Episode 474: Influencers vs. Content Creators
In this episode you'll learn:
The fundamental differences between content creators (focused on producing high-quality content) and influencers (focused on building and maintaining audience relationships)
How to strategically choose between content creators and influencers based on your marketing objectives, whether that's creating valuable content or tapping into existing audiences
The importance of setting clear expectations, success metrics, and content usage rights when working with either content creators or influencers
Why follower count isn't always the most important metric - engagement rates and authentic connection with your brand values matter more
How to effectively leverage both content creators and influencers in your marketing strategy, including looking at who already follows and supports your brand
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Fiona Killackey: So the key difference, I guess, between content creators and influencers is the purpose. Content creators focus on producing necessarily always beautiful but high-quality content, whereas influencers are really about prioritizing, building, and maintaining this relationship with their audience, with their community. They are community builders.
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Hello and welcome to episode 474 of The My Daily Business Podcast. If you have ever considered working with an influencer, a content creator, or, you know, someone else external to your business who's going to help you get your brand out there, market particular categories or products or services or offers, then today is absolutely for you.
This is actually the last coaching session for 2024, and it's something that I realized I had not talked about before, but I do discuss with numerous clients, especially when we look at their budgets, their marketing, and their return on spend.
Before we get stuck into that, though, I want to, of course, acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these beautiful lands. For me, in North Warrandyte, that is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
I also want to say thank you for all of the feedback we got on our recent interview with Nas from Poppy AI and on the tool itself. If you want to see a sneak peek of the tool, you can just go to my Instagram, @mydailybusinesscoach, and check out the latest reel.
If you want to check out Poppy AI, you can send us a DM, and we'll send you the direct link. It's also linked in my bio on Instagram, and it's also linked in the podcast show notes for that episode, which was at mydailybusiness.com/podcast474.
It is such an incredible tool. It really has changed my business massively, and I know that it can really help you with your business as well. Thank you so much for the feedback on that.
Today, it is a coaching episode, and I can't wait to get started. So, let's get into it.
I started my career way back in, God, 2000—well, 2001. I worked at an ad agency in London and at some magazines there as well, as an intern. One of my first jobs at one of those magazines was to call PR agencies and find out what celebrities had been wearing.
I guess back then it really was celebrities that were the influencers, and access to them and everything else. Early in the 2000s, I became an editor for various magazines—fashion, art, and lifestyle.
One of those was a custom publishing title for David Jones, which is a major department store here in Australia. It was really around the time—this is before social media—that David Jones was trying to change up their audience and really hit a younger, more fashion-forward audience.
They brought on brands like Sass & Bide and White Suede (is that what it's called?) and Zimmermann and all these brands, right? They wanted to look at a magazine that people could pick up for free in the department store.
They've recently gone back to this, which is crazy—like 20 years later. I was the editor for that magazine, and it was really interesting because, for the first time in magazine land, we were getting designers to be the influencers.
We were really asking the duo behind Sass & Bide, the sisters behind Zimmermann, for their opinions on things—like, what do they love? And now it's so common, that sort of stuff. You understand—you buy your fashion label, but you also want to buy into the lifestyle of the founder: where they live, where they holiday, what they buy, and all of that.
Influencers, in any kind of format, have been around long before social media.
But people tend to think of influencers just as people that are blogging all day, vlogging all day, getting paid to basically get handbags sent to them and talk about it. And it's kind of got this superficial connotation attached to it, even though it is a gigantic industry.
So statistically, I looked this up before I hit record. The influencer marketing industry is estimated to be worth, wait for it, US$24.1 billion—24.1 billion. Now, the beauty industry as a whole—so if you think about every single thing like L'Oréal, Maybelline, Rimmel, all of those brands, plus all of the kind of more high-end brands, plus all of the sort of, not smaller necessarily, but say brands like Rhode that Hailey Bieber started—that whole industry is around about 240 billion.
