Regional creators and the digital garden wall

In a fragmented culture, knowing one place exceptionally well can be its own form of influence.

Who would convince you to try the new restaurant in town?

Someone with a huge following who visited once? Or someone whose recommendations you’ve followed for months, who knows the area and will probably answer if you ask whether it’s worth booking?

The more useful measure is what each person knows, why their audience listens and whether that knowledge matters to the decision being made.

A niche can be a place

People move between communities depending on their interests and what they need to know.

You might follow someone because they know everything about a video game. Someone else because they can spot a valuable vintage teapot at a car boot sale. And another person because they seem to know everything happening in Ballinrobe.

Their knowledge helps you decide what is worth buying, watching or doing. We readily recognise that kind of expertise around a specialist hobby. Local knowledge can work in much the same way.

Research from Confidant and Vytal offers some context. In a 2024 survey of 1,000 US adults across Gen Z, millennials and Gen X, 45% said they felt more connected to niche communities than mainstream culture. Confidant and Vytal, The Cult of Everything

As audiences fragment across different interests, identities and communities, expertise gives people a reason to keep listening to someone. That expertise can be formal, but it can also come from taste, experience or an unusually good knowledge of a place.

For organisations, a broad label such as “lifestyle creator” tells us relatively little about that relationship. Perhaps people follow them for honest food recommendations. Perhaps they always know what’s happening locally or where to take children on a rainy Saturday.

Their following may be modest, but their knowledge can carry considerable weight when someone is deciding what to do.

The garden wall has gone digital

Think of the recommendations once exchanged over a garden wall. Is that new place any good? Is there much happening in town this weekend?

Some of those conversations now happen through Instagram stories, TikTok videos, comments and DMs.

A local creator’s post might feature the café you pass on the school run or a restaurant you’ve been meaning to try. You can ask whether it’s good with kids, or send the post to a friend and suggest going.

The useful part of a recommendation is often the judgement behind it. Someone knows the place, understands what you’re looking for and can tell you whether it suits.

Over time, a creator whose suggestions have served you well can become someone you turn to. You don’t need to know them personally to trust their judgement on where to get lunch.

That creates a potential blind spot for organisations: someone unfamiliar to your team may be a familiar voice among the people you need to reach.

A regional address alone won’t reveal that relationship. Neither will a small following. The important question is what the creator knows and what their audience trusts them to know.

From seeing a post to considering a visit

In our work with launching Wendy’s in Tullamore, , one response to Niamh Smyth’s  content captured a very practical gap: “oh im in Tullamore and didn't know this was here!!” Niamh replied, encouraging the viewer to come down.

Under Pyonneel’s Reel, another viewer wrote: “I must pay Wendy’s a visit”.

Across the Tullamore activity, four pieces of coverage delivered a reported total reach of 171,900. Those comments help us understand what sat behind that figure