How to Find Which Influencers Your Competitors Work With

To find which influencers a competitor works with, collect every post that names or tags the brand over a fixed window, then separate the sponsored posts from the organic ones. Sponsored posts carry a paid-partnership label or a clear disclosure such as “ad” or “sponsored.”

Then rank the creators by views. The creators at the top of that list are the roster worth studying, and the split between sponsored and organic tells you whether the competitor is buying its reach or earning it.

How do you find out which influencers a competitor works with?

Search each platform for posts that tag or mention the brand, collect them over the same window, and list the creators behind them. That list is the raw roster.

Three places catch most of it:

Tags and mentions. Posts that tag the brand’s account or name it in the caption.
The brand’s own feed. Collab posts, reposts and creator content the brand reshares.
Branded hashtags. Campaign tags the competitor asks creators to use.

Fix the window and the platforms before you start, so this quarter’s roster can be compared with last quarter’s. The limit is that a creator who shows the product but never names it will not turn up in any of these searches.

How can you tell if an influencer post is sponsored?

Look for the platform’s paid-partnership label or a clear disclosure in the post itself. In the US, the FTC expects a creator to disclose any “material connection” to a brand, and that includes free or discounted products, not only payment (FTC).

No single signal is complete, so read them together:

Signal	Where you see it	What it tells you	Blind spot
Paid-partnership label	On the post itself, switched on by the creator	The creator declared a commercial relationship	Only appears when the creator switches it on
“Ad” or “sponsored” in the caption	Caption or on-screen text	A disclosed paid or gifted post	Easy to miss in a block of hashtags
Ad library entry	Meta Ad Library, TikTok Ad Library	The brand is paying to boost it	Coverage and history vary by platform
Gifting language	“Thanks to… for sending this”	Seeded product, usually no fee	Often left undisclosed
Repeat posts for one brand	The creator’s own feed	A likely ongoing or ambassador deal	Fans repeat-post too

TikTok’s content disclosure setting labels a post as “Paid partnership” or “Commercial content” (TikTok). Treat the label as a strong signal rather than a full audit, because it depends on the creator using it.

Which free tools show a competitor’s influencer ads?

Meta Ad Library and TikTok’s Ad Library are both free and public. They show which ads a brand is running, including creator posts the brand is paying to boost.

Tool	Platforms	What it shows	Limits
Meta Ad Library	Facebook, Instagram	Every ad currently running	Inactive ads are kept only for issue, election and political ads
TikTok Ad Library	TikTok	Ads with at least one view, kept for a year after the last view, plus promotional posts	Covers ads shown in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK only

Meta lets anyone search ads that are currently active, but it keeps inactive ads searchable only for issues, elections and politics (Meta). Check it regularly, or a competitor’s last campaign will be gone. TikTok’s library lists ads shown to users in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK, and it has a second library for commercial posts the platform was not paid to show (TikTok). For a US-only competitor, it may show little.

On Instagram and Facebook, partnership ads appear as coming from the creator’s handle (Instagram). So a creator’s name in a brand’s ad list is a direct read on who that brand is paying to put in front of an audience.

How concentrated are a competitor’s views?

Views concentration is the share of a brand’s creator views that comes from its top creators. To calculate it, divide the views from the brand’s top 10 creators by all creator views about the brand, then multiply by 100.

Here is a worked example. The numbers are illustrative, to show the arithmetic:

	Brand A	Brand B
Creators who posted	120	140
Total creator views	1,000,000	1,000,000
Views from top 10 creators	580,000	210,000
Top-10 concentration	58%	21%

Both brands earn the same views but in very different ways. Brand A depends on a short list of creators, which you can name, study and possibly outbid. Brand B has a broad base, which usually means seeding or a community program. That is harder to copy, and it takes longer to beat.

What does a competitor’s creator mix tell you about their strategy?

The split by creator size and by sponsored versus organic shows whether a competitor is buying reach, building a community, or doing both. Read the pattern, then pick your move:

Pattern	What it usually means	Your move
A few large creators, mostly sponsored	Paid reach bought in bursts	Hold your own spend for the gaps between their bursts
Many small creators, mostly organic	Seeding or a community program	Build your own creator base rather than chase single posts
A sponsored spike in one week	A launch or a promotion	Find what they launched and plan for the next one
The same creators month after month	Ongoing ambassador deals	Look for comparable creators they have not signed

Creator size on its own is not the answer. Nano and macro creators perform differently depending on the goal, and more followers does not mean more value.

Should you work with the same creators as your competitor?

Sometimes. A creator who already drives views for your category is proven, but check two things first: whether their contract with the competitor includes exclusivity, and whether their audience has already heard the pitch.

Overlap is a starting point, not a decision. Vet a creator on their record of delivering, not only on who they have worked with. Creator reliability is a better signal than reach. Often the better move is a creator who looks like the competitor’s best performer but has not worked with them yet.

How often should you run a competitor influencer analysis?

Run it quarterly as a baseline, plus around any competitor launch or a seasonal peak. Keep the window, platforms and competitor list the same each time, so changes in the roster are real and not an artifact of how you searched.

Trigger	Cadence	What to look at
Baseline	Quarterly	Roster, concentration, sponsored vs organic split
Competitor launch	Two to four weeks after	Which creators carried the launch, and how much was paid
Seasonal peak	Weekly during the peak	Who wins each week, and which creators moved it
Your own campaign planning	Before each brief	Creator types and formats that already work in the category

Pair the roster with how much attention each brand wins overall. Share of voice in creator content tells you whether you are behind. This analysis tells you who is putting you there, and checking the report makes sure the gap is real.

Is there a tool that shows which influencers a competitor works with?

Yes. In the Social Native platform, a Share of Views report lists every creator who posted about each brand you compare, filterable by sponsored or organic and by creator size, so the roster and the paid-versus-organic split above come from one report instead of a spreadsheet. A weekly heatmap shows which brand won each week, the same check the cadence table recommends during launches and peaks.

Roster, paid split, concentration, cadence: that’s the whole analysis. To see it for your own category, tell us which competitors you watch. We’ll run a Share of Views study that shows who creates their content, how much of it is paid, and where you’re losing ground.

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