The Social Showdown: Key Differences Between Bloggers, Vloggers, & Influencers

In the world of digital content creation, there exist three major schools of creators: bloggers, vloggers, and influencers. Whilst there can be a fair amount of diversity between creators working within these three different mediums, the conventions of these mediums are still rather rigid, especially so when it comes to using these platforms as content marketing channels. 

If you’re a business owner who’s looking to boost your organisation’s online visibility, you may be considering utilising the services of these digital media magnates, whether or not they are actually magnates. The trick to partnering with these content creators, however, is being sure to ask yourself just how each one can benefit your business. This question can have different answers depending on exactly what your marketing goals are, your intended audience or buyer persona questions, as well as the nature of your business.

Here’s what you can expect from each of these three digital content creators.

Bloggers

Back in the ‘90s, before Google and the very idea of search engines, the internet consisted of GeoCities websites run by dedicated bloggers and honestly very little else. These sites were highly personalised to their owner, but one thing that they all shared was a wealth of outbound links that were designed to behave kind of like a digital directory both for that site’s owner as well as their wider community of bloggers. This model basically acted in a similar fashion to F4F on Instagram, except instead of mutually following one another, you agreed to mutually display links to one another’s site, all with the express purpose of securing your site some backlinks to boost your discoverability online. 

Of course, with modern search engine metrics, simply having a large number of backlinks isn’t all you’ll need to consider to boost your site’s SEO rating. It’s worth noting, however, that the era of blogging was so impactful on Google’s original ground-breaking algorithm that enabled the search engine to set itself up like a monolith amongst its competitors. 

Even though Google’s algorithm has been through its fair share of alterations over the years, the search engine still operates on the basis that a domain’s authority and Google ranking can be identified through its backlinks, the site’s content, and the keywords present in that content. In essence, bloggers are the foundation of the internet as we know it, and if you’re looking to generate organic traffic, pursuing affiliate marketing agreements with reputable blogs will be guaranteed to deliver whilst simultaneously boosting your website’s overall visibility in the process.

Vloggers

Since YouTube enabled channels to take charge of their monetisation, video content is becoming an increasingly lucrative medium for prolific content creators. 

The primary concern with enlisting vloggers to help promote your business is simply that videos can often be a little less structured than traditional written content, so you’ll want to be absolutely certain that your chosen creators are reliable and that their other content doesn’t clash with your company’s personal ethos and brand identity. 

A fantastic way of making absolutely certain that the values of your vloggers align with your organisation’s identity is by selecting vloggers who produce content that’s relevant to the select industry in which your organisation operates. Established digital organisations and web hosting service providers like WordPress and Squarespace have been known to sponsor an array of reputable YouTubers like CrashCourse, Good Mythical Morning, and CinemaSins to name a few. The major advantage of sponsoring a diverse line-up of content creators is that your projected call-to-action is more likely to reach a wider audience. 

If you’re a smaller business, however, you may not have the resources to sponsor big name vloggers, which means that you’ll need to select your creators with extra care. For absolute certainty that your marketing budget is being effectively utilised, you should study the demographics of your selected channels or vloggers, just to make sure that your organisation’s message is reaching your own target audience.

Influencers

Many see Instagram as the definitive home of ‘the Influencer’, a special breed of digital media personality whose primary objective is to maintain a certain level of trust with their audience so that they can use that trust to promote products or services. Whilst the emergence of ‘sponsored posts’ have become more normalised on Instagram than on any other social media platform, influencers don’t necessarily have to be isolated to this social media platform alone.

Influencers tend to be active on whichever platforms are most popular, which is why a growing number of Instagram personalities are flocking to TikTok. Instagram’s solution to retaining users was to release Instagram Reels, a feature that allows Instagram users to publish short, and engaging video content straight to their Instagram gallery. 

As influencers primarily tend to publish photos and video content, they tend to provide organisations with a little more control over how their message is projected, as social media managers can pen dynamic captions that provide your target audience with little narratives that surround that influencer’s meaningful interactions with your products or services.

The problem with influencer marketing, however, is that it’s not entirely effective for all kinds of businesses. Influencers themselves tend to cater to younger audiences like millennials and Gen Z-ers, with industries like health and beauty, travel, and fashion, experiencing the most positive engagement, with arts and tech following closely behind.

If you’re a locally owned small business, boosting your visibility on social media should be more about engaging with individual customers on a daily basis, and encouraging them to check in or share their experiences with your business online by incentivising them to do so. Make loyalty cards, and offer free products as a reward for posting on their social media. If your campaign lets everybody feel like they have as much influence as big-name influencers, your organisation will experience a positive ripple effect of interactions with highly satisfied and valued customers simply through word of mouth with social media’s perpetual helping hand.

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It’s worth noting here that as a lot of content creators are now going cross-platform to maximise their audience engagement, it’s common to see bloggers maintain their own social media accounts on other platforms as well. This doesn’t necessarily mean these other platforms will be monetised too. In fact, some of their other platforms may be of significantly lower quality than their primary platform, which should be something to consider before you make any payments. 

It’s recommended that you assess each content creator’s digital identity before signing any contracts with these creators. Of course, when in doubt, it’s worth considering enlisting the help of seasoned digital marketing professionals. It may save you some time, money, and heartache in the long term.