Here’s the transcription of the video:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Push Forward Podcast, the show where we help you elevate your content game. I’m your host, Alex, and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us today. If you’re a Creator, be it a blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, or even a marketer, today’s episode is made for you. I know I’ve said that in other episodes, but I really mean it because I think there are a lot of emerging trends happening in the digital marketing, influencer, Creator world that is worth noting. If you stay up with the trends, that means that you’ll be able to better monetize the work that you do, the creations that you make online. And if you are behind on the trends, sometimes you will notice that your followers will leave you, and they will find someone else who can cater to them.
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Create your own free link in bio page
Ready to simplify your online presence?
With Pushbio, you can;
- Link all your social media profiles together effortlessly.
- Showcase all your content, products, and services in one space.
- Share everything through a single link.
After all, if you’re a Creator or an influencer, you’re more than just a marketer, you’re more than just someone promoting a brand, a product, or a service. In essence, you are performing, and you are an entertainer, right? So it’s important that you understand what’s working and what doesn’t work. And sometimes, for most creators and influencers, it’s been my experience as a digital marketer that it’s hard for you to keep up with the trends, the different things, and algorithms that Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, they’re constantly changing. You have hundreds and hundreds of tech developers and marketing people that are all the time changing the way things work, they’re upgrading the features, they’re upgrading security, they’re looking at user experience, and all the while, you are sitting on rented space, right? Because we have to acknowledge that we get these great tools, some that I just mentioned, we get these great social media platforms and websites that we can use as entrepreneurs. Because listen, after all, if you are a Creator or an influencer, you are an entrepreneur. You are making money in multiple ways from multiple streams, right? So that’s whether you’re a blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, that is your goal, is to be able to take your talent and entertain people, give them things of value, and then in return, you get paid, you get monetized, whether it’s doing ads, promoting products, or anything like that.
So I want to just explore a few themes that’s going on right now with this emerging trend, which is the question of influencer versus Creator. What is the big difference between an influencer and a Creator? And this has been an ongoing conversation in the digital marketing world and in the advertising world. If you read Ad Age, if you read Inc Magazine, Business Insider, there’s a lot of great media publications out there that have been trying to answer that question: what is the difference between influencer and Creator? And it really depends on who you talk to, and some will even say that the influencer title or economy is dead. I don’t think it’s dead. The difference, the main difference, is still today, and has always been, that influencers act more like promoters, and you feel it. It feels more like advertising, which there’s nothing wrong with advertising. Advertising is great, whether you’re Nike or Apple or any other product out there. When you put out an ad, you want to both entertain the audience that is your ideal customer profile, but you also want to sell or promote your product, and you try to do it in a way that the ad doesn’t feel salesy, right? So good ads do that. They tell a story, they evoke emotions, and then you naturally want to go to the website and buy the product and have that affinity. So that’s influencer, whereas with creators, it’s more of a marketing strategy, and it’s very in-depth with the brand.
So if you’re a Creator, yes, you are still doing the same thing as an influencer in that you create content, you create a product that people can consume digitally, right? That is content, whether it’s social media, whether it’s webinars, videos, tutorials, you are creating content. But the difference with creators is that the brands, they take a back seat with the content creation, and they really allow the creators to think outside the box and fuse their talent in with the brand, so that their users, their audience, will be more likely to absorb that information, right? The promotion, in a way, that doesn’t feel salesy. And again, the influencer economy, which you see certain verticals, certain industries like Fashion, Beauty, food, travel, and many others, you see that it’s still done that way, in that you will see the little ad button there, a little icon, and it’s disclosed that it’s an ad, which there’s nothing wrong with that. But you know that you’re consuming an ad, and it doesn’t really feel so organic, whereas with the Creator, the Creator is going to basically create a strategy around the piece of content, be it a series of videos or social media posts, and they’re really not going to take too much direction from the agency or the brand. They’re going to create it, bring it back, and say, “Hey, does this work for you?” Right? So the Creator is really leveraging emerging technologies, which is not something that influencers do. You know, with influencers, you upload your content, you’re done, great. And even with these content houses that have popped up over the last many years, you have influencers that are tech-savvy and understand that they need to do live streaming and get into gaming and do the whole entertainment thing, but most of them don’t. Most of them don’t want to be so strategic. Most of the influencers, they’re just really artistic and creative.
They just want to stick to the content and not get too bogged down with the full marketing strategy that fuses not only with the brand’s agency but the brand’s marketing and advertising teams, right? So those are the big things. But ultimately, you know, whether you’re an influencer or a creative creator of sorts, you are promoting your brand, you are promoting a product to sell, be it your own or a third party’s. Because, you know, look, in the world of digital, of the digital economy, affiliate marketing is still key. You’re going to see many YouTubers that have affiliate programs for hundreds of products. You know, every single one of those clicks that they get, they get paid for, and they want you to buy those products. And since you trust that Creator or that influencer, guess what? You know, you’re going to click on the product, you’re going to try it out because you trust them, and everyone is happy. The brand is happy, the agency’s happy, the Creator’s happy, and you, the user, are happy too, right? But you know, it’s hard to distinguish between the really true and honest influencer and Creator and the ones that just want to monetize. The truth is, so many of these creators and influencers are creating decent content, but it’s just about monetization for them.
