Ciara Strickland, a 27-year-old living in Virginia, shares style tips, clothing guides and her latest fashion picks, geared toward queer women, to her roughly 1 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and blog. Instead of her profiles carrying her name, they display the title of her brand and recently launched gender-neutral, androgynous clothing line: The New Mix.  

While some brands might still categorize her as an influencer—someone to pay in exchange for her social following—she would prefer the term “creator” and to be treated as such.

“Influencers have the bad connotation from 2012, when people were promoting all kinds of products they didn’t believe in,” Strickland explains. “We’re in that evolutionary phase making that shift over to ‘creator’ because that’s what we are. When people think of me as an influencer, they think I just post a photo, and I’m like, ‘No, that’s not it. There’s so much more work that goes into it. So I use the term creator.’”

She’s far from alone. Strickland represents a growing number of content creators who want to be taken more seriously as entrepreneurs and business owners, rather than as digital personalities who primarily post photos or videos to hawk products. Their ever-demanding followers—largely millennial or Gen Z audiences—appreciate authenticity and creativity above all else, and increasingly expect more from who they follow; they want to be entertained, educated or inspired. After all, anyone can post a photo and use hashtags to promote themselves. 

Creator or influencer? 

“Creators are people who put the art of creation first and then share that through communities. That’s very different from an influencer,” says Jim Louderback, general manager and senior VP at ViacomCBS and CEO at creator conference VidCon. “[An influencer] just wants to get rich and famous. They aren’t creating, they’re really just leveraging [social media] in a way to get rich and famous.” He points to a celebrity like Kim Kardashian-West and her 250 million Instagram followers as an example of an influencer, compared to a creator like filmmaker Ryan Connolly whose YouTube show, "Film Riot," has 1.3 million subscribers.

Brands, Louderback says, can benefit from both depending on what their campaign goals are. With creators having specific followings, there’s the potential for higher engagement and the opportunity to speak to more niche segments of audiences, whereas with influencers, their clout comes in the form of broad reach and popularity. “The depth of commitment and love for specific creators can translate to really powerful connections for brands,” he says. “You can also get great results with influencers, but then it’s a scale game.”

The key performance indicator for influencers is, for the most part, what the title implies: influencing their audience to do something like buy a jacket they are wearing or skincare products they show in their morning routine, says Evan Horowitz, CEO and co-founder, Movers+Shakers, a creative studio. They monetize their platform predominantly through brand deals and affiliate programs.

Creators, on the other hand, can have both large and small followings, and are typically less of a household name, Horowitz explains. Also, as the name implies, the focus of creators is content creation. "Influencers can also be creators, but not all creators are necessarily influencers," he says. "Oftentimes, influencers start out as content creators as they build their presence and personality on the internet." 

One major difference between an influencer and a creator comes down to how they are measured and why audiences are following them in the first place, says Gabe Feldman, senior business development lead, Viral Nation, an influencer agency. 

"An influencer is measured on quantitative factors such as audience reach, viewership, engagement rate. Ultimately, an influencer is essentially word of mouth at scale - with a friendship-like relationship with their audience," Feldman says. "Whereas a creator is different; a creator isn’t measured on reach or viewership, but the quality and caliber of their content. Audiences are attracted to creators primarily because of the depth and breadth of content they produce. Generally speaking, creators produce content that otherwise would be expensive to execute in traditional capacities (i.e: high-end studios)."

Deciding between the two

Brands typically turn to influencers when they are looking to elevate their share of voice on a specific platform or drive revenue and acquisition of customers, Feldman says.

Influencers often have a larger following and are more instantly and widely recognized, says Horowitz. "This can be a strong asset for brands that are trying to gain broad exposure, grab attention and impact sales." 

Brands looking to establish a presence on a new platform, might look to creators to help build strong content, Horowitz adds. Creators also tend to have certain niches and can help bring a brand in front of a specific audience. 

Marketers can also lean on creators to supplement their content production needs, Feldman says, adding that creators give brands a two-for-one deal. "They get an abundance of high-end content, paired with the likeness and credibility of a talented content creator."   

Jessica Philips, founder and CEO of The Social Standard, an influencer marketing agency, says they recommend a different approach for brands depending on marketing goals. For example, The Social Standard worked with Mexican restaurant chain, Qdoba, to construct murals in Nashville with creators who could paint a mural and share it on social media. However, when Chrysler wanted to promote the latest features of the Pacifica, the agency partnered them with family influencers who could demonstrate how it worked in their daily lives.  

But there is a price difference typically involved, with creators, perhaps surprisingly, sometimes seeking a higher price tag. "The reason being, production costs paired with content licensing and usage fees can inflate costs significantly if the partnership isn’t negotiated correctly. From my experience, brands wouldn’t be paying for their social 'clout' or viewership, but would be paying for production plus usage of that content, like if the brand wants to repurpose and integrate their content into other mediums of advertising," Feldman says.  