Like, if you think about how big you think the beauty industry is, influencers are climbing up. They're 10% of that market in terms of how much they're worth by a market percentage of, you know, 24.1 billion. Now in 2022, it was 16 billion. So it has gone up and up and up, and it's just growing exponentially. And it's just going to keep soaring because we are wanting to know—we want to be influenced—and we are influenced all the time.
I literally came across a video just this morning. I bought a lot for Christmas and the end of the year. And I mean, I'm trying not to buy too much and trying not to get influenced too much. But anyway, I bought stuff, and I was just watching this one video. It was somebody I did not know. It was not some huge influencer, and she was using this blush. And I found myself pausing the video to see what the brand was because I thought, well, maybe, maybe I need that.
And it's really hard in a world where you don't want to be influenced all the time, to also be running a business that needs to influence people in order to get sales. And this is something I grapple with a lot. I know a lot of people I work with grapple with because influencing, by its very nature, a lot of the time is influencing people to act on something, whether that is to purchase or to change their lifestyle or to do something else.
And there's an element to that that only works because of the lack mentality of "I don't have enough. I don't have the right blush." Now I have about 10,000 blushes. It is something that I buy because I really don't wear much makeup, but I feel like if I have a tinted moisturizer, a blush, and tinted lip balm, then I feel like I've been done.
IAnd it takes two seconds, which is the main thing. It doesn't take long for blush to kind of give you a bit of a sense of your face looking a little bit more alive and awake. But I'm going on a ramble here.
nfluencers are really instrumental to marketing and to getting your brand out there. And so it's something that, if you've been thinking, "Oh God, they're all just so fake and it's so superficial and it's all about a lack mentality," I hear you, and I completely understand that viewpoint.
I also understand, as just myself as a consumer, I get influenced all the time—by what to buy, what to read, what to watch. And we're getting influenced all day long by our friends, by our family, by our social circles, by people at school pick-up—like all the time, you're being influenced, and you're not even aware of it.
So when we say influencers, sometimes you're really just thinking about the influencer—like literally somebody who influences. And it could be a priest in a Catholic church, it could be a rabbi in a synagogue, it could be an imam in a temple. All of those people are influencers, even though you wouldn't necessarily, when you think of the term influencers, think about those types of people.
Politicians—I mean, so many people out there in our world all the time—are influencing us: our best friend, our children. All the time, we're being influenced.
And today I really want to talk about what are influencers and how can you use them in your business? But also, what are content creators? Because are they influencers?
And I have seen, because I've watched this space all the time (I'm such a researcher, I'm always looking at these things and I've been looking at it well before social media), and I have my few points on that. But I saw a couple of years ago that a lot of influencers started breaking away from the term "influencer" and calling themselves "content creators."
Now, I actually think they're two different things. And I think sometimes, because of this want for people to not be seen as this superficial influencer, they've changed their title to "content creator," and they can get really mixed up.
And so when you're looking for somebody to partner with in your business, or to straight-out just pay or collaborate with, or, you know, looking for ambassadors, looking for how you can have other people come in and help you market your business, it could be really confusing to be like, "Are they an influencer? Are they a content creator? What do I actually need? Do I need a content creator? Do I need more of an influencer? Do I need both? Is there room for both?"
And so today I want to go through what I suggest when it comes to all of those questions, because that whole growth of US$24.1 billion in 2024—that's how much that market is estimated to be worth—will continue to grow.
And you've got to get your head around this if you're going to tap into these resources for your business. Because if you're a small business owner, then you've probably just heard both of those terms used interchangeably, and it can be very confusing, as I said, to figure out, "Okay, well, what's best for my business?"
So if you think about it this way: if influencers and content creators were kind of tools in your marketing toolbox, they'd be different instruments for different jobs. In the same way that you wouldn't use a hammer to tighten a screw, right? You'd use a screwdriver to tighten that.
Or, you know, something else—you wouldn't use an influencer when what you actually need is a content creator, and vice versa.
