BlogFrog's social marketing blog service nabs $3.2M

Grotech Ventures backs the mommy blogging service that partners writers with brands for big bucks

BlogFrog, a blogging platform for social activation, has raised $3.2 million in a Series A round of funding.

This round was led by the Washington D.C.-based Grotech Ventures, with participation from existing investors including David Cohen (founder of TechStars). 

The company was founded in 2009 as a community for mommy bloggers, but in the last year, BlogFrog has pivoted its focus to help focus on engaging influential individuals in discussing products and events that impact them.

While the company does work closely with marketers to build revenue, they are not a blogging site filled with banner ads -- the business focuses more on recruiting bloggers that are interested in posting on products and brands that interest them.

BlogFrog has a database of more than 70,000 bloggers that post on a range of companies from local wilderness retreats to Fortune 500 brands.

Working on a brand program on BlogFrog’s social activation platform can involve dozens to thousands of influencers on a variety of social channels including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest.

Bloggers and active online personalities also use BlogFrog to increase readership and traffic, or create interaction with readers and followers via an instant community platform, and increase revenue through participation in brand programs.

One mommy blogger that has incorporated brand activism into her posts to help gain a larger readership and boost her online revenue include Jen from the blog Buried with Children and her post about LEGOs.

LEGO Board Game Play Time from Jen Mitchell on Vimeo.

The Boulder, Colo.-based company states that this funding will be used to accelerate the expansion of BlogFrog's social activation platform to further serve brand marketers, broaden its feature set for advertising and marketing agencies, and expand the company's network of publishers and online influencers.

Back in October, BlogFrog touted that it had broken the 100,000 member mark and was gearing up to reach more than 10 million women online each month with the content found on the site.

 The BlogFrog strategy to work with marketers is to show that advertisements in pop-up or banner ads is not as effective as listening to conversational and in-depth reviews from people that they trust or can relate to -- such as stay-at-home moms.

The past year brought great growth for the company with the addition of dozens of new consumer clients and "tens of thousands" of new influencers. 

The company also plans to double its headcount before the end of 2012 and open an additional office in New York City to serve their growing base of agency clients.

BlogFrog is in a similar space to one of the largest blogging sites: BlogHer. BlogHer engages women, mothers and bloggers writing about topics that interest women and moms. BlogHer uses several revenue models including the parterning with brands to write reviews, sponsored blogs and contract blogging.