How to Find Creators on Instagram at Scale (and Contact Them on Autopilot)

If you're a creator platform, a brand, or a growth team trying to find influencers or creators on Instagram, you've probably hit the same wall.

You search manually. You scroll endlessly. You find a few good profiles, paste them into a spreadsheet, and repeat. It takes hours and you've barely scratched the surface.

Or you sign up for an influencer marketing platform like Modash or Heepsy, pay a few hundred dollars a month, and realize the database is static, the filters are limited, and half the profiles haven't posted in months.

There's a better way. And it scales.

I'm Antoine, founder of Wave. Alongside building Wave, I work with growth teams and creator platforms to build custom creator lists at scale on Instagram. This article breaks down exactly how it works.

1. Why the Traditional Approach to Creator Discovery Doesn't Scale

Most teams discover creators one of two ways: manually browsing Instagram, or using a dedicated influencer platform.

Both have real limitations.

Manual search works for finding 10 or 20 profiles. It doesn't work when you need 500, 1,000, or 10,000 qualified creators. The time cost is too high and the coverage is too narrow.

Influencer platforms (Modash, Heepsy, Upfluence, and similar tools) give you access to a pre-built database. On paper, that sounds efficient. In practice:

• The database is the same for every customer. You're not getting an edge, you're accessing the same list as your competitors.

• Filters are limited to what the tool decided to offer. You can't add your own logic.

• Data goes stale fast. A creator who was active 6 months ago might have stopped posting.

• Pricing is high, often $300 to $500 per month, for data you don't own.

What these tools can't do: build a list from scratch based on your exact ICP, with custom targeting logic, at any volume you need.

2. The Smarter Method: Analyze Who Already Follows the Right Accounts

Here's the core insight behind the approach I use.

Your target creators are already on Instagram. They follow certain accounts, they get followed by certain audiences, and they exist inside specific corners of the platform. You don't need to guess where they are. You just need to look in the right places.

The method works like this:

• Identify a set of reference accounts: top creators in your niche, competitor platforms, relevant brands, or any account that attracts the audience you want.

• Scrape their followers or followings at scale.

• Run the resulting profiles through filters to extract only the ones that match your ICP.

For example: if you're a creator platform targeting lifestyle creators in the US, you'd start by analyzing the followings of 10 to 20 major lifestyle creators. The accounts they follow tend to be other creators in the same space. From there, you filter by follower range, location, niche, activity, and more.

The result is a list of creators who are organically embedded in the ecosystem you're targeting. Not a random database pull.

3. What "At Scale" Actually Means

This is not about scraping 50 profiles and calling it a day.

The approach I use involves analyzing millions of Instagram profiles to surface the most relevant ones. The filtering happens after the collection, which means you cast a wide net and then apply precise criteria to keep only what matters.

Here's a real example. I recently built a creator list for a US-based creator platform. The brief: lifestyle and fitness creators, based in the US, with at least 100k followers. Starting from the followers and followings of reference accounts in the space, I analyzed millions of profiles and delivered a final list of over 10,000 qualified creators, enriched with all the data points the team needed to start outreach immediately.

That's the difference between manual discovery and a data-driven approach.

4. How to Qualify Creators: The Filters That Actually Matter

Volume without qualification is useless. Here's how I filter profiles to make sure every lead in the final list is worth contacting.

Follower count

The most obvious filter. Define your range based on your use case: micro creators (10k to 100k), mid-tier (100k to 500k), or larger. Avoid extremes on both ends unless you have a specific reason.

Follower-to-following ratio

A creator with 200k followers and 300 followings has built a real audience. A profile with 8k followers and 7,500 followings is likely a follow-for-follow account. The ratio is a fast signal of organic reach.

Account activity

No point reaching out to someone who stopped posting 4 months ago. I filter for accounts that have posted recently and show signs of active engagement.

Public vs. private

Private accounts can't be contacted at scale and their reach is limited by definition. Filter them out unless you have a specific reason to include them.

Bio keywords

The bio is the fastest way to understand what someone does. Filtering by keywords like "creator", "UGC", "content", "fitness", "lifestyle", or any term relevant to your niche lets you narrow down to profiles with a clear fit before you even look at their feed.

Location

If you're targeting US creators, filtering by country or city is essential. Location data is available in the profile enrichment and can be combined with other filters.

Verified status

Depending on your use case, verified accounts may be a priority or a filter to apply separately. Either way, it's a column worth having.

Email and phone availability

Some creators make their contact info public in their profile. When it's available, it opens up outreach channels beyond Instagram DMs.

Combining these filters is what makes the difference between a list of 10,000 random profiles and a list of 10,000 creators who are actually worth reaching out to.

5. What Data Gets Delivered With Each Profile

Once the filtering is done, each profile in the list is enriched with the following data:

• Username and full name

• Follower count, following count, post count

• Bio

• Link in bio (all links, not just the first one)

• Email (where publicly available)

• Phone number (where publicly available)

• Category and account type (creator, business, personal)

• Verified status

• Public or private

• City, country

• Direct link to the Instagram profile

The list is delivered as a CSV or Google Sheet, ready to use. It can also be loaded directly into Wave as an audience for immediate outreach.

6. Once You Have the List: Contact Creators on Autopilot With Wave

Finding the right creators is step one. Reaching out to all of them is step two, and that's where most teams hit another bottleneck.

Sending personalized DMs to thousands of creators manually is not realistic. Wave solves that.

Wave runs outreach campaigns directly from your own Instagram account. You connect your account, upload your creator list as an audience, write your message sequence, and let it run. Wave sends personalized cold DMs, follows up automatically, and tracks replies, all from the cloud with no manual action needed.

Personalization is built into every message. You can reference the creator's name, niche, follower tier, or any field from the enriched list. The message feels direct and relevant, not like a mass blast.

You get full visibility on campaign performance: messages sent, reply rate, and responses. If a creator replies, you take over and close the conversation.

The full pipeline looks like this: build the list, load it into Wave, launch the campaign, handle replies.

7. Who This Is For

This approach works for any team that needs to identify and reach creators at scale:

• Creator platforms looking to recruit new talent or grow their creator base

• Brands running influencer or UGC campaigns who want to go beyond what influencer platforms offer

• Agencies managing influencer marketing for multiple clients

• Growth teams building ambassador or affiliate programs on Instagram

If you need a one-time list, I can build it as a standalone custom service. If you also want to automate the outreach, Wave handles that part.

Want This Done for You?

You can use Wave to run the outreach yourself. Or if you need the full pipeline, from custom creator identification to automated outreach, reach out directly.

I do this as a custom service for growth teams and creator platforms. You tell me your ICP, I build the list, and Wave contacts them on autopilot.

👉 Try Wave free for 7 days

Or reach out directly via email (antoine@usewave.co) or through the chat in the bottom right corner of this page.