And so what makes this topic particularly relevant right now is just this shift that we're seeing in marketing. Brands that want to become household names are tapping into the kind of user-generated content community, which is slightly different from what we're actually talking about in terms of influencers. They're kind of tapping into this micro-influence—literally, people who can influence. But at the same time, you know, there's this need for more and more and more content, particularly video content and other content that maybe you as the founder just don't have time to execute, let alone the skill set to do so in a way that's truly going to be engaging.
So people today are really looking to brands for authentic voices, genuine connections, and also quality content. It doesn't have to be super polished content, but engaging content that resonates with them as your audience. And again, whether you have a really big marketing team or it's just you as the founder, it can be very time-consuming to try and do all of this yourself.
In the next 20 to 30 minutes, I'm going to try and break down the key differences between influencers and content creators, the benefits that each can bring to your business, how to choose the right one for your marketing goals, and also some ideas of where to find these people. Most importantly, I’ll cover how to make either choice—an influencer or a content creator—work for your budget.
Whether you're just starting to explore content creator partnerships or collaborations, or you're trying to optimize your existing marketing strategy through influencers, this episode should be helpful. As always, we have the full transcript and any links on our website. You can go to **mydailybusiness.com/podcast** for this particular episode—it's #474—if you want to look at this in text format or if you're not in a position right now to take notes.
All right, let's go.
So I guess the first thing is to really clearly define what we mean when we're talking about content creators and influencers. There is definitely overlap, and some people will fall into both camps, but they are really distinctly different roles.
If you think about content creators, you can think of them as kind of like these creatives—artisans, if you will—of the digital world. They are photographers, videographers, writers, podcasters, artists, set designers, and all sorts of people that are really, really good at their craft. They are this creative powerhouse, and they're able to do that thing or that medium really, really well.
A content creator typically handles everything from creative direction to execution. They're figuring out the props, the background, the hook, the angle, the outfits—the whole thing. They're almost like a producer. If you've ever done a fashion photo shoot (I've done about, God, 50 or 60 in my career), you’ll know you always have a producer. The producer is the one figuring out the venue, booking it, and doing a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes. That’s really what a content creator is also usually able to do. You're coming to them for their creativity, skill set, and craft. They're managing everything and are absolute specialists in their craft.
That could mean photography or an incredible blog post that's super engaging and can be repurposed on LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, and all the things—or producing incredible videos. What's interesting about content creators is that it's not necessarily about how many people follow them. The follower count is not their main form of currency. What you're paying for with a content creator is their expertise, craftsmanship, skills, and the quality of what they’re going to execute.
So you could have a content creator with 200 followers or one with 2 million followers. But usually, you're not paying for their audience; you're paying for their skill. Yes, you're also paying for the skill of an influencer—I’m not saying they're skillless at all—but a lot of the time, if you try to think about it simply, a content creator is creating awesome content that you can use. Usually, with the right contracts, they create content for you to use on your channels—to your audience—whether that's through advertising, your website, or your social media. You're using it because they have created amazing content.
They’ve usually just created content that’s amazing at what it does. For example, think of Wes Anderson. Yes, he’s an influencer in his own way, but if you think about his films, they’re next level. The details, the colors—they're just incredible. If you’ve never watched a Wes Anderson film, go and do that soon because honestly, they’re super inspiring. My husband and I recently went through a whole bunch of Roald Dahl short films that Wes Anderson has done on Netflix, and they are just so good. They’re short, but so well done.
I’d say that Wes Anderson—if I had to put him into a category—is more of a content creator because of the absolutely incredible execution and attention to detail.
Now, if we think about influencers, an influencer is someone who’s usually built an audience or following of some sort, enabling them to influence people’s purchasing decisions. That could mean purchasing a lifestyle, a product, or an offer. Influencers typically rise to prominence through their own social media channels, podcasts, email lists, YouTube channels, or other platforms. They create an online presence.
A lot of their currency comes not just from their craft (though they may be skilled at creating content), but from their ability to influence their own community. When you pay for a collaboration with an influencer, you’re buying their ability to influence their audience.
