By now you've probably heard about Webfluential, the online platform that connects brands and influencers (they basically find blogging or social media work for bloggers and influencers). They're essentially the good hustlers who find us work, measure our platforms, arrange payment for us 30 days after a job without the need to invoice and chase PO numbers and fill out dozens of supplier forms.They also organise the African Blogger Awards, which I feel is the fairest blog competition in SA, based not on votes, but on reach, resonance and relevance.

Anyway, first they gave us their agency services, then they gave us tools such as "create your own media kit" and "invite an influencer and earn", and now they have "Booked by Webfluential", which I think mom influencers are going to love the most. Why? Because it has a chat function that opens up more conversation between us and the client (we're quite a chatty and communicative bunch), and I believe it will help us create better relationships and content, which from what I can gather on the mom Facebook groups, is a priority with us.

Booked by Webluential means that an influencer will get briefs directly from brands via their websites or Webfluential media kits. It also guarantees you payment for every booking, automates reporting, and provides a one-on-one chat feature for you to collaborate with brands. I think the latter is my best feature – I love that I can communicate directly with a client, find out angles or messages I might not have got in the brief, and build on a relationship that goes just beyond a "publish and deliver" approach.

Webfluential is the first company in the world to offer this technology to influencers and brands, and this new feature also means you can take control of your own bookings as they'll come directly from the client. Any influencer can use it, and it's a free WordPress plugin that's pretty easy to install.

Whenever there's a message in your Bookings section, you get an email notification, but all the communication happens on the Webfluential dashboard.

When brands use your booking form, they'll get a professional quote, and just like with other Webfluential jobs, you'll have the option to say yay or nay.

I tried out the beta phase last week and felt quite empowered using it. Tasneem from Webluential took me on a trial run on how it would work if this was a real job, and this is what our interaction looked like:

I wouldn't call this new tool a game changer because to me, Webluential has already been the game changer. However, if anything is going to make the game friendlier, more professional yet fun and probably yield great performance, it's this. I'm already a huge fan.

Here's a video of how it all works: