Colorado Social Media Landscape
By Nancy Watzman, Lynx LLC, with research support from Arman Hanifpour and Shaydanay Urbani. Thanks to the Colorado Media Project for support.
February 2026
Increasingly, Coloradans are getting their information from social media sources rather than traditional media. Yet, little information is available about who the state’s digital influencers are, what audiences they reach, how they frame state-level issues, or where gaps in accurate public information exist.
To better understand this landscape, we undertook research to identify Colorado influencers. We identified a list of 80+ creators — almost all on Instagram and TikTok. Viewed together, these provide helpful guideposts for how news organizations might approach searches for potential collaborators, and/or how to think about accounts that have become de facto purveyors of news content.
However, this resource should not be considered comprehensive, but rather as a way to think about categories of influencers and to point to directions for further research and outreach, depending on the project and the purpose.
Takeaways
The Colorado influencer landscape is vibrant and full of local flavor. There is no lack of information being shared online in Colorado by influencers. This research provides a baseline of the diversity of influencers and some basic categorization of how to think about the ways they communicate, to inspire thinking about potential partnerships. The great majority of these influencer accounts do not aspire to be dispassionate news reporters and instead boldly mix news with commercial sales and strong points of view. They often purvey a strong sense of place — Colorado is a central character, whether they’re posting about mountain town life, the Denver food scene, or family activities.
Influencers follow distinct personas. The 80+ influencers fall under several groupings or personas, which often overlap.
Activist: Influencers posting on political and social issues, most often with a strong point of view.
Lifestyle: Some activist influencers carve out specialized niches, such as parenting, the outdoors, pets, food, seeking collaborations for monetization. Sometimes they mix in political and social commentary and sometimes not.
Commercial: Beyond collaborations, some accounts offer particular products or services for sale, from restaurants to t-shirts to real estate, while also offering a point of view and/or lifestyle brand.
News: Some accounts describe themselves as news sources but have no obvious affiliation with a formal news organization.
Geographic and demographic diversity is limited. Finding significant accounts outside the Denver metro area is challenging, and the goal of demographic diversity by age, race, and ethnicity requires more research on other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, podcasts, and WhatsApp.
More vetting needed: Before working with a particular influencer, more vetting and in-depth analysis are needed. This would include calculating engagement rates and other metrics, as well as authenticity, tone, evaluations of fit for point of view, independence, ethics, etc. Commercial tools such as Modash, Hootsuite, etc. are available that make searching at scale less labor-intensive and engagement rates easy to find. However, these tools can be expensive (Modash Essentials is $199/month), and even with them, human vetting would be needed before considering any collaboration.
Customize searches depending on product/initiative. While this research provides a snapshot of the influencer landscape in Colorado, finding the right fits for specific projects and initiatives would require deeper research related to project criteria. In addition, depending on the topic, there are almost certainly more potential influencer accounts to consider. For example, rural outreach might require searching for hashtags such as rural businesses combined with place names, such as #ranch, #rodeo, #farmer in combination with particular place names such as #Limon and #Yuma.
Sample profiles
Note: By sharing these links, we are not endorsing these digital creators. They should be regarded as examples of types of accounts we found.
Category: Activist
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@goodtrouble_
Followers: 2.1 million
Modash engagement rate: 19.76% = high
Audience: Comments sometimes on Colorado issues, but much of his content is focused on national issues, from a strong left/liberal point of view.
Categories: Activist, Commercial, Lifestyle
URL: https://www.instagram.com/jimmorristees
Followers: 842K
Modash engagement rate: 0.47% = average
Audience: Boulder-based activist who sells t-shirts while offering commentary on environmental issues and other political and social issues as well as raising funds to donate to environmental and wildlife organizations.
Categories: Lifestyle, Commercial
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@biggbails
Followers: 481.8k
Modash engagement rate: 2.96% = low
URL: https://www.instagram.com/biggbails
Followers: 130k
Modash engagement rate: (not retrievable)
Audience: Snowboarders and skiers, young. Commented on Colorado ballot initiatives.
Categories: Lifestyle, Commercial
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@lettersfromtae
Followers: 14.3k
Modash engagement rate: not retrievable
Audience: Music and sports in Denver
Categories: Lifestyle, Activist
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@latinameriicana
Followers: 4,128
Modash engagement rate: not retrievable, low follower account. However, she had viral video content gaining more than 1 million views, such as this one on family separation via immigration enforcement.
Audience: Commentary on fashion, life as a stay-at-home mom, with some political and social commentary.
Categories: Lifestyle, Activist
URL: https://www.instagram.com/mayorhaley/
Followers: 8,146
Modash engagement rate: not retrievable and low follower account. However, she had viral video content such as this video, talking about her critical reaction to Trump’s reelection as a member of the military.
Audience: Lifestyle content mixed with political and social commentary.
Categories: Lifestyle, Activist
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@logicandliberty
Followers: 151.7k
Modash engagement rate: not available, high views on some content (hovering around 500k)
Audience: Lifestyle podcaster with conservative/libertarian point of view.
Categories: Commercial
URL: https://www.instagram.com/dnvr_sports
Followers: 87.2k
Modash engagement rate: 8.99% = high
Audience: This account for a sports bar on Colfax Ave. also reports on the local sports scene.
Categories: Activist
URL: https://www.tiktok.com/@professorcasey
Followers: 119.3k
Modash engagement rate: not available
Audience: Professor at CU Boulder, who does commentary and explainers on AI and tech policy, mostly national but sometimes Colorado-focused.
Categories: News
URL: https://www.facebook.com/BeulahValley/
Followers: 4.3k
Modash engagement rate: n/a
Audience: Beulah, Colorado is a community outside Pueblo with a population of under 1,000. Such places sometimes have Facebook accounts such as this to share news and provide a place for commentary. Recent posts include one congratulating the grandparents of an Oscar nominee, and another alerting people to a community meeting to talk about the future of an arts and car show.
Methodology
Over the period of January 17–31, 2026 we spent more than 50 hours collectively conducting multiple searches, primarily on Instagram and TikTok, for hashtags, search terms, and other criteria, to surface Colorado influencer accounts. We also looked at comments, followers, cross-posting, etc. as discovery tools. While we had initially hoped to include more platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, etc., the labor-intensive nature of these searches led to our limiting largely to Instagram and TikTok.
We tagged influencers by persona, as well as tags conveying content topics and audience (real estate, family, food, outdoors, etc.)
We looked for signals such as high follower accounts, rate of posting, and account “likes” and other measures. However, a deeper look at engagement rates per account was beyond the scope of this research.
Various measures are used for engagement rates; however, the American Press Institute provides this general formula.
Engagement rate: (Total Engagements (Likes + Comments + Shares) ÷ Total Followers) × 100
However, formulas vary across social media tools with many basing rates on a sample of recent individual posts (say over a 30-day period). These rates are also fluid, changing from day to day based on an account’s performance at that point in time.
To get some sense of how a commercial tool would rate accounts gathered in this research, we signed up for a free trial with Modash and looked up accounts until we reached the limit of free searches. Where available, we include this rate. Details on how Modash calculates engagement rates can be found on: https://www.modash.io/.
Below is a partial list of hashtags we searched and/or were used by accounts.
#303
#boulderlife
#colorado
#coloradoactivism
#coloradolife
#coloradoliving
#coloradoenvironment
#coloradonews
#coloradopolitics
#coloradosports
#coloradosprings
#coprotest
#denver
#denvercolorado
#denverfoodie
#denverhousing
#denverlife
#denvermetro
#denverpolitics
#denversafety
#developingdenver
#food
#GrandJunction
#i70
#politics
#seconews
#stopthecrime
#visitcolorado
#ColoradoPlains
#PlainsLife
#RuralColorado
#SoutheastColorado
#NortheastColorado
#water