The key difference between content creators and influencers lies in their purpose. Content creators focus on producing high-quality content, while influencers prioritize building and maintaining relationships with their audience. Influencers are community builders first and content producers second, whereas content creators are content producers first. That's how I like to look at it.
And as I said, there are definitely people who cross into both markets—who are a content creator and who’ve also built an incredible community and have a huge online presence. So it's not that you have to exclusively be in two separate camps; you can be in both camps.
However, if you're looking at your marketing objectives, you really want to think about: Am I trying to tap into an existing community to leverage an audience that already exists because I'm trying to build my own and it's not quite there yet? Or have I already got a community, and what I want to give them is amazing, incredible content that comes from working with a content creator?
So, let's say, for example, you are a sustainable indoor plants company—like, that's your business. You could work with different content creators and influencers in a variety of ways.
You could have a content creator who's like a botanist, who produces educational videos about how to look after your plants—plant care and maintenance. That is a content creator. They’re going to make really engaging content about how to water them, when to water them, and what you should use, like neem oil or other oils, that sort of stuff.
Then you could have, separately, a home decor or an interior designer kind of influencer who shows how to style your plants. They could say, "This is my new lounge room. I upped it because I felt like it was lacking a little bit of humanity. So I'm going to bring some plants in, and actually my favorite indoor plants company is XYZ Company. I'm going to show you how I styled them." They are literally influencing their existing community to buy your plants.
Whereas the first—the content creator—is creating content that is really valuable for educating your audience on how to look after the plants they’ve just bought from you. That might be content that then goes out in a retention email sequence.
You could also have a photographer content creator who specializes in capturing the most beautiful, fine details of your plants. So they're just like incredible images, even images that are so up close that you wouldn't even know it's a plant. It's like, wow.
You could even then have those images sold as prints on your indoor plant company’s website. So that's a content creator photographer.
Then you could have an influencer who is a sustainability expert influencer, who talks about your business practices and how incredible the packaging is when you get your plants. And maybe all of your plant pots are somehow biodegradable. I don't know if that would work with plants, but, you know, I'm just making this up on the fly so you can see the differences.
And again, you may well have that first person—the botanist content creator. They may well have a gigantic audience themselves, so they can go between both influencer and content creator.
But it's really important for you to think about, oh, let's say, for example, our retention EDM needs some more work and we don't have the capacity to do that ourselves. So we're going to employ a content creator to make a series of videos that go into the emails once somebody has bought these plants that show them how to care for it, how to get excited, when to know if your plant is getting thirsty or infected or anything like that. So that's some kind of practical examples between the difference of a content creator and an influencer.
And I guess now, if we look at those in terms of your marketing as a small business, it's like I've talked a lot about my son, my eldest son, who plays basketball in rep and domestic, and he's really good. I think he's amazing. Obviously, I'm his parent, but I think he's pretty good. But on a team, obviously, everyone can shoot and everyone can do all parts of it. But as they progress, I mean, in any kind of, I guess, sporting team, I'm not a sports person, so maybe I'm wrong, but you're going to eventually then have the people who are better at this, and then you have the other people who are better at this part of the sport.
And it's the same with your business. You want to have a whole varied team around you when it comes to the marketing so you can get the best possible outcome.
So I guess the benefits of content creators is this expert-level content production. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes they can be more affordable than influencers. Not always. So don't use that as a golden rule, for sure. Sometimes it can feel a bit more authentic because there's not this necessarily like, "I'm trying to influence people to do something." It's more, "I'm sharing my viewpoints here." They may have really detailed knowledge on specific niches, like photography and photographing things up close. Yeah, it could be a whole bunch of kind of benefits from them.
The benefits of influencers, the most obvious, I guess, is that often they have a very large audience, and it could be the exact audience that you are trying to go after yourself that you haven't been able to build yet. Often, again, it depends on the influencer, but they've built that audience because there's a level of trust there. It could be that they are used to doing this, so it could be that the time it's going to take them to come up with their content, or maybe they, you know, they always do. I don't know them sitting in the morning like in the car with their coffee, and so they just do that every single morning. So then they just, you know, put in a new brand or a new thing that they're trying to show off that's the next day.
