer platform market exists because most marketers don't realize how much of what these tools do is just an API call wrapped in a UI. Once you see the trick, it's hard to unsee.

This guide is for marketers, brand managers, and small agency teams who want their own influencer finder. No code. No engineering team. Just three connected tools and a clear idea of what makes a good influencer for your specific brand.

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What You're Going to Build

By the end of this guide, you'll have a system that:

• Takes a list of search criteria (niche keywords, location, follower range, engagement threshold)
• Searches Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube for creators matching your criteria
• Pulls each creator's public profile data (followers, engagement rate, contact info, recent post performance)
• Stores everything in a searchable, filterable spreadsheet
• Lets you flag favorites, add notes, and track outreach status
• Updates itself on a schedule so your data stays fresh

This is functionally the same as a $500-$5,000/month influencer platform. The difference is you control the criteria, the data, and you're paying $30-$50/month instead.

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The Stack

Three tools, each doing one thing well.

1. Make.com (or Zapier or n8n)

The orchestrator. This is what actually fires the API calls and routes the data. Make.com is what I recommend — it's more powerful than Zapier for this kind of multi-step workflow and has better pricing for the volume we're working with. n8n is also great if you want to self-host. Zapier works but gets expensive fast at scale.

Cost: Make.com starts at $9/month for the Core plan. Most brand teams will outgrow that and move to Pro at $16/month.

2. Airtable

The database and UI. Airtable gives you a structured way to store creator data, filter it, sort it, add notes, mark statuses. Way better than spreadsheets for this use case because you can have multiple linked tables (creators, posts, outreach campaigns, brand fits).

Cost: Free for small teams. Team plan ($24/user/month) for collaboration.

3. SociaVault API

The data source. This is what actually pulls Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube creator data. You feed it a search query or a username and it returns structured profile data, post performance, contact info from bios, and engagement metrics.

Cost: Pay-as-you-go starting at $0 (50 free credits). Most workflows run on $20-$50/month at moderate scale.

Total monthly cost: roughly $30-$80 depending on volume. Compare to $1,800/month for what is essentially the same thing.

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Step-by-Step: Setting It Up

Here's the actual workflow. I'm going to walk through it as if you've never used Make or Airtable before.

Step 1: Set up your Airtable base

Create a new Airtable base called "Influencer Finder." Add a table called "Creators" with these columns:

• Username (single line text, primary field)
• Platform (single select: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)
• Followers (number)
• Following (number)
• Posts/Videos (number)
• Engagement Rate (percent, formula: (Avg Likes + Avg Comments) / Followers)
• Avg Likes (number)
• Avg Comments (number)
• Bio (long text)
• Email (email — auto-extracted from bio later)
• Website (URL)
• Niche (multiple select: configure your relevant niches)
• Location (single line text)
• Last Updated (date — auto-set when row is updated)
• Status (single select: New, Reviewing, Contacted, Negotiating, Active, Rejected)
• Notes (long text)
• Source Search (single line text — what query found this creator)

Add a second table called "Searches" with:

• Search Name (primary field)
• Platform (single select)
• Keyword/Hashtag (single line text)
• Min Followers (number)
• Max Followers (number)
• Last Run (date)
• Active (checkbox)

Now you have a structured place for everything to land.

Step 2: Get your SociaVault API key

Go to sociavault.com, sign up, and grab your API key from the dashboard. You get 50 free credits to start, which is enough to test the workflow with a few searches.

Step 3: Build the Make.com scenario

This is the heart of it. Open Make and create a new scenario.

Module 1: Schedule trigger. Set this to run daily, weekly, or whatever cadence you want. Daily is overkill for most use cases; weekly is usually enough.

Module 2: Airtable - List Records. Connect to your "Searches" table. Filter to records where Active is checked. This gives Make the list of searches to run.

Module 3: Iterator. Loop over each search returned by Module 2.

Module 4: HTTP - Make a Request. This is where you call the SociaVault API. The URL pattern depends on the platform:

For Instagram hashtag-based discovery (use the Instagram search endpoint):

GET https://api.sociavault.com/v1/scrape/instagram/profile?handle={the_handle}

But for finding creators by hashtag/keyword (not just looking up a known one), you'll typically run a hashtag search first, then loop through the top creators in that hashtag and pull their profiles.

For TikTok, similar pattern — search by keyword/hashtag, then look up each creator. The TikTok search users API and hashtag search give you the discovery layer.

Module 5: Iterator. Loop over the creators returned by Module 4.

Module 6: HTTP - Make a Request (profile lookup). For each creator found, pull their full profile data. Same API key, profile endpoint.

Module 7: Set Variables. Compute the engagement rate from the recent posts data:

• avg_likes = average of last N posts' likes
• avg_comments = average of last N posts' comments
• engagement_rate = (avg_likes + avg_comments) / followers

Module 8: Text Parser - Match Pattern. Run this against the bio to extract email addresses if present.

Module 9: Filter. Only continue if the creator passes your criteria:

• Followers between Min Followers and Max Followers
• Engagement rate above a threshold (typically 1.5-3%)
• Bio is non-empty (excludes obvious bots)

Module 10: Airtable - Search Records. Check if this username already exists in your Creators table.

Module 11: Router. Two paths — Update existing record or Create new record.

Module 12a: Airtable - Update Record. If the creator exists, update the followers, engagement rate, and Last Updated fields.

Module 12b: Airtable - Create Record. If new, create a full row with everything you've collected.

That's it. Run the scenario. By the end of the first run, your Creators table is populated.

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Customizations That Make This Actually Useful

The basic workflow above gets you parity with off-the-shelf influencer platforms. Now here's what makes it better.

Add scoring logic

In Airtable, create a formula field called "Brand Fit Score" that combines multiple factors based on what matters to you:

IF(
  AND(
    {Followers} >= 5000,
    {Followers} <= 100000,
    {Engagement Rate} >= 2,
    FIND("your_brand_niche", LOWER({Bio}))
  ),
  "A",
  IF(
    AND({Followers} > 1000, {Engagement Rate} >= 1.5),
    "B",
    "C"
  )
)

Now you can sort by Brand Fit Score and only review the A's. Off-the-shelf platforms can't do this kind of brand-specific scoring.

Track posts, not just creators

Add a second table for "Posts" linked to "Creators." Pull each creator's last 10-20 posts using the Instagram posts API or TikTok videos API. This gives you actual content samples to evaluate, not just stats.

You can even pull the transcripts of their videos if you want to understand what they actually talk about.

Cross-platform tracking

A real influencer often has presence on multiple platforms. Add columns for Instagram username, TikTok username, YouTube channel. Run separate Make scenarios for each platform but link them in Airtable to get the full picture of any given creator.

Outreach automation

Once you have a creator with an email and an A score, the next logical step is reaching out. Add an Airtable button that triggers a Make scenario that drafts a personalized email and sends it via Gmail/Outlook. This is where the system goes from "find" to "find and contact."

Don't fully automate the sending. Draft and review. Auto-sent emails feel auto-sent and convert poorly.

Scheduled refresh

Add a second Make scenario that runs weekly and updates existing creator records — so you can track who's growing, whose engagement is declining, who has changed their bio. This is something off-the-shelf platforms charge premium tiers for.

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Real-World Example: A DTC Brand's Setup

A friend running marketing for a DTC skincare brand uses something close to this. Her configuration:

Searches she runs weekly:

• Instagram hashtag: #skincaretok, #skincareroutine, #bareface
• TikTok hashtag: #skincaretok, #cleangirlmakeup
• YouTube keyword: "skincare routine 2026"

Her criteria:

• 5,000-150,000 followers (micro to mid-tier)
• Engagement rate above 3% (high bar — skincare audiences engage well)
• Bio mentions skincare, beauty, or related terms
• Has email or website in bio (must have a path to contact)

Her tables:

• Creators (the main one)
• Posts (last 10 posts per creator, used to assess content style)
• Outreach Campaigns (linked to Creators, tracks who got which pitch)
• Brand Deals (linked to Creators, tracks who's signed and what they're posting)

Her cost:

• Make: $16/month
• Airtable: $24/user/month (she has two team members)
• SociaVault: roughly $30/month at her usage

Total: ~$70/month, replacing a $1,200/month platform. The team uses the spreadsheet daily and never mentions missing the old tool.

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What This Setup Won't Do

Honest: no-code has limits.

It won't do real-time monitoring of campaign-mention spikes. That requires more sophisticated streaming infrastructure than Make can handle gracefully. Off-the-shelf platforms are sometimes worth it for brands running constant always-on campaigns.

It won't predict future performance. The big platforms have ML models that estimate which creators will perform well. You can build similar logic yourself, but it takes more work.

It won't handle 50,000 creators in a database. Make and Airtable both have limits. For very large databases (say, you're a creator marketplace tracking 100,000+ creators), you'll outgrow this stack and need a real database.

For most agencies, in-house brand teams, and small-to-medium influencer programs, none of these limits matter. The setup is plenty.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need any coding knowledge at all?

No. Everything described here is point-and-click in Make and Airtable. The only "code" is the formula field for Brand Fit Score, which is the same syntax as Excel/Google Sheets formulas.

Can I use this for B2B/LinkedIn instead of consumer Instagram/TikTok?

Yes. The SociaVault LinkedIn endpoints work the same way. Replace the Instagram modules with LinkedIn modules and adjust your scoring criteria for B2B fit (job title, company size, post frequency, topic relevance).

How long does this take to set up?

A first version takes 2-4 hours if you've never used Make or Airtable. A polished version with custom scoring, multiple platforms, and outreach integration takes 1-2 days. Way faster than building software, way more flexible than buying it.

What if I want to add YouTube?

Same workflow, different endpoint. Use YouTube channel and YouTube search instead of Instagram. The Airtable schema can be the same.

Will this scale to thousands of creators?

It'll scale to 5,000-10,000 creators in Airtable without breaking a sweat. Beyond that, Airtable starts feeling slow. At that point you'd want to migrate to a real database (Postgres, etc.) but you'd also be running an operation that justifies actual engineering.

What's the credit cost per creator?

Roughly 2-3 credits per creator: 1 to find them via search, 1 to look up the profile, sometimes 1 to pull recent posts. At SociaVault's pricing, that's a few cents per creator. Pulling 1,000 creators per month costs around $20-30.

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Try SociaVault free → — 50 free credits to build your first workflow.

Related: Build an Influencer Database in JavaScript · Make.com Integration Guide · Find Micro Influencers