Blogger, writer, influencer or creator?

Blogger, writer, influencer or creator? Who is what and does it even matter? Since we're in the 'business', we've been thinking about these questions...

Table of contents

Bloggers

When blogging became hot in the early 2000s, many people wanted to call themselves bloggers. Having their own blog was a way of expressing themselves in text and images, and in many cases also contributed to a social exchange between bloggers. A large number of people blogged as a hobby, and a smaller number tried - and some succeeded - to make an income from the activity.

Being a blogger is about continuously updating a flow of texts, and maybe even pictures. Blogging can be personal and deal with your everyday life, but can also focus on a specific topic such as interior design, books, personal development, technology, business or just about anything.

Over time, the blogs became fewer. Some got bored, others moved to Instagram or YouTube, and still others developed the blog into something new. From 'everyone' wanting to be a blogger, it has become a more limited group - perhaps those who really like the form of expression and continue whether it is 'in' or not.

For our part, we changed the name of our site from "blog" to "digital magazine" a few years ago, but if someone chooses to still call us bloggers, that works fine for us. We like blogging and bloggers!

Writer

You could say that blogging continued, but evolved. From being advised to blog 'five times a day' (if you wanted to reach out), it turned into many people thinking that you should write infrequently, but with high quality. Some of those who continued to blog, but in this way, started to call themselves writers rather than bloggers.

An advantage of the word 'writer' is that it can be used to refer to someone who writes in several different contexts, perhaps on their own blog, but perhaps also for newspapers or other websites. A possible disadvantage is that it does not include forms of expression other than writing - for example, not photography, filming or podcasting.

We quite often choose to call ourselves travel writers. We travel and we write, and although we also photograph and film, writing is our main form of expression. We also write for our own digital magazine and sometimes for a company in the camping world. Although the word writer doesn't always fit perfectly, it often fits us well.

Influencers

After many years of 'blogging', the word 'influencer' came into use. The immediate advantage of this word was that it could include a wider group - not only those who wrote texts but also those who took photos, edited films or created podcasts. In this way, it became a broad and useful term that many people embraced, but at the same time, there was always something chafing...

Personally, we feel that the word largely signals the perspective of business owners, rather than content creators. If a company wants to find a way to promote a product, they may be looking for someone to influence people to buy the product, so from their perspective it may make sense to call bloggers, vloggers and podcasters (and even celebrities in general) 'influencers'.

One problem with the concept is that, by definition, it focuses on the person reaching many or the right target group (by having many or the "right" followers or by being famous), while it focuses much less on what the person actually "does". For the content creator themselves, it can possibly feel a bit ... demeaning? As if they are nothing more than an advertising pillar.

Some people use the term "influencers" and others are reluctant to use it. We use it ourselves on our home page where we introduce our guest writers as "Guest writers/Influencers". The purpose of this was to signal to companies, among others, that our guest writers also have their own channels, for example on Instagram and YouTube. Will we stand firm and continue to use the word "influencers"? Time will tell ...

READ MORE: Will Facebook and Instagram die?

Digital creator

In recent years, some other terms have come into use, both in English and Swedish, such as content creator and digital creator. These terms have one thing in common with "influencer" - they work regardless of whether the person uses text, image, video or voice as a form of expression.

A major difference is that the concepts focus on the content the person creates - rather than on whether he or she can sell other companies' products. In other words, it is the perspective of the content creator that is described and not the perspective of the entrepreneur.

I actually like both terms, but in Swedish I think "digital kreatör" sounds better than "innehållsskapare". The word signals that the person creates something digital. It could be texts, images, films, podcasts or similar.

This word could perhaps, in many cases, be used instead of 'influencer', at least if 'influencer' refers to a person who creates digital material on a digital channel (and not a celebrity in general).