Whereas, say, a content creator—if you think about that photographer taking up-close pictures of a plant—that might take a lot more work, which really goes to the point of paying them less, probably shouldn't. But yes.
So there are going to be benefits for both. And so you really want to then think about, "Why should we work with each, and what should we look out for if we're going to employ a content creator or an influencer, or both?" I guess the biggest thing to start with is: How much money do you have to spend on this? And also, what are you expecting as a return on investment?
I have worked with numerous brands who utilize influencers and content creators, and in my previous employed role as head of marketing for a major accessories label here in Australia, we had influencers, for sure, that we worked with. And I have to say that sometimes I was absolutely against us working with a particular influencer because I just didn't think they actually genuinely enjoyed or liked even the product. I thought it was very much just a transactional thing.
And I remember one in particular, a very, very well-known influencer in Australia in the kind of fashion space, and we paid a considerable amount for them, and I was like, "I just can't see them actually liking this, you know, liking this brand." And what ended up happening is that they posted a full-length photo.
Now, this was a post on the grid on Instagram back, you know, 10, 11 years ago. So it's not like today where you get so much more video content. So they had a static image, and it was them full-length, and they were holding one of our handbags, and the bag was literally at their ankles. So the main part of the bag was at their ankles. If you think about a short, like a square photo on an Instagram grid, and you have a full-length outfit and you have background and you have everything else, that little bag at the side of your feet is really not getting much exposure.
So they did that. They also posted it around midnight, which was pretty frustrating as a brand. They posted it right after they posted another brand collaboration with a major fast-moving consumer good, which again was something that I thought, "Oh, as if they actually eat that." And it just felt like we were checking a box. It was like, "Cool, I get paid this much, cool, I just need to take a photo." And there was no real interest in the product. It wasn't showing them actually using it in any capacity.
And so for me personally, I thought that it was a massive loss in terms of financially what we could have done, and potentially working with a micro-influencer for the same price where they would have really been excited about it, who actually liked the brand, who actually used the brand.
And that's what I say to people a lot of the time: If you're going to work with an influencer, have a look at who already follows you, because chances are, especially if you've got a decent following, there's going to be a bunch of people who are influencers who already use your product, follow you, enjoy your brand. Look for them first, because one, they are going to be more invested in it, and two, they are actually your customer as well. And so they're going to know what other people like them are looking for.
So that's the first thing, I guess—figuring out what is the cost that we're going to do, like how much money do we want to spend on this? Also, you really want to think about who owns things like the content and the usage of imagery.
So, for example, with that photographer example that I said with the plants, if you then decide to print those and sell them, is that something that they need to be paid 50% for? Are they handing over the images and they can literally be used in any capacity? Is it being able to be used for six months? Is it able to be used, you know, on your website and your social media organic, but not in paid social media ads?
So all of that stuff needs to be ironed out. You also want to make sure that they're in alignment with where your brand is going and what you want to be known for. And also that you've done some deep diving on them as people. Who else have they worked for? What else have they got coming up so that you're not kind of paying all this money working with somebody and then for them to come out with a huge campaign with your direct competitor a month later or even two days before your campaign comes out.
So again, you don't necessarily own this person in any capacity, but you should be able to say, hey, in my category, you're in my industry, are you currently working with other people? And if you are, you know, that's cool, you've got to make a living. But is that going to come out around about the same time as my content or my posts? Also, how are you going to specify, like I always talk to people about success metrics? What are the success metrics for this? How are you going to figure out if this was a win? And also for them, like what? You know, especially if they're a content creator, it might be that they have expectations as well as, like, how is this going to be used? How are you going to promote me? Where am I tagged? How am I credited? All of that stuff needs to be really laid out and really be thought of before you sign up to work together.
And also thinking about in terms of where this content is going to be posted, whether it's your website, email, email sequences, social media. On those different platforms, do you have different needs? So again, let's say it's a website.
