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Influencers vs content creators

Not sure if you should partner with an influencer or a creator for your next campaign? 

Understand the key differences so your campaigns can thrive!

Let's compare the two:

Influencers Content creators

Gets paid to:

Promote a campaign

Produce content

Focuses on:

Their audience

Your brand

Content distributed on:

Their own channels as branded posts

Your channels

Value in:

Reach, personality, and personal brand

Asset creation, quality, and alignment

Great for:

Awareness, hype, and instant recognition

Brand storytelling, evergreen campaigns, and content building

Influencers? Content creators? What's the difference?

Influencer 🎥🎉

Definition: An influencer is a creator with a large social following. They're often paid to promote products, services, and experiences to their followers.

Influencers have an existing following that engages with them on an ongoing basis. Their job is to create buzz and bring attention to different experiences and influence their audience to agree with their opinion for what they're promoting.


Example use: A travel brand partners with an influencer to generate excitement around a new event or campaign launch, with the goal of reaching a wide audience quickly.

Content creator 📸

Definition: A content creator is someone who is hired to produce high-quality content specifically for them to use across the marketing channels.

They're hired for their ability to produce content in a way that matches the brand while not taking the spotlight. They're the creative director behind the content creation, but ultimately the brand that hired them uses the content in a way that they see fit.


Example: A hotel looking to film content on their property throughout the year to build an evergreen video library that they can re-purpose over the year. 

Not sure which partner fits your campaign best?

Let’s look at five common marketing scenarios with guidance on who’s typically the better fit and why.

Situation #1: You're promoting a seasonal event like a festival, grand opening, or holiday celebration
Best fit: Influencer 
Why: Influencers are great at generating hype in a short window. Their large followings and timely posts help amplify your message quickly and drive traffic during high-impact moments.

Situation #2: You need a steady stream of short-form video content for your website, social, or paid campaigns.
Best fit: Content creator
Why: Creators focus on delivering licensed, high-quality assets that you can reuse across multiple channels. Perfect for building a long-lasting content library that fuels your brand over time.

Situation #3: You're launching a new experience and want to build social proof fast.
Best fit: Influencer
Why: Influencers excel at showing they’ve “been there, done that.” Their endorsement helps validate your offering and creates a sense of urgency for their audience to try it too.

Situation #4: You're trying to showcase authentic stories from several local destinations or regions.
Best fit: Content creator
Why: Creators can be sourced from the exact towns or neighborhoods you want to highlight. That local knowledge creates more relatable, community-rooted storytelling, all while keeping your brand voice consistent.

Situation #5: You want visuals that you can edit, adapt, and repurpose for future use.
Best fit: Content creator
Why: Unlike influencer posts that live on someone else’s profile, creator content is delivered to you with full usage rights. That means more flexibility, less legal back-and-forth, and greater ROI across multiple campaigns.

You already know what an influencer campaign looks like, here are some posts made entirely by Creator content

@VisitCalifornia Link chevron
@VisitTheUSA Link chevron
@SuperNaturalBC Link chevron
@VisitSMTX Link chevron
@VisitSMTX Link chevron

What about the costs?

If you're deciding between workign with an influencer or a content creator, here is an easy way to think about the cost:

Influencers charge based on how many followers they have and how much exposure your campaign will likely receive. You're paying for access to that audience and for content that will live on their channels.

Content creators charge based on how much content they product for your brand to use. You'll receive content that can be re-purposed across different campaigns and platforms.

FYI, at Creators, we handle all payments directly and ensure that creators are compensated fairly, and in most cases, above market rate.

Explore more with our cost comparison tool Link chevron

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