The word 'influence' means "the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself".
This is a broad definition, and can be interpreted in many ways. But to relate to the context of this article, I will use the words influence, and influencer, to represent what they define within the spectrum of the modern, digitally driven world.
I'm pretty sure the word 'reviewer' doesn't exist. I can use 'critic' in its place, and have done so on many occasions, but in this blog I will stick to the harmless 'reviewer' option. A reviewer basically takes an experience and gives an honest, factual explanation about said experience thereby relaying credible information to an interested crowd. Or lack thereof.
The two people in featured in this cartoon are an influencer, and a food reviewer. They're both nice people with lives, personal strifes, and their own goals. Just regular people with slightly different jobs.
But unfortunately, since there exists a very thin line between each employee within this great, cosmic, digital entity that is the virtual employment sector (look for it in the picture)- a lot of people tend to get these roles mixed up.
Here's a casual blog post on all the things that make these two roles different from each other.
The Role of the Influencer
An influencer's day-to-day job isn't really a spiffy, smooth ride down the highway to Una- it's a lot more complicated than that. While it might seem like more of a past-time as opposed to our cultured views of employment being of a more serious calibre, to be an influencer takes big guts.
For one, they deal with clients. On a daily basis. This means, although they're entitled to their own, unique styles of marketing and media navigation- they're also bound to relay brand broadcasting duties as per the requirements of the brand. So on most occasions, they're basically funnels that filter out some of the cringe in straightforward advertising, to influence their audience with a re-vamped image of the same brands they choose to work with.
Hence the very obvious term, 'Influencer'.
The Role of a Reviewer
A reviewer's day to day job isn't really a walk in the park either. To be a reviewer, you have to get ready to shed all expectations of a 'following' and accept the possibilities of a mob instead. This is primarily due to the fact that whatever information the reviewer relays has to be totally factual in content. Personal hoo-ha is advised against, but is administered at the discretion of the reviewer.
*Fridays at 5PM- on YAMU tv
Sounds like a great job, but with a few death threats, some daily hate, and a lot of other fun stuff thrown into the mix.
The Influencer has to present content which has been bent and contorted to incorporate personality as well as professionality to appease the respective brand. While it IS content meant for their following, they do it with the best interests of the brand in mind.
The reviewers do the same thing, but for their general audience instead of the actual brand.
Both of these are harrowing markets to satisfy.
Don't both of these people have some form of duty to the general public?
When a tool as powerful as Social Media Outreach is thrust unto your hands, your first order of business is to provide good, trustworthy content. Or services. Whichever.
It is the right of both the Influencer and Reviewer to ensure the topics and subjects they choose to juggle, produce some sort of positive impact. I'm pretty sure nobody is running around with 15k followers on Instagram talking about killing people, but you get the gist.
It's a means to provide some sort of betterment to the overall development to the virtual community so that idea can be implemented in real-life, in some way or the other.
That being said, neither party really owes their clientele anything. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, and the worst we'll have to deal with is a client/patron throwing a fit about a write-up or blog post. Or a few death and rape threats. Heh.
What is the point of this blog post?
Y'all know what's coming. The reason for this post is to diffuse, once and for all, the tension and myths surrounding persons of these respective job roles. While both might seem to check off a lot on the 'internet employee' list- it's much more complex when you start looking at the cogs and springs that make it work.
It is within the reviewer's purview, to never relay information in an advertorial and biased format. That's the influencer's job. It's not a bad job. It just is.
In conclusion
There you have it. There's no result to this face-off aside from the fact that both jobs can either suck or not depending on how much you choose to hustle. But we all gotta do something, don't we? Basically this post is mostly just common sense, so we just decided to put it in writing in case anyone had any questions.
I suppose the lesson to take away from this post is to treat your fellow humans with respect. Also I'll give you a tip: if you pay for your own food, you have a better chance of being able to chat sh*t about it. 😉