From hawking products to business tycoons

To cater to their growing audiences, these creators are putting in longer hours than a typical full-time job and constantly seek ways to build their brands even outside of the social platforms that have made them internet famous. The term ‘influencer’ no longer fits the bill.

“There’s been an evolution in the last five years from the pout and posed posse to the creators, the people who are actually looking at this and thinking this is a medium [they] want to tame and maximize [their] potential in,” says Mary Keane-Dawson, CEO of influencer agency Takumi.

The influencer marketing industry has come a long way since its formative years when brands would mostly pay for mentions in posts with free samples, and influencers would promote brands without a hint that they were receiving payment for their posts.

Most experts pinpoint the start of influencer marketing with the rise of YouTube. It was only a few years after the platform came to market in 2005 that influencers like PewDiePie, Zoe Sugg and Michelle Phan began to grow impressive followings that transformed hobbies into careers. With the entrance of Instagram in 2010, the next decade steadily became that of the influencer. With the advancement of technology and more distribution platforms, the path to becoming a creator was open to everyone.

"The accessibility and the low-barriers to entry, relatively speaking, means that whether you’re a refugee trying to get into the United Kingdom or you're someone who has been born to billionaire parents sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean, they’ve all got the same device, they’ve all got the same opportunity," says Keane-Dawson. 

This year, marketers are expected to spend $3.69 billion on influencer marketing in the U.S., and that’s expected to rise to $5 billion by 2023, according to a 2021 eMarketer report. And while brand deals continue to make up the majority of creators’ paychecks, over the past year more platforms have launched creator funds in an effort to retain and grow the talent that draws users to the platform. The way creators are paid for their work has also become more sophisticated, if not complex.

Eric Jacks, chief strategy officer and partner at influencer agency Collab, has witnessed firsthand the expansive growth of the creator space through his career trajectory. In the early days of YouTube, before platforms like Instagram or TikTok came to be, Jacks was a talent agent at Creative Artists Agency and helped package deals with some of the first creators, such as Michelle Phan and Freddie Wong, to partner with brands. Now, Collab, which served as agency of record to Musical.ly before it became TikTok, works with the app’s internal team to funnel creators to the brands interested in partnerships. Beyond brand deals, Collab helps creators protect their intellectual property and grow their brand through off-platform projects like merchandise, books and even movies.

“We saw a web 2.0 model where platforms really had the power, and where we’re at now is emerging into this web 3.0 where creators really have the power,” says Jacks. “The platforms themselves, the technology, everything is really driven by the needs of creators and what they want to do in terms of being a storyteller.”

Collab doesn’t refer to any of the creators on its roster as “influencers.” Collab itself was formed by brothers who started in the space by building a YouTube channel. Now as an agency, the creators are working with brands like Chipotle, Nike, L’Oreal and Energizer to pair them with more than 500 creators. “There is this negative connotation within the creator community about being looked at as an influencer,” says Jacks. “It almost feels like you’re being used in some capacity.”

Platforms like TikTok and YouTube have launched “creator weeks” and “creator workshops,” no longer referring to their talent as influencers. Among brands and influencer agencies, the term is sticking around, mostly because there exists an imaginary line between those deemed worthy to be ‘creators’ and those social stars who are best characterized as “influencers.”

Hurdles for digital entrepreneurs

For many creators, despite the momentum in the space, it’s still an ongoing battle to forge their new digital businesses. While a larger percentage of creators today are able to focus on their roles full-time, the majority cannot support themselves on their social identities alone, especially in the case of micro or nanoinfluencers whose smaller followings mean less of a chance to get discovered. 

“The competition is fierce out there for dollars with people trying to have a career doing this and I don’t think brands and agencies always necessarily value how hard it is,” says Collab's Jacks. 

For Kevin Parry, a stop-motion animator who has about 4 million followers across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, it took about three years of posting as a side hustle before he built up enough of an audience to transition to full-time and began working with Collab. Now he works a standard 40-hour workweek creating videos for his audience and brands like Lego, Logitech, Mercedes Benz and Apple, that are very time and production intensive. It takes at least a week for him to complete a 15-second video with all the planning, filming and editing involved, he says. 

And while creator funds help out, they don’t pay the bills. Heather Chelan, a TikTok and Instagram creator, landed her first brand deal with Sally Beauty this summer after a TikTok video of her singing about how having colored hair doesn’t make you unprofessional went viral. However, even with the original video generating over 8.1 million views, she only saw $250 from TikTok’s Creator Fund. “I can’t afford rent, but my dog can eat,” she says.

Contributing: Erika Wheless