The commentary introduces two research articles accepted for the special issue on “social media influencer marketing”. The first article elucidates the role of social media influencers’ attributes in affecting brand attitudes and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), whereas the second article illustrates how influencers decode and transmit organizations’ commercial messages to their followers. The commentary ends with a short discussion of emerging influencers such as virtual influencers, pet influencers, and metaverse influencers.