Some of the most influential people on LinkedIn would never call themselves influencers.
They're founders sharing what they're learning as they build a company. They're executives breaking down industry trends. They're recruiters explaining how hiring actually works. They're consultants turning years of experience into practical advice. And increasingly, they're the people your customers are already following, commenting on, and trusting.
That makes LinkedIn an especially interesting place to find influencers for B2B and professional audiences. The challenge is figuring out which voices have genuine influence in the niche you care about and which accounts are simply generating a lot of surface-level engagement.
If you're looking for LinkedIn influencers for a campaign, partnership, or thought leadership strategy, here's how to find the right people.
1. Search for Expertise, Not Just Influencers
LinkedIn search is a good starting point, but think about the people you want to reach rather than the word "influencer."
Search for topics, job titles, industries, and areas of expertise related to your campaign.
For example, a cybersecurity company could search for CISOs, security researchers, or people talking about zero-trust architecture. A recruiting company might look for talent leaders, recruiters, and HR professionals who regularly post about hiring.
Then look at the people appearing repeatedly in those conversations.
You're trying to find the people others pay attention to when a particular subject comes up.
2. Look at Their Posts, Not Just Their Profile
A LinkedIn profile can tell you someone's job title and career history. Their posts tell you whether they actually have influence.
Click through to their recent content and look for consistency.
Are they posting regularly? Do people leave thoughtful comments? Are other professionals responding to their ideas? Do their posts generate conversations rather than just likes?
This matters because LinkedIn engagement can look different from other social platforms. A post with a few hundred likes might be less valuable than one with a smaller number of comments from the exact executives, buyers, or professionals you're trying to reach.
3. Find the People Who Own a Niche
LinkedIn is particularly useful for B2B influencer marketing because professional communities tend to form around specific areas of expertise.
Instead of looking for a generic "business influencer," get much more specific.
Think:
- SaaS sales leaders
- Fintech founders
- Product management experts
- Supply chain executives
- HR technology specialists
- Venture capital investors
- Data science leaders
- Marketing operations professionals
The narrower the niche, the easier it can be to identify people whose audience overlaps with your ideal customer.
A creator with 15,000 highly relevant followers can be much more interesting than a general business creator with 500,000.
4. Explore LinkedIn Newsletters
Don't overlook LinkedIn newsletters when researching creators.
Newsletters can be a strong signal that someone has built an audience around a particular subject. LinkedIn members can subscribe to newsletters and receive notifications when new editions are published, giving creators a way to build an ongoing audience around their expertise.
You can discover newsletters through LinkedIn profiles, the My Network section, and newsletter recommendations. LinkedIn also says newsletters can appear in search results, making them another useful way to discover people publishing consistently around a particular topic.
If someone has built a newsletter about exactly the subject your customers care about, they're worth investigating even if their follower count isn't enormous.
5. Pay Attention to Thought Leadership
On LinkedIn, influence often comes from having a recognizable point of view.
Look beyond posts that simply repeat industry news. Find people who explain complicated topics, challenge conventional thinking, share useful experiences, or have genuine expertise in an area.
This is especially important if you're planning a thought leadership campaign.
LinkedIn's own advertising tools reflect this distinction. Its Creator Marketplace can help brands discover public LinkedIn content for thought leader ads, including posts, articles, and newsletter content.
That means a creator's existing ideas and opinions can be just as important as their audience size.
6. Check Who Is Actually Engaging
Don't judge a LinkedIn creator entirely by their headline metrics.
Open their posts and look at the people commenting.
Are they founders? Marketing leaders? Engineers? Buyers? Investors? Other industry experts?
The quality of the audience can matter more than the raw number of reactions.
A creator whose posts consistently attract senior decision-makers might be a strong partner for a B2B campaign even if their engagement numbers look modest compared with consumer influencers on TikTok or Instagram.
7. Look for Consistency
One viral LinkedIn post doesn't necessarily make someone an influencer.
Look at their content over the past few months. Are they consistently talking about the same area of expertise? Do they have recurring themes? Have they built an audience around a recognizable subject?
LinkedIn provides creators with analytics covering post and audience performance, which can give creators additional insight into how their content is performing.
For brands, consistency is useful because it indicates that a creator's audience isn't dependent on one unusually successful post.
8. Use Creator Discovery Tools
LinkedIn search is useful, but finding the right people manually can become time-consuming once you're looking beyond your immediate network.
LinkedIn now has a Creator Marketplace for eligible creators in the US and Canada that allows brands to discover creators based on their profile, expertise, selected content, and audience and performance insights. Availability is still being expanded, so it won't be visible to everyone.
Third-party platforms can also help with creator discovery and audience research.
Featured's Find Creators tool is another option when you want to broaden the initial search. You can use it to surface potential creators based on a category or type of audience, then investigate their LinkedIn presence yourself.
Discovery tools are useful for expanding your shortlist, but LinkedIn is where you should evaluate someone's actual posts, expertise, audience, and voice.
9. Think About the Partnership You Actually Want
Before reaching out, decide what you want the creator to do.
A LinkedIn influencer could write a sponsored post, contribute their perspective to a campaign, participate in an event, create thought leadership content, or allow an existing post to be promoted through LinkedIn's advertising products.
LinkedIn's thought leader ad format, for example, allows advertisers to sponsor eligible posts from individual profiles with the creator's approval.
The right format depends on the creator and your objective. Don't force a creator into a generic influencer campaign if what makes them valuable is their expertise.
Final Thoughts
Learning how to find LinkedIn influencers starts with changing what you mean by "influencer."
On LinkedIn, influence is often built through expertise, consistency, credibility, and professional relationships rather than entertainment or sheer follower volume.
Search by niche. Read the posts. Look at the people engaging. Explore newsletters. Pay attention to thought leaders who have developed a genuine point of view.
Then use LinkedIn's own discovery tools or creator search platforms to expand your list.
The best LinkedIn influencer for your brand might not be the person with the biggest audience. It might be the person your ideal customers already trust when they need an answer.