The Guest Post: Connecting with Influencers

Influencers inform, entertain, draw readers to My Place Hotels

You may have seen social media posts featuring stories and photos by our carefully selected travel crew that stays at My Place Hotels of America locations across the country.

They’re our “influencers,” people who do more than just tell others about My Place Hotels. They take us along with them, from Alaska to Atlanta and beyond, with stories about their lives, the causes they support, and details of their adventures.

We want readers to become more aware of our brand, but our influencers also make readers want to know more about them personally. Their posts help us get to know their quirky but loveable pets or kids, and perhaps understand more about their struggles and accomplishments while traveling across the country, and through life.

We chose our influencers to match what we’ve found to be popular with our social media post readers. For example, people love dog photos. We know that from the thousands of views pet pictures get on location Facebook pages, and on Twitter and Instagram.

Social Media coordinators use that secret pet post power sparingly, but when we find gold it’s hard to hold back, like when we found Lucy Lou the therapy dog. This pup’s different colored eyes, expressive asymmetrical ears, and goofy doggy grin are influencer gold.

Lucy’s posts are written in “first-person” dog form, but the brains behind the bones is her human master, the creative Amanda Nelson.

Amanda showcases both her photo and writing skills while developing Lucy’s personality, which also boosts awareness of the pet-friendly aspect of our hotels. They travel across the nation staying at our comfy locations and writing about their experiences.

While Amanda has a puppy to look after, another one of our influencers, The Millennial Twin Mom, has two young humans – little boys with special needs.

We’ve discovered that cute photos of children are popular, too, and these two fit the bill perfectly.

Through Millennial Mom’s posts, readers learn how she deals with her sons’ autism diagnosis. Meanwhile we learn that she is her children’s best advocate. And, Millennial Mom recently found out that she herself has Autism Spectrum Disorder, at the high-functioning end of the spectrum.

She blogs about her travels, struggles, and how despite initial worries she turns out to be a really great mom. While they are literally on the road and staying at My Place Hotels, they also are on a figurative journey to advocate making the lives of Autistic people better through awareness. That gives us a higher altruistic purpose beyond simply telling folks about our hotels.

While pets, kids, and parents make great influencers, perhaps our most unusual is Nick Hanson – Eskimo Ninja. When he stayed at one of our Alaska My Place locations, he was recognized by the staff from his four appearances on the TV Show “American Ninja Warrior.”

We watched the good-natured TV star taking pictures with staff and guests and realized that having the World Eskimo Indian Olympics star on board would be interesting to our readers.

He’s an Inupiaq from Unalakleet, Alaska, and has qualified for the Las Vegas TV show finals every year since his first appearance on the competition four seasons ago. He’s an international motivational speaker, too.

We’re proud that Nick includes My Place in his posts during travels across the country, just like our other influencer travelers Ashley Taggart, Haley Guidry – Voyages Of Mine, Jess Darrington – Part Time Tourists, Francia Bensen – VagabondBrunette and Ryan Lockard with his loveable Tubs the Therapy Dog. Check out their pages to learn more. They all have their own interesting and entertaining ways of showing you their worlds, and at the same time let our future customers know about My Place Hotels of America offerings.