Influencer or content creator? Yes, which is it?
published in Pharma Relations issue 07/2022
Influencer, opinion leader, content creator, social media advertiser - terms that we now encounter almost daily. But who can still keep track of them all? Where are the similarities and differences? And when should you use whom and where in the marketing mix?
Creators vs. influencers
Content creators focus on target group-specific content specifically for the web, blog or social media. The goal of creators is always to create the highest quality content possible. As a rule, the service goes beyond pure production, as they attach great importance to design and deliver elaborately produced videos or very well edited images. So they are professional artists who specialize in content creation. Emotionalizing text or images alone is not enough. The storytelling techniques of content creators help to write compelling stories that can be experienced with multiple senses.
In the case of influencers, on the other hand, the focus is on the person themselves in the social media context and, above all, on their reach. They exert influence on their target group because they are often specialists in a particular field and are perceived in their community as experts and recommenders. However, their acquired reach can of course be the result of exciting, high-quality content. However, they achieve their function and added value in marketing from their function as influencers, in which they exert a certain effect as a person on their community.
The best of both worlds
There is as yet no generally valid, uniform definition of these terms. What is clear, however, is that both are necessarily to be located in the social media environment, which distinguishes them from regular celebrities, authors or video producers. According to our distinction described above, it is obvious that customers want the performance of both players for influencer marketing: high-quality produced content from the target group for the target group and the reach as well as impact of an influencer. However, a person can also combine both, thus being content creator and influencer in one and having great influence on the community with high-quality produced content and personality. In fact, influencer/creator content has various functions along the customer journey.
Awareness, Consideration, Decision
Influencer marketing is mostly used for awareness, because companies can use the appreciation and reach to convey messages. In this phase, opinion leaders can tell particularly authentic stories about their experiences when they themselves first came into contact with the disease, with a therapy or a medical device. Exciting storytelling arouses interest, activates people and lays the foundation for further activities. Value-creating content is therefore important for all phases of the customer journey. Content on social media and blogs is also valuable for consideration and decision-making, providing in-depth information and convincing with personal experiences and recommendations from real people. Influencers and content creators can act in different positions, taking followers on their own journey and reporting how their knowledge about and attitude towards a health topic has developed.
Patients, as a rule, do not look for it specifically, but find content and health information from influencers during online searches and let themselves be taken along by personal experiences around health and illness. Authentic reports about how other patients discovered their (rare) disease through their own symptoms, how they deal with a chronic disease, what they think about diet and exercise, and what criteria they use to select a doctor build trust, have a lasting effect, and influence the entire information and decision-making process.
Person or content?
It remains to be clarified at which point in the customer journey the influence of a specific person or high-quality content has the greater effect. It's not easy to answer this question.
Influencers have a certain reach, which helps them to reach the target group in the awareness phase. However, without creative, substantive and easily consumable content as a combination of (moving) images and text, as is usual for content creators, the necessary inspiration to deal with more extensive information on a particular topic is lacking. Therefore, content creators and their content are important in order to create both attention (=awareness) and to invite interaction (=consideration).
Of course, the persuasive power of well-prepared, emotionalizing content should not be underestimated. However, nothing beats the persuasive power of a personal recommendation. Followers trust the opinion of "their" influencers in a similar way to friends and family. A recommendation from an influencer whose life you participate in every day via social media therefore has a stronger influence than anonymous content.
Conclusion
In our free opinion, influencers and creators differ mainly by their mode of action, namely whether they captivate through high-quality content or as a person. What is important in both cases is relevance on social media. Thus, someone can be either a creator or an influencer, but also both in one. Inspiring content and activation through influencing are self-reinforcing marketing tools at different touchpoints of the customer journey. Thus, influencers and content creators are equally suitable for generating awareness and reach. To consolidate information during the consideration phase, the quality and experience of content play the greater role, while certain individuals "influence" more strongly, convince personally and drive decisions better. The successful combination of valuable content and the wide-reaching community of an influencer help to sustainably optimize the customer journey on the basis of one's own marketing goals.
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