You may need a photographer to have things horizontally like landscape, whereas if it's going to be on YouTube Shorts or TikTok, it might be, yeah, we need this in portrait and maybe you need it in both. So you need to, you need them to know that it's going to be used across multiple mediums. So they're going to have to execute it and deliver it in a way that is helpful for all of those different platforms and marketing connection channels. Then I guess that you want to think about, like, how to choose the right people. And this can be really hard, especially if you are—and you see people all the time just kind of go after these big names and big follower numbers without looking at things like engagement.
And sometimes when you look at... I remember we used to use a tool, and Transparency, I did do a workshop with these guys when they were just starting out, which is a tool called Scrunch (S C R U N C H). They're an incredible place to look for influencers and content creators and just get a whole bunch of information about this stuff.
But we used to look at, for some of my clients, when I'd say I'd suggest that they use Scrunch (I don't get a kickback from that at all), I would put in, you know, what we were looking for. And sometimes you'd find these influencers that maybe had like 10,000 followers and they would have just as much engagement in terms of actual numbers of, like, how many people engage and comment, save, et cetera, as huge influencers. So it was beneficial for us to maybe work with the smaller influencers because they had a more intimate kind of relationship with their audiences. So you want to think about what is your overall goal with this?
Also, is this going to be somebody you're working with once off? Is it going to be somebody you work with ongoing? What does that relationship look like? What are their values? What other brands have they worked with? Are any of those, you know, just brands you would absolutely never have anything to do with yourself? Also, how do they like to work? You know, as I said at the very start, like content creators are often this autonomous almost producer from the, you know, the creative idea through to the whole rollout through to, you know, they've got all these different incredible skill sets that you might want to tap into.
An influencer may also have all of those skill sets as well, or they may want to work with you to deliver for you to deliver them a really, really clear brief so they know exactly what they need to do, how they need to film it. You may have examples of their previous work for other brands on there being like, this is kind of the exact way we'd love you to do our brand and so really understanding what are the deliverables really and how is that going to be practically discussed between all of you?
So that really brings us to the end of today's episode, which is really to think about what you need in your business. What are your marketing objectives? What are you trying to do? If you're a new business, then yes, sometimes it makes sense to leverage an existing community that you just haven't been able to build yet because you're so new.
And lots of people have done that in all sorts of businesses, not just, you know, product-based business. I think, often, when we think of influencers, we think of them literally, like, promoting a product. But service-based businesses have this exactly the same. I mean, you might partner with a media company that has an existing community that you're trying to go after. I've talked about it before that, you know, when I started my business and I used to do a lot of writing for Marketing Magazine.
Now, Marketing Magazine went out to every CMO in the country. So that Marketing Magazine, the tangible, like actual printed magazine, was going right to the people that were making decisions around whether or not I was going to come in for corporate consulting.
So I wrote a feature article every single month there, I got paid for it, one, which was great, but also I was getting my name in front of a whole bunch of people that then when I contacted them, they're like, oh, yeah, I read your articles in Marketing Magazine. Same with the Design Files. To a different segment, very much that creative small business owner. I was doing the small business column for years. Now, both Marketing Magazine and the Design Files had and still have a much bigger community in terms of social media followers than I do. So, you know, I was just getting started.
So I think it's like thinking outside the box as well, but really asking yourself, am I looking for a content creator or am I looking for an influencer? Or am I looking for this incredible person that may, you know, walk in both camps? So that is it for today's coaching episode. Really looking at the power of content creators and influencers and what the difference is between them. So I really hope you found that useful.
If you want to go through this in text format, you can find all of that at mydailybusiness.com/podcast474. Thank you so much for listening. The very next episode is going to come out on Christmas Eve if you're listening in real time. So make sure you subscribe so you get that and it might just be a little bit of peace and tranquility in what can be a very hectic end of year. All right, I will talk to you all soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to the MyDaily Business Podcast. For a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates, check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com/shop and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email hellodailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram @mydailybusiness.
You can find us on TikTok @mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
