How to find TikTok creators for your brand

Say you sell a dog shampoo — the gentle kind, for dogs that hate bath day. You've decided to run a creator campaign, you open a blank doc titled creators, and it stays blank. Most guides start one step later: what to check once you have candidates, what to pay, what to put in the first message. Where the names come from barely gets a sentence.

The instinct is to go looking for people — a ranked list someone else built, a page of profiles sorted by follower counts. But you don't need people who describe themselves as creators for hire. You need one specific thing: a video like the one you wish existed about your shampoo, and the person who made it.

On TikTok you can search for that video directly. Every video on the platform carries its maker — the handle sits right on it, and the profile behind the handle holds everything else they've made. Find the video first; the creator comes attached. The rest of this guide is that move, run in three places.

Why search for videos instead of people?

Because the thing you're hiring for is a video, and directories are made of people. A directory sorts by who exists and how big they are, not by the video you're looking for — so you'd still be opening profiles one at a time to answer the finding stage's whole question: has this person ever made the thing you need?

A video answers it on sight. Someone kneeling by a tub, narrating over a squirming dog, the before-and-after sniff at the end — if that video exists, its maker has already done the thing you're about to ask for.

TikTok makes this search unusually direct. Type words into the search bar and what comes back is videos, playing, one after another. Each one is a work sample with a person attached: tap the handle and you're looking at everything else they've made. Searching for videos is searching for creators — you're finding them through proof instead of through descriptions.

One boundary to keep from the start: a found video tells you this person has done it once. It doesn't tell you the video will do the same thing for your shampoo, and it doesn't make them the right pick. It earns them a line on a list.

What should you write down before you search?

Two things, and both fit on one page.

First, one sentence: the thing a viewer should walk away understanding. That's the same sentence our choosing guide is built on, because it's doing work at every stage. For the shampoo it might be: bath day doesn't have to be a fight, and the wet-dog smell doesn't come back by Thursday. Without a sentence like that, every video you watch will feel like a maybe. With it, you can say why a video belongs on your list — or why it doesn't.

Second, the list itself. Three columns, nothing clever: a link to the video that earned the spot, the maker's handle, and one line on why that video matches your sentence. The why-line is the part that matters. It's what you'll re-read when the names on the list stop meaning anything, and it's what the next stage, ruling people out, will lean on.

Notice what's not on the page: any judgment about the people. At the finding stage you're a collector.

Where do you look first?

In the search bar, with the words a viewer would use — not the words your industry uses. Nobody with a smelly dog types pet care content. They type dog bath, dog smells like wet towel, how to wash a dog that hates water. Start with a few searches like that, straight from the problem your sentence describes.

Then watch the results the way a viewer would; most videos won't land on your sentence, and you can skip them without guilt. When one does — someone mid-bath, talking the way your customers talk, the dog reluctantly cooperating — stop and collect: video link, handle, why-line. Open the profile if you want to see what else they make, but remember what you're there for.

Then vary the words and go again. Different phrasings surface different corners of the same problem — bath day, dog grooming at home, reactive dog bath. Keep a note of which searches produced matches; those words are where your next session starts.

One honest limit: an evening of searching won't show you everyone, and it doesn't have to — you're here to leave with lines on a list. More sessions widen the sweep.

Who's already in your brand's orbit?

The second place is closer to home: the people who already know your product. The entry point here is usually a comment, not a video.

Open your own account's comments and read them as a list of people instead of a list of reactions. Some commenters post nothing. Some, when you tap through, make videos every week, and one of them may have been talking about your shampoo in their own voice this whole time.

Then search your brand name and your product's name as plain words. What comes back is anyone who has already filmed your product without being asked — a customer who posted their own bath-day video, a sniff test you never knew happened. Those go on the list with everything else: link, handle, why-line.

Be precise about what this signal is. Someone who already posted about your shampoo knows the product and cared enough to film it. That's real, and it's worth a line. It is not evidence that their video will carry a campaign — that judgment belongs to the next stage, same as for every other name.

How do you spot creators already doing brand work?

The third place is your category's paid work, and it announces itself: a paid brand video carries a mark viewers can see. We've written where that disclosure sits when you're the one arranging it.

At the finding stage, that mark reads the other way around: it's a public record that this person does brand work. Run your category searches — the dog-care words, the adjacent ones — and note the videos that are marked as paid. The maker of a disclosed dog-food video has worked with a brand and posted the result, for a product in your category. Collect them the same way: link, handle, why-line, and here the disclosure itself is a strong why-line.

Two cautions. Don't copy another brand's picks wholesale — a disclosed video means this person does brand work, not that they fit your sentence, and the sentence still decides. And read nothing into the mark's absence: a missing mark costs a name nothing here.

When do you stop looking?

When the list can survive shrinking. Finding was never about completeness; its job is to hand the next stage enough to work with. And the next stage cuts: "A shortlist isn't a ranking. It's what's left after you rule people out" — that's our choosing guide again, and it takes over from here.

So the stop rule reads off the list itself: every line has a why you'd defend out loud, and there are enough lines that ruling people out won't leave you at zero.

From there the path is already paved. Rule people out until a shortlist is left, then write the first message to the ones who survive — and if a message goes quiet, that has a guide too.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just use a video I found instead of hiring its creator?

No. Finding a video gives you a candidate, not permission. Using a creator's video for your brand runs on their agreement, and those terms are settled with the creator before anything else. Until then, a found video is only a reason to send a message.

What if a creator I found has never made a brand video?

Keep them on the list — finding only asks whether the matching video exists. Our choosing guide covers what the posts with no brand attached can tell you.

See what this looks like for your brand

Nothing above needs a tool or a budget line. Open the search bar with your customers' words, and start the list when the first video lands on your sentence.

And if you'd rather spend the evening elsewhere, the finding can be done for you — what you're buying is the time and the coverage.

Popow instantly surfaces active nano & micro creators who have already successfully executed similar content.

Or email us: business@popow.ai