Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristina Sidamdouane and Nicholle (Nikki) Wagar.
Kristina and Nikki, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Before we started Tripping with my Bff, we met through a mutual friend in Las Vegas in 2013. Coincidentally, we were both celebrating our 21st birthdays! Kristina’s is December 14th and Nikki is the 15th. At the time, Nikki was living in New York and Kristina was living in Atlanta so it was hard keeping up with each other but we kept in contact through social media and would meet up on our birthday every year. Fast forward a few years, Nikki decided to move to Atlanta in 2016 and just so happened to move into an apartment down the road from Kristina! We both knew we wanted to be in the blogger community. Kristina was creating makeup video tutorials on YouTube while Nikki was building her fashion blog. A friend of ours invited us to take a trip to Los Angeles which neither of us had ever been to before. Unfortunately, our mutual friend couldn’t make it, but we still went and had the time of our lives! We were so excited to be exploring somewhere new, we filmed and took photos of everything. We both had the passion to share our experiences with our individual audiences. While editing our own content, we thought, “It’s basically the same stuff, so why don’t we just put them together?” and boom, Tripping With My Bff was born! It took a while to come up with the name but once it stuck, we fell in love and still love it to this day!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Both of us would agree that we wish we had more hours in the day. We’ve had countless nights of staying up and editing from sunset to dawn. What sets us apart, and can sometimes set us back, is that we do more than just taking beautiful photos on Instagram. We create fully detailed visual and written content for our blog, vlog-style videos on our YouTube channel, and hour by hour updates of our travels on our Instagram Story, so it’s almost like our audience is “tripping” with us too!
As you can tell, this does take a lot of time and effort and we’re both passionate about creating beautiful visuals but the biggest downfall is that we are still in the growing stages of our business. Not only are we investing a lot of our time, but money as well. Traveling can be a huge expense, especially when starting out. And also exhausting when we have back-to-back trips, brand collaborations, and endless content to put out and create, all while trying to balance our personal lives too.
With that said, most would assume we’re roommates or we’re always together. Even though we do see each other often, we both have jobs, families, etc. At the end of the day, we’re both driven and passionate about the community that we’ve created, and aim to make this our full-time career with no plans on stopping anytime soon! We’re both so lucky to have each other because we both have the same vision for our business. It’s the most rewarding thing we’ve ever done career-wise and spiritually.
We would love to see more best friend/joint type Instagrams! We think it’s so much fun to share our story and our trips we’ve had together! Everything is always double the fun with someone else. While growing online can be challenging, our victories and successes are even better than we get to experience them with each other!
Please tell us about Tripping With My Bff.
At first, our focus was to build Youtube vlog-style content with our viewers but we weren’t gaining or growing at all. We came to realize that no one was going to watch a 15-minute video on someone they didn’t know. So, we shifted our direction and started creating more searchable content that still fit into our niche, and that we thought would be more useful. It wasn’t until we started posting more about the experiences and expectations of the places we visited, that we started gaining more traction. Every time we visit somewhere new people would ask us questions about the place, our opinions if it’s worth their time and money, and suggestions of what to do while they’re visiting, etc.
Once we started to engage with people from all around the world, that’s when we knew that we were starting to grow an actual audience. We now live in a world where social media plays a big role in society, so not only are we creating entertaining content but we’re also sharing useful information. Our narrative is to bring you, our audience, along with us as a BFF to really be apart of the journey. It sounds funny when you put it into words like that, but when you start to build a relationship with your audience you can see the difference in engagement. And it’s really helped us along the way to continue going from all of the positive feedback we’ve received from our followers. This led us to create blog posts that provide even more details, along with easy to follow guides dedicated to female travelers. You never know what to expect when traveling, so we put a lot of time and effort into planning our trips and we aim to share each experience to its fullest extent. Whether that means trying exotic dishes like delicacies from around the world, getting the VIP experience at an event, or finding the value in a place that’s underrated. We have a passion for sharing what we love to do because we truly want others to get the same experience, either by exploring on their own or with us through our platform.
Source of inspiration
We find inspiration everywhere! From online on Instagram and YouTube, as well as the places we travel to. We love the carefree energy of Los Angeles, the environmental conscious yet bohemian vibes in Tulum, Mexico, the sophisticated charm of Savannah, Georgia, and the playful yet glamorous scene of Las Vegas.
The world is constantly changing and we’re also evolving as well. We get inspired by the people we interact with and take inspiration from all the places we’ve traveled, which has built the characteristics of our brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.trippingwithmybff.com
- Email: contact@trippingwithmybff.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trippingwithmybff/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trippingwithmybff
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/trippingwithmybff
Image Credit:
@sprpotography
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
