Despite their similar etymological roots, Influencer and Influser are words with two completely different meanings. You can find the main differences between Influencer and Influser below.
Influser
“An Influser is someone who is always attracted by new trends and is naturally eager to announce to his/her sphere of influence that he/she was the first to discover them, more so than 95% of the population.”
| Influencer | Influser | |
| Who are they | People with a large number of followers on social media and/or people with some kind of media exposure. | People attracted by the latest trends and products, who have the early adopter reputation among their friends and families. |
| How do you contact them | They can be contacted directly or, in some cases, through an agent.
Micro-influencers can be contacted through specialised platforms. |
They are engaged "naturally": they guide and set an example for their friends and families, who wouldn’t otherwise try a certain product or trend, through their buying choices and their curiosity to explore new things. |
| Do you sign them up individually? | Yes, see above. | No (it wouldn’t make much sense given the restricted area of influence of each Influser) |
| How do they fit in a marketing communications campaign | Influencers receive a detailed brief and they execute on what they have agreed with the client (shoot a video, take a picture, write a review, go to an event…) The terms of the agreement can extend to the copyright of the creative material produced and the terms of usage of the influencer's name. | Influsers are the target of an initiative (an advertising campaign, an event, an exclusive product or service offered uniquely to them). As a result, you can expect them to spontaneously share with their sphere of influence what they have learned through the initiative, therefore amplifying the reach of that initiative. |
| How many are there? | There are many different kinds including celebrities, journalists, experts, social media influencers and web stars. The statistics about their influence are usually available publicly. | They represent approximately 5% of the population. |
| What is the reach in a single campaign | A single campaign engages 1-10 influencers where each has ten or hundred thousands of followers. In the case of micro-influencers each has thousands of followers. | A single campaign targets thousands of influsers, each of them has hundreds of friends, relatives and colleagues who trust them. |
| Do they spontaneously become an Influencer or Influser? | Yes, because they chose it as their daily job, or because they are public figures. | They notice their influence on their friends and families, but they don’t exercise this power voluntarily. |
| How do you recognise them? | Through their large number of followers on social media obtained "spontaneously" and through a natural response of their followers to their content and actions. | There are psychological traits common to all influsers and it is possible to identify them through a specific test developed by Influse. |
| Are they aware of who they are? | Surely, they act as part of the agreement with the client. | They rarely know that they are influencing someone. They only realise it after someone acts as a consequence of what they said or did. |
| Are they specialised in something? | Every influencer has a credibility limited to a certain field, given by their public persona. For instance, a fashion influencer probably won’t be as effective in promoting a medicine. | Influsers are not specialised, but they do reflect their natural social profile of people who immediately adopt a behaviour that would otherwise take longer to spread (their eagerness to try new things modifies the prejudices and opinions that others already have towards something).
They do not help consolidate an existing behaviour adopted by others. |