Influencer vs. Creator? Which Term Describes You Best?
Colloquial usage has apparently made the terms creator and influencer synonyms, but there can be a helpful distinction.
The terms influencer and creator have, in 2024, nearly become a distinction without a difference. Nonetheless, a precise definition could be just the motivation you need to make your content business a success.
The trouble with these two words comes, frankly, from usage. "Too often, marketers conflate the roles of creator and influencer, using the terms interchangeably," wrote Dennis Ortiz and Kenny Gold, who are both from Deloitte Consulting.
Usage
When eMarketer principal analyst and vice president Jasmine Enberg referred to the Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat folks who attended the Cannes Film Festival as "creators," I was surprised. Admittedly, the July 2024 webinar in which she spoke was about the creator economy. Still, I had expected Enberg to use the term "influencer" since the folks she described are audience builders who effectively sell their influence over followers' social identity.
I have noticed, too, that AdAge magazine uses the terms with only a subtle difference in many cases.
When describing an individual who makes content or uses a social media platform, AdAge tends to use the word creator. However, when writing about the agencies that represent creators or the brands that buy sponsorships from creators, the magazine employs influencer as in influencer marketing. Although this is a distinction, it could be as much about avoiding word echo as applying a real difference.
Content creators themselves frequently use the words interchangeably, and even many of the SaaS companies building creator economy platforms swap out the words willy-nilly.
Ultimately, the colloquial usage may win the day, and the dictionary definition of creator and influencer could soon indicate they are synonyms. However, there may be value in separation.
Defining Creators vs. Influencers
I believe the terms can be distinguished in at least two ways—audience relationship and economic sway. However, these distinctions are more like the difference between a rectangle and a square.
Thus, a creator or content creator describes someone who produces digital content, distributes that content to an audience, and uses that content to engage that audience. The creator is the rectangle in a geometric analogy.
An influencer is a social media user, author, or celebrity who has gained a significant network of trusting followers and developed the ability to direct—at least to some degree—audience opinion and behavior. The influencer is the square since all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
Audience Relationship
Let's apply this idea to audience relationships. Here, both creators and influencers can be experts in a niché. Both may have trusted followings on social media and substantial email lists. However, the influencer has an aspirational or leadership connection to the audience.
The influencer has the power to get at least one other person to adopt a new opinion, associate with a new community, or prefer a given brand. This power may come from a sense of social identity.
Social identity is the idea that people associate themselves with a group or community and tend to behave like a group member because of that association.
"An influencer community consists of the influencer and a group of followers who together build interactions with each other and mutual support and create a group norm and micro-culture, such as language preference, communication custom, and a sense of community," wrote Samira Farivar and Fang Wang in a 2022 article for the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Thus, as the leader of this community, the influencer's behaviors and preferences soon become part of the community micro-culture. This is the differentiator.
You are reading this article. I am its author, so I am a content creator, but with very few exceptions, I cannot influence you much. We don't have the shared social identity that influence would require.
Economic Sway
The second distinction between a creator and an influencer is how each can sway an audience to make a purchase or connect with a brand.
As mentioned in the last section, I am a content creator and the author of this article, but I am not an influencer with whom you identify. Nonetheless, at this moment, I could still suggest a product or brand, and if that product or brand was relevant, you might buy it.
Thus, "Creators tend to shape bottom-to-middle consumer purchasing behavior," according to Deloitte Consulting's Ortiz and Gold.
In contrast, "Followers value influencers' opinion leadership; thus, when they perceive influencers as opinion leaders, they are likely to follow their recommendation," wrote Farivar and Wang.
Influencers can help to make a market, if you will. They "Tend to have an aspirational draw. They can help brands boost visibility and awareness among large groups of consumers and may have their own websites or merchandise. Influencers typically drive top-to-middle of the funnel consumer behavior and long-term consideration," according to Ortiz and Gold.
Defining Focus
A creator is a person who makes content, builds an audience, and can earn a living with a content business via advertising, courses, digital products, and similar.
An influencer is a creator who has developed an aspirational and opinion-leader relationship with his audience.
I am going to end this with a personal note. I don't want to be an influencer. I respect the community they build, but I don't want the responsibility of being an opinion leader. So, I build my content businesses as a creator. This distinction helps me choose between business models and opportunities and ultimately helps with success.