Social media encompasses many social interactions in a modern, digitalized world. In the digital plane, created by interacting computers, smart devices, and web servers, many internet users display their identity and personality through presented information on these networks (all of which you can use social media scraping to collect this data).
Just like in the physical world, charismatic individuals, business-minded people, marketing companies, and other entities that manage to attract attention can use social media platforms and other tools of accelerated communication to gain popularity.
Different websites, systems, and networks present unique ways to send messages and share information with other people connected to the platform.
Unlike television, radios, and newspapers, the internet and social media platforms let users communicate with each other and interact with presented content in the forms of text, pictures, and videos. Some parts of a website are dedicated to advertisements: their strategic placement and appearance make them far more effective than marketing on traditional media platforms. 
With different tools and techniques to represent data, communication is much faster and comes in many different forms. Talented individuals can find their niche and reach respectable popularity, and maintain constant interaction with potential fans. Between the average web surfers and prominent stars, we observe micro-influencers — social media personalities with a following just big enough to maintain a loyal following and receive potential sponsorship deals.
Now let’s take a look at modern marketing from a business standpoint. Micro-influencers have loyal fans that discover and stick around due to genuine interest, not because of algorithmic recommendations. Such users are genuinely interested in a presented personality and their work, which makes them more reactive to sponsorship deals. Such influencers always look for sponsors, and a manageable following allows them to interact with the audience and offer discount codes.
The beauty of marketing through micro-influencers lies in personalized marketing and responsiveness to ads. What’s left is the discovery of such potential partners. This is where we pull out the big guns — algorithmic automation. Why would you do something in a few minutes when you can spend hours automating it?
Jokes aside, our goal is to discuss the discovery of favorable marketing partners with the help of web scrapers. We will go over the functionality of these tools that automate data extraction and discuss the social media scraping process on the most popular social media platforms. There are also main criteria to focus on while seeking out micro-influencers to advertise your business. To top it off, we will talk about the necessity of proxy servers and how social media proxies help us conquer social media with web scrapers.
For example, TikTok proxies help companies tap into local algorithms and find unique micro-influencers that dominate specific regions. Both the geolocation changes and IP address masking enhance the data extraction process with sufficient protection and greater possibilities.
With TikTok reaching a billion monthly active users and still growing, using TikTok proxies while navigating the platform will help you control presented information. For now, let’s focus on web scraping and the discovery of micro-influencers, we will get back to the enhancements later.
Understanding data scraping
Web scraping is a simple but effective strategy for extracting and organizing information from targeted websites. After the extraction of rendered HTML code, parsers restructure valuable information into a readable and understandable format and discard everything else. Web scraping is most effective on a scale that allows it to greatly surpass manual data extraction and on websites that constantly update presented information. You can either purchase a pre-built, customizable scraping bot or write your scraper with Python, C#, or other languages good for scraping.
Social media platforms — endless sources of information
Social media platforms are peculiar targets for automated data extraction: the websites are operated by the biggest tech companies and the amount of available information can be overwhelming. To make matters worse, most networks strongly oppose social media scraping, so even if it is not illegal, using automated bots to extract data may get your IP address banned.
When we manage to bypass struggles and potential limitations, there are no better places for the discovery of micro-influencers. After all, social media networks provide the foundation for the presentation of their product and the means of communication with their fanbase.
Finding micro-influencers on Facebook
While often ridiculed as the platform for senior internet users, Facebook is the first social media network that revolutionized communication on the internet. Still, with almost 3 billion monthly active users, finding a person that has never had a Facebook account is no easy feat.
The popularity of Facebook on an international scale offers not only quantity but also a great variety of micro-influencers, allowing us to reach the most unique audiences through their influence. User accounts and pages offer different structure formats for popular individuals, where your published ads will have guaranteed visibility and engagement. Today, Facebook is a jack of all trades, offering content in text, image, video, and TikTok-Esque reels — plenty of types to choose from, with the effectiveness depending on the advertised product.
The discovery of micro-influencers on Facebook is a bit trickier because, unlike Twitter or Instagram, users of the platform rarely use hashtags for their posts. You can still use such identifiers for web scrapers, but identification through the most popular keywords is the most successful technique. Use the query like a search engine, but instead of links to the highest ranked websites you will see the most relevant user accounts and associated pages. From there, you can use web scrapers to extract information based on the search results, sort them in the appropriate order, and start messaging the best potential partners!
Influencers and their love for Instagram
Instagram is the chaotic kingdom for micro-influencers. Pages that attract followers either due to charisma or the physical beauty of individuals receive many sponsors for clothing advertisements. The structure of the platform, frequent use of hashtags, and a great recommendation algorithm guide the user to new posts and pages that resonate with their interests.
When searching for the most suitable micro-influencer, the choice of a platform plays a big role. You will see far more ads for clothing, makeup, and beauty products on Instagram than on Facebook and YouTube because the simplicity and image-focused representation of content make it the best platform for the advertisement of such products. Instagram has the most micro-influencers that focus on traveling, skincare, clothes, and makeup tutorials. A company that deals in such products will find plenty of influencers on Instagram.
When the number of potential partners is high, location choices can make a great impact on your success. With Instagram, try to discover locations that would cherish the appearance of your products on the market or find the closest local influencers. With thousands of potential matches, following these criteria will help you choose the most suitable partners.
Detailed explanations of YouTube ads
YouTube is the third most popular social media network and the best platform for advertising complex products. Once you partner with a chosen micro-influencer, an agreed-upon script that takes up a portion of the video is used to explain the service or product. Clothes and beauty products are best advertised in pictures and do not require more information. YouTube is the best network for advertising gadgets, video games, privacy tools, and new unique services that otherwise would be confusing without a simple and attractive explanation.
When searching for a micro-influencer for more composite ads, YouTube is the best platform. Use web scrapers to discover channels whose content may be directly or partially associated with your goods and services. For example, extraction of names based on keywords and subscribers can help you discover all the tech or unboxing channels that could advertise your gadgets. Small and intermediate content creators have loyal audiences that often go out of their way to support the creator therefore your ad will not go unnoticed.
Local marketing with TikTok
Finding the right influencers for Tiktok can be unpredictable because individual algorithms can favor otherwise rarely visible users. However, most feeds generated by the algorithm feature local creators that receive engagement from users in particular regions. 
With the help of Tiktok proxies, you can discover micro-influencers that dominate the feeds of smaller countries when their content is tailored for local users. Finding such partners can help you bring your product into an untapped market and help sustain the growth of a local public figure. Associating your brand with a marketable influencer can be a great investment that will continue to be beneficial for both parties.
When paired with proxies that help us change geolocation, we can also discover influencers by hashtags that may have something in common with your product or service. The key is a healthy mix of rising stars in localized markets and stable micro-influencers that can find their way on “For you” pages for users around the world. The preferred ratios depend on the marketed product.
How to approach potential partners
To find the most suitable micro-influencers, web scrapers have to search and filter out different segments of public data to open up communication with partners. For Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can always send a direct message to establish communication. However, for YouTube and TikTok, and in many cases, for the platforms mentioned before, the extraction of e-mail addresses is valuable if not necessary. Many influencers attach business addresses to their page or channel descriptions, making it a valuable segment of public information that should be extracted.
When approaching potential partners, make sure to add a personal touch to every letter if possible because many influencers can identify a template tailored for all recipients. Infusing the message with personal details and knowledge about the creator is a respectful approach that will increase the likelihood of a positive reply. If you are contacting many influencers at once, at least try to include their name in a greeting.
Before approaching the most marketable influencers, make sure that the advertised product is relevant to their audience. If you are marketing male grooming products, the ad will be ineffective if the influencer’s audience is predominantly female. Make sure that your product or service may be useful or even essential for the potential client base you are trying to reach.
Extract information without risks
As we established, a good data scrape of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or any other available network will reveal the most suitable micro-influencer. However, even though there are no laws against the extraction of public data, just like search engines, social media networks try to eliminate any visitors that do not resemble a real user interacting with the page. There are distinctions between manual browsing and social media scraping that can flare up and put your IP address at the risk of blacklisting.
For a company exposing the network identity and getting an IP address banned is very unsafe. Even despite the damage to your reputation and digital security, an IP ban will not allow you to enter or scrape the platform.
To ensure anonymity while social media scraping automated bots work with proxy servers. Residential proxies are the best choice for such risky tasks as they take over the data packets from scrapers and assign them a different identity from devices serviced by internet service providers (ISP).
Business-oriented proxy providers offer large pools of IP addresses for social media scraping and other data-oriented tasks. With multiple residential proxies at our disposal, we can choose desired intervals for rotation between the identities to avoid detection. Use the available addresses to set up rotating proxies that do not raise suspicion on recipient servers and utilize them to run multiple scrapers. With addresses from many locations around the world you can change the presented content and protect your network identity at the same time.
Getting started with social media scraping
Online marketing automation is pushing the boundaries of efficiency. With entertaining and addictive social media networks attracting the attention of internet users all around the world, advertisers have many great platforms for advertising and client outreach. The Discovery and cooperation of micro-influencers help us find users most likely to be interested in an advertised product and create personalized connections with new partners and potential future clients.
