Do both of them seem like one and the same thing to you? If yes, you’re right in some ways but that one thin line of difference is a significant one. The online industry is booming nowadays, and because of that, we get to hear new terms for internet marketers floating around, seemingly every day. Blogger, Influencer, Trendsetter, Vlogger, Podcaster, and many more.
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Bloggers are not always Influencers:
Being a blogger means you are someone who knows how to blog. To make it simpler – someone who knows how to put themselves out there in a presentable manner, knows how to get pictures clicked, can creatively click pictures of products, has the ability to market themselves over the internet.
A blogger can be an influencer if they have an influential blog. In the blogging world, influence is often measured by # of monthly visitors and engagement metrics like shares, comments, clicks, etc. You can own a blog and publish valuable content, but if you don’t have a sizable number of subscribers or readers, you don’t have anyone to influence, and thus, you can’t technically be called an influencer.
Metrics define Influencers:
Influencers use their platform or multiple platforms to motivate their followers to purchase products and services from brands and companies they’re working with.
Bottom line: An Influencer is someone with an online platform who has a massive following and therefore a large impact on an audience’s buying decisions. An Influencer promotes products and services through their platforms. You know you’ve stumbled on an influencer’s Instagram when their feed contains visually stunning flatlays of products or carefully lit photos of them having a good time while using a specific product.
These photos and the accompanying captions and hashtags are designed to showcase products and services to their followers. These are more effective when their whole feed reveals a certain kind of lifestyle that appears desirable to their followers.
An Influencer isn’t necessarily a trendsetter. A trendsetter is someone who can impact an audience enough to start trends. However, not all of these trends involve purchase decisions by an audience (plus, they’re rarely paid for starting a trend). For instance, whoever started the #WhatTheFluff challenge video trend (this is a great compilation) probably wasn’t trying to promote or sell anything, and yet started a viral, if short-lived, trend.
Example –Â
Jorry can be considered as an Influencer as she promotes brands and has an influence over her audience’s buying preferences. She has partnered with brands like Dior, Chanel, Jo Malone and many more. Her high number of followers get her high transaction and sales.
Example –
Amanda Rushforth is a Brit expat who blogs about her lifestyle in Dubai – keeping it like a personal scrapbook. She tried to shape her audience’s shopping choices towards sustainability and living mindfully, thus, – she is a Blogger.
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