Resumen de Social media influencers as content creators in the creative economy
Research on influencers is often falling short of fully capturing their impact on the creative economy and on media at large. Beyond their influence on consumer decisions and hence, their importance for marketing, goes their contribution as creators of enticing content often combined with entrepreneurial drive that is actually the basis for their impact. In this study based on a survey among n=46,486 influencers from seven countries we shed light on different categories of content they create. Discerning topics and characteristic formats, we derive clusters of similar content and contrast this with different degrees of professionalization and monetization. Apart from self-disclosing influencers’ every day life are the most proliferant topics related to food, beauty, lifestyle, and travel – however, with differences across countries and contrasting characteristic formats per topic. The latter can at least partly be explained by the various modes of monetization or other kinds of compensation. This study on social media influencers as content creators with increasingly professional businesses shall serve a better understanding of their relevance to the future development of the creative economy at large as well as of their potential for partnering with incumbent media players.
