Creator or influencer, which should you use and do they refer to different things? The short answer is no, but it’s crucial to understand the origins of each term. This was something I studied when writing my book Influence: How Social Media Influencers Are Shaping Our Digital Future, which pinpoints how and why the industry emerged.
In its current form and meaning – referring to individuals who influence consumer behaviour through social content – the term “influencer” was coined by the advertising industry to describe the function it wanted these people to provide.
This was after the rise of Instagram in the 2010s and served as an umbrella term for YouTubers, bloggers and the new wave of content producers building audiences on the Meta platform. Yes, these people could have been defined rather inelegantly as Instagrammers but “influencer” gave this growing marketing channel a greater sense of purpose and scale for brands. Essentially, influencer is the advertising industry’s term to describe creators.
You may also like
Creator is the term that social media content producers who have built audiences around their work prefer. It more accurately defines their job and incorporates the many ways in which they use content as a springboard to, well, create things. That’s everything from clothing lines and makeup collections, to music.
This was portrayed epically in Casey Neistat’s 2017 video “Do What You Can’t” where the scope of opportunity being pursued by creators was laid out. Some feel diminished by the term influencer as this boils down their entire creative output to having two functions (market and sell) whereas the reality is much bigger.
There is no difference between creators and influencers but the terms are best used in different contexts. In a corporate setting when discussing brand objectives, influencer may be the most accepted and easily understood term, especially if there are people round the table who are less familiar with influencer marketing. Adding new language could result in another barrier to understanding, although it’s worth noting many businesses now prefer the term creator too.
When speaking to digital talent directly, creator is the more respectful term although most understand that to brands, their role in any partnership is influencing consumer behaviour.
Understanding this is important as it stops us instigating a hierarchy in which creators trump influencers and certain content formats are seen to be more valuable or have more merit than others. For example, to people following creators for daily fashion Carousels, that content has great meaning – even though it can often be explicitly commercial. It is helping them figure out what to wear which is no small thing.
It’s easy to say that a YouTuber with a more entertainment-led approach is more creative or more of a creator, but in fact both people are content producers giving their audiences what they want. Both are influencers and both are creators.
By Sara McCorquodale, CEO and founder of CORQ.
Global uncertainty makes the influencer landscape more complex than ever: Chante Joseph tackled big issues in digital culture debate