Find TikTok creators by country (region targeting)

Why a US-default feed hurts cross-border sellers

Until now, every KOLens keyword search browsed TikTok from the United States. For a US brand that is the right default. But most KOLens users are cross-border (出海) sellers — a phone-case brand expanding into Japan, a baby-products seller targeting Brazil, a gadget store launching in Indonesia. For them, a US-default feed is a problem.

Search phone case from the US and you get US creators, US slang, US trends, and emails that route to US-based management. None of that helps you sign a creator who can actually sell to shoppers in Tokyo. You would have to manually sift hundreds of irrelevant results to find the handful of Japan-facing creators buried in the list.

Region targeting fixes this. You tell KOLens which market you sell into, and the scraper browses TikTok's keyword and hashtag feed as if it were a shopper in that country — so the creators and content that surface are localized to where your store actually ships.

How region targeting works

The new region parameter is an ISO-3166 alpha-2 country code — a two-letter code like JP (Japan), US (United States), GB (United Kingdom), DE (Germany), BR (Brazil), or ID (Indonesia). KOLens validates that the value is a real two-letter code and uppercases it automatically, so jp and JP behave the same.

That code drives the scraper to browse TikTok's keyword / hashtag feed as if the request originated from that country. TikTok's feed is heavily localized — what you see for a hashtag in Japan is a different creator mix than what you see for the same hashtag in the US. By browsing from your target market, KOLens surfaces the creators and content that market actually sees.

If you omit region, KOLens browses from the United States — the unchanged legacy behavior. Existing searches and Discovery Plans without a region keep working exactly as before.

Two ways to set the region

Region targeting works at two levels: a one-off scrape for a quick look, or a fixed setting on a recurring Discovery Plan.

1. A one-off scrape via the Claude MCP tool

If you have connected KOLens to Claude via the MCP plugin, the scrape_tiktok_by_keyword tool now accepts a region argument. Ask Claude to run a localized search and it calls:

1. scrape_tiktok_by_keyword(keyword="phone case", region="JP") — a one-off scrape that browses TikTok from Japan and returns creators localized to that market.
2. The region argument is validated as a two-letter code and uppercased, so region="jp", region="Jp" and region="JP" all resolve identically.
3. Drop the argument entirely — scrape_tiktok_by_keyword(keyword="phone case") — and the scrape browses from the US, the default.

Use the one-off form when you are exploring a new market and want to see the creator pool before committing to a recurring plan.

2. A fixed region on a recurring Discovery Plan

A Discovery Plan re-runs the same keyword search on a schedule and stacks a fresh creator cohort every run. Plans now carry a region too: the create modal and the plan edit page both include a region selector — a dropdown of country codes.

Pick the country once on the <select> when you create the plan, and every scheduled run inherits it. A daily plan for phone case with region JP keeps pulling Japan-localized creators day after day — you never re-set the region. Need to pivot to a new market? Open the plan edit page, change the selector, and all future runs follow the new region.

Step-by-step: a region-targeted Discovery Plan

From zero to a recurring, country-localized creator feed in under two minutes.

1. 1

   Open Discovery Plans and click Create plan.

   The create modal opens with the keyword field, a results count, a schedule, and — new — a region selector.
2. 2

   Enter your keyword and pick the target country.

   Type a product-category keyword (phone case, baby stroller) and choose the country from the region <select> — e.g. JP for Japan, BR for Brazil. Leave it on the default to browse from the US.

   

3. 3

   Set the schedule and save.

   A 24h cadence is the common choice — each run stacks a fresh batch of region-localized creators. The plan runs hands-free from here.
4. 4

   Confirm with the audience snapshot.

   Region biases which creators surface; it does not certify each one's audience. Open the audience snapshot on a shortlisted creator and check the audience-country breakdown before you reach out.

   

Important: region is a soft signal, not a filter

Be clear on what region targeting does and does not do. It is a soft signal — it sets the proxy / browse location KOLens uses to view TikTok. It is not a hard filter on a creator's nationality or registered country.

• What it does: strongly shifts the creator pool toward a target market. Searching region="JP" surfaces far more Japan-facing creators than a US-default search would.
• What it does not do: guarantee that every single result is a Japanese national, or that every creator's audience lives in Japan. A creator who posts in Japanese but has a pan-Asian audience can still surface.

This is why we recommend pairing region targeting with the audience snapshot. Region gets you a localized shortlist fast; the audience snapshot's audience-country analytics tell you whether a specific creator's followers actually sit in your target market. Use region to narrow, use the audience snapshot to confirm.

vs the manual workarounds

Common region codes to start with

• East Asia — JP Japan, KR South Korea, TW Taiwan: high-value, design-led markets.
• Southeast Asia — ID Indonesia, TH Thailand, VN Vietnam, PH Philippines: fast-growing TikTok Shop markets.
• Europe — GB United Kingdom, DE Germany, FR France: mature e-commerce, strong creator economies.
• Americas — US United States, BR Brazil, MX Mexico: the default plus the two largest Latin American markets.

Next step

New accounts come with 50 free credits — enough to run a region-targeted search for every market on your roadmap. Start with a one-off scrape_tiktok_by_keyword(keyword="...", region="...") to scout a market, then promote the keyword to a Discovery Plan with the region locked in, and let it stack a localized creator cohort every day.