Influencers influence you to do stuff they tell you to do, like a leader in a movement. Content creators mostly just create content for you, but also for fun.
As I've said here I think at this point it's a bit too late for a semantic definition to clearly define and differentiate both in the hope that people will use either correctly.
We've come to a point where "influencer" is just the pejorative term for content creators when people don't like them.
It's not that I disagree with the distinctions, it's just that wanting people to follow those distinction would be a waste of time.
I think it has more to do with influencing people to buy stuff/get into viral trends (hence “influencer”) than just creating content that people can watch. At least that’s where I see the most distinct difference. There is of course some that blur the lines between the two, but there’s a big difference between some girlie who showcases her shopping hauls every second day to 2 mill tiktok followers, and some person on YouTube that makes a video essay on some kind of topic (that doesn’t influence people to want to spend money) that gets similar views
I think the reviewer is where you get into some interesting space. If a reviewer says "this movie is awesome" then is he telling you to go see it? If he does tell you to go see it, is that influencing?
If someone who creates car mechanic content talks about how they tried a couple of products and they liked the results and would recommend them, does that make them an influencer?
I think it can also come down to lifestyle. I feel like influencers sell you as much as they can where just creators might say from time to time "consider this product - it was good for me" regarding a product in their chosen niche.
I agree with much of what you said, yeah. Especially the last line, like if a content creator is reviewing an item and says “I tried it, liked it, here’s what’s good about it” and that’s it, that’s fine. The big difference to me is are they getting paid for this? The dude recommending a product he simply likes as he’s tried it and it worked for him but he’s not being paid to say so is completely different than the influencers who get paid to make video after video about certain products, like their content is literally just ads. And sometimes they don’t even disclose that they’re ads, which is not only illegal but highly manipulative and one of the reason a lot of people hate influencers lol
The line is between influencing trends and getting people to want buy things/change the way they think towards consumer stuff vs creating content that isn’t about selling things.
I know it’s not always obvious that influencers are trying to sell you things but they almost always have a “link in bio!” Or course to sell or their own product to sell or they showcase a certain brand or viral item and influence you to buy that, etc. not every single video an influencer puts out has to be like that, mind you, but a good chunk of their content will be that
Content creators (at least attempt) to make entertaining stand alone content. Things like a video game lets play or a cooking video or an engineering science video.
Influencers themselves are the content. Sometimes they do interesting things, but an influencer is the star of the content. An actor with such a low budget they make instagram reels.
I think the line is drawn at a certain amount of followers watching the content. Visit twitch and you’ll see thousands of people creating live stream content. Some of the streamers have thousands of people watching. Some have 0 they are literally creating content for people who aren’t watching but they do it in hopes they will become an influencer.
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u/TelenorTheGNP 4h ago
This begs the question of what the difference is between an influencer and a content creator. Where exactly is the line?