Where does Cheerful find creators?
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Cheerful finds creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube from several sources, including creators already reviewed in its own index, live checks on each platform, and public search for accounts discussing your topic. You describe who you want in plain English, and Deep Search turns that brief into a list of real, active creators who match your follower range, location and topic, reviewed before they reach you.
The part worth understanding before you compare tools is the checking. A large database is easy to query and full of accounts that are private, inactive, the wrong size, a brand rather than a person, or in the wrong country. Most of what Cheerful does between the brief and the list is removing those.
Cheerful finds creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube from its own reviewed index, live checks on each platform and public search, then reviews every candidate against the brief’s follower range, location and topic before delivering it.
How to set it up
- 1
Write the brief the way you would brief a person
Product, audience, the kind of creator you want, follower range, market. Plain English is the input; there is no filter form to fill in first.
- 2
Swipe the first deck
Deep Search shows a first deck of about 20 creators, usually within a minute. Keeping or passing on them tells the run what you meant better than a longer brief does.
- 3
Let the run finish
The full run then keeps searching and reviewing creators until it reaches your target number. It takes 15 to 60 minutes, and results appear as they are confirmed.
- 4
Send the list to a campaign
Delivered creators land in the run’s own list, which works like any Cheerful list: share it, vote on it, or add it to a campaign. Contact details are included wherever a creator has published them.
Which platforms can Cheerful search for creators?
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Each platform is read live, so follower counts and recent posts are current. Lookalike search and hashtag discovery are not identical on every platform, because the platforms do not expose the same data.
Where does the creator data come from?
| Source | What it contributes |
|---|---|
| Creators already reviewed | Creators Cheerful has looked at before, so a brief can be matched against them quickly. |
| Live checks | Current follower counts, bios, recent posts and links, read from the platform when a candidate is considered, so nothing is delivered on stale numbers. |
| Public search | Accounts discussing your topic on the web and on Instagram and TikTok, which catches creators who are not in any list yet. |
If you name brands your audience already follows, Deep Search also looks for creators connected to them. Those brand accounts are never delivered as creators themselves, and brands you name as competitors are excluded.
How does Cheerful check creators against the brief?
- Follower band. Results stay inside the range you set, with a small margin either side.
- Location. You can name one or several countries and a city. A strict location drops creators confirmed to be elsewhere; the default keeps creators whose location is unknown, labelled as such, behind confirmed matches.
- Account quality. Private accounts, inactive accounts, brand and business accounts, venues, repost pages and accounts that are not a person are removed.
- Topic. Each candidate’s own content is reviewed against the brief before they reach your list.
- Already known. Anyone you have already listed, blocked, passed on or contacted, including creators a teammate contacted or saved to a shared list, is never shown again.
Engagement is used to screen out inactive accounts, not to rank. A run aims for 50 creators by default and can be set as high as 200.
Can Cheerful find creators similar to one I already like?
Yes. Name example creators in the brief, up to 100 of them, and the run uses them as examples for lookalike discovery alongside the written description. There is also a direct "similar to @handle" search. Seeds work best when they share the thing you care about, such as the niche, audience or format, rather than just the follower count.
How does Cheerful find a creator’s email address?
Public contact details found while searching are kept. For creators without one, Cheerful looks for a published address when they join a live campaign, and you can add one manually.
When nothing is found the creator is marked as having no email, and you can type one in by hand. Most creators have no public address, so a search result without emails has not failed.
What this does not do
- Deep Search is not instant. The first deck takes seconds to a minute; a full run takes 15 to 60 minutes.
- Discovery covers Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Other platforms are not generally available.
- Location is verified at country level. A city requirement relies on the creator saying where they live in their own content, so treat it as evidence-based rather than guaranteed.
- There are no audience-age or audience-gender filters in a Deep Search brief. Structured gender and language filters exist only in the classic keyword and lookalike search.
- Some creators have no public contact details. They stay in the list without an email.
- Searches spend credits from your plan’s balance.
Frequently asked questions
From several sources: creators Cheerful has already reviewed, live checks on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and public search for accounts discussing your topic. Every delivered creator is checked against live data rather than a stored snapshot.
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Yes. Set a follower range and one or more countries in the brief. Results stay close to that range, and a strict location drops creators confirmed to be elsewhere.
Yes. Add up to 100 example creators to a brief, or run a direct "similar to @handle" search.
Yes. Public contact details found during search are kept, and for creators without one Cheerful looks for a published address when they join a live campaign. You can also enter an address by hand.
No. Creators you or a teammate have already contacted, listed, blocked or passed on are excluded from new results.
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