This post is sponsored by BlogFrog.
What is a social media influencer?
Simply said, you are a social media influencer. We all are. Anyone who has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest account (or insert several other social networks here) is a social media influencer and can influence the other users in the various platforms and contribute to viral marketing. PR agencies, large corporations and brands have been trying to crack the code for finding the most influential of them all, and how to put influencers in some sort of order.
This is where social media influencers become the 8th wonder of the world. Real influence doesn’t necessary have anything to do with how many followers, readers or fans someone has, or even how high someone’s Klout score is. Sometimes it takes to be in the right place in the right time, to reach a small number of the right people, and being the expert in that small group of people.
This is why when companies want to work with bloggers and social media influencers need help from companies who truly know the influencers who they recommend to work with.
When Skimbaco.com was a retail store and I used viral word of mouth marketing to drive our sales already in 2007, it was all very new, and I learned my lessons from early on. Once I was able to get a very large blog, one of the top blogs for moms at the time, with over million page views a month to write about our products, and I was sure our sales were going to sky rocket. Yes, we got sales, but they didn’t sky rocket. The sky rocketing started happening when blogs like Mamanista, and Adventures in Babywearing wrote about our store, blogs that back then had much smaller following but with a very tight community who trusted what Candace and Stephanie wrote.
That’s what social media influence is really all about, trust.
Trust is all we have
I would like to think that you turn to Skimbaco Lifestyle when you want non-biased and trusted info. I hope you know how hard we work to keep it this way, and keep your trust. We don’t take many product samples, and keep our sponsored blog content to the minimal, and only work with brands that we would recommend anyways (like BlogFrog, who sponsored this post, they get us).
We even turn down half of our advertisers, because we want you to know you can trust that we give a real stamp of approval to everything we promote, write or mention here at Skimbaco Lifestyle. We may be a part of the engine doing word of mouth marketing – but we are not part of any collective with biased opinions and our opinions can not be bought.
What you may not realize – this trust goes two ways. We also read every comment, suggestion and feedback given to us, and trust your opinion. I personally put so much trust on this, that earlier this spring I asked on our Facebook page, which country in Europe you’d recommend traveling. Remember this? You voted and recommended going to Italy.
Social Media Influencers Enhance my Life
Stacie of The Divine Miss Mommy recommend visiting Venice, and we did. She and Fadra of All Things Fadra were impressed by Pisa – so we made sure not to miss it. Pauliina of My o My said her favorite place was Lucca, so we stayed there for 4 days. I happened to see a pictures from Burano on Pinterest on someone’s board I followed, and had to add visit to Burano to our agenda too.
It was the social media influencers and the trust I had developed for them, that drove most of our travel planning decisions. Thanks to these and many other social media influencers (with big or small following), I am able to live life to the fullest. I hope we here at Skimbaco Lifestyle are able to offer you the same.
As a part of the BlogFrog Influencer Circle, I have the chance to create meaningful, authentic content for brands I love. If you’re a blogger interested in new opportunities, join BlogFrog’s Influencer Circle and check out some of the top brands already working with BlogFrog.
If you’re a brand looking to work with online influencers, learn more about BlogFrog’s Brand Solutions here.
What do you love most about blogs and blogging?
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of BlogFrog. The opinions and text are all mine.
