Blogger vs vlogger vs influencer: what’s the difference?

Pack The Suitcases uses affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!

If you’re confused about the difference between a blogger vs vlogger vs influencer, here’s the lowdown on these roles. I hope to explain it all in this article, just like Clarissa would have wanted. I’ve defined each term and given context about how they differ. And I’ve tried not to be too biased towards my own job (a blogger) vs the comparatively rubbish roles of vloggers and influencers…

The reason I’m writing this post is that I’ve been annoyed by something on the internet. Quelle surprise, I know. If you’re not angrily scrolling, are you even online? But more specifically, I’m sick of seeing the press and traditional media using the terms blogger, vlogger and influencer interchangeably and incorrectly. Only the other week, I read a news article using the term ‘blogger’ about a woman who is a reality TV star and influencer but who definitely doesn’t have a blog, has never written a blog post, and probably wouldn’t know Google Analytics if it came up and bit her. Nothing wrong with being an influencer, of course, but it’s a whole different job. So the result of my annoyance is this article, which will hopefully a) clear things up for anyone confused and b) make me feel better for getting it off my chest.

Put the kettle on and let’s get into it…

Blogger vs vlogger vs influencer: what’s the difference?

What is a blogger?

It’s me. Hi. I’m a blogger. A travel one, to be precise.

By definition, a blogger is someone who runs a blog (definition of a blog coming up – don’t you worry).

Simply running a blog technically makes you a blogger. But it doesn’t make you a professional one. We could get into a whole debate here about whether regularly writing poetry makes you a poet, and so on. But when we think of bloggers, we’re likely thinking of ones who do it as a full- or part-time job, earning money from it. We’re not thinking of the ones who simply have a hobby blog about their favourite dog breeds, which they don’t want the wider public to read.

What is a professional blogger?

Professional bloggers are, by and large, writers with digital skills who run a blog website for profit.

Most professional bloggers will have a niche they write about. Mine is travel, as you know. But the other most well-known niches are:

• recipes (the biggest niche by far)
• health
• DIY
• finance (apparently the most profitable niche)
• politics
• technology (think of all those ‘how to’ articles about Excel you’ve had to read)
• sports

And there are myriad other niches. I read dressage/equestrian blogs and gardening blogs more than anything else, for example.

The success of a professional blogger depends a lot on being a good writer. But you also have to understand how to bring in readers in order to make money. Readers find blogs by searching a query on Google, such as ‘best brunch in Manchester’. So bloggers need to write stuff that gives people what they’re looking for, in a way that Google will understand and boost to the top of those search results. This is called search engine optimisation (SEO).

The more people professional bloggers get reading their blog, the more money they make. Money comes mainly through in-content adverts (like the ones you’ll be seeing on this page as you read it) and affiliate links, where you earn a commission when someone buys something through a link with your code in it. My main one, for example, is when people book hotels through my Booking.com links. If you want to know more about how I make money as a travel blogger, I have an article on that.

What is a blog?

The definition of a blog is a type of website made of written content, where the content is frequently updated and presented in reverse chronological order. You’re on one right now, in case you haven’t noticed.

Blogs have been a popular type of website since the early 90s. You may never have thought about ‘types’ of websites before but there are loads. We all use things like e-commerce websites (where we waste all our money, like my beloved ASOS), business websites (where we scour menus before we go out for lunch), and news websites (where we try to get around paywalls and never actually read anything). I may be biased as a blogger, but blogs are the best.

A key difference between a blogger vs a vlogger vs influencer, the blogger is the only one who owns the platform they publish their work on. More on that later. 

What is a vlogger?

By definition, a vlogger is someone who makes regular videos, in most cases on YouTube.

Without repeating everything I said about defining a professional blogger, naturally a professional vlogger will make money through vlogging. The more viewers, the more money YouTube pays them.

TBH, I don’t think I’ve seen as much confusion around the definition of a vlogger as I have around bloggers and influencers. Maybe the ‘v’ at the beginning makes it clearly about ‘video’ for even the least online-savvy person? But I thought I’d better include an explanation anyway because the whole thing would feel incomplete otherwise.

So, vloggers make videos (or ‘vlogs’). The vlogs often involve the vlogger filming themselves, making them similar to an influencer. But this isn’t always the case. You can be a vlogger and never feature in the videos yourself, for example vloggers who do voiceovers reviewing products, who shoot drone footage of scenery, or who just show their hands doing some sort of DIY tutorial of how to fix a dishwasher.

Vloggers (like bloggers and influencers) usually have a specific niche that they focus on. The standard DIY, recipes, travel, fashion and so on all feature. But some things definitely work better in video format so tend to feature more in vlogging than other mediums. I’m thinking of computer game reviews, ‘how to’ DIY guides where fixing a washing machine on video is easier than trying to describe the job in written words, and the ever-popular makeup tutorials.

I personally have a lot to thank makeup vloggers for, namely for teaching me how to do winged eyeliner on my hooded eyelids. A real breakthrough moment in my life.

What is an influencer?

By traditional definition, an influencer is simply a person who influences another person to do something. So, if your next-door neighbour Margaret gets a nice hanging basket for her front garden and this makes you go and buy one too, she’s influenced you. She’s an influencer! Me, writing a guide to Lisbon on my blog, might inspire one of my readers to go. So I’m also influencing my readers by being a successful blogger (how confusing?!).

But no one really uses the traditional definition of influencer now. These days, the term is almost always used in the sense of being a social media influencer.

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer uses their social media account, most often Instagram or TikTok if we’re thinking of the UK, to influence people to do something. Usually that ‘something’ is to make a purchase, but it can also be to take a specific action, such as joining a cause.

The majority of social media influencers want to persuade people to buy something, which they’ve either been paid to promote and/or are sharing an affiliate link for (as explained earlier). They promote the thing by posting photos or videos on their social media account showing how great it is. The thing could be anything from a pair of jeans to a board game to a round-the-world cruise. 

When we talk about influencers, many people will immediately think of fashion and beauty ones. And that comprises reality TV stars, models and so on, who have gone into influencing. They’ve become the go-to idea of an influencer these days. But there are millions of other types of influencers on social media, from book reviewers to yoga instructors to dog trainers.

The downside of social media influencing

Would I recommend being a social media influencer over being a blogger? Absolutely not. It’s fine as a side income/job, but I would never do it on its own. The huge risk with influencing is that you do not own the platform.

As we saw in recent years with the Twitter/X fiasco, a social media platform can change drastically in just a few weeks. More worryingly, it can die a sudden and painful death (RIP MySpace; I still miss you). Either way, that’s your platform – and your job – either hugely altered or gone. At least if you own a blog, it’s yours forever and you own and control it.

By the same logic, I also wouldn’t recommend being a vlogger as a sole job TBH. You don’t own the platform there, either (although the risk of YouTube being killed off seems much lower).

Blogger vs vlogger vs influencer: can you do all three?

Most social media influencers do not tend to have a blog. They’re more likely to have a vlog, perhaps, but it’s not a given.

On the other hand, most bloggers and vloggers will have some kind of social media presence too. 

Some will hardly use social media or even just have a blank account so that no one takes their username (which is what I did with TikTok; I may be too old and haggard for it, but no one else is allowed to take ‘packthesuitcases’ on there, okay?!).

Others will use social media just to encourage people to go to their blog or vlog. And others will be actively creating content for social media and earning money from that, on top of their blog/vlog income. I’m somewhere in the middle of those two as I do the odd social media advert but mainly use both my Facebook page and my Instagram account just to chat to my readers, tell them when a new travel guide is live on the blog, and show them bonus travel footage that doesn’t make the cut for the blog.

Some workaholics probably do run a blog and a vlog and are influencing on multiple social media platforms. I’m tired just thinking about that, though.

As explained earlier, blogging involves long-form writing and website management. It’s a very different skill set from filming/editing videos and different again from engaging and influencing people on social media.

You can do more than one job, of course. But the jobs are all separate, requiring different skills. And the terms blogger/vlogger/influencer are definitely not interchangeable. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Blogger vs vlogger vs influencer: further reading

So that’s it! All the ways the jobs differ.

If you’ve found it interesting, you might also like my other blogging-related article:

• How I make money as a travel blogger

If you have any questions about travel blogging or how to make money from it, do get in touch and I will edit this post to add some FAQs if I get enough.

Save and share: the differences between a blogger vs vlogger vs influencer

If you found this blog post on blogging, influencing and vlogging useful or interesting, why not pin it to your Pinterest board?

I don’t normally blog about blogging, but if you’re interested in travel, you might want to stick around. 

If you’ve used one of my travel guides and enjoyed it, you can also buy me a drink. Cheers. 

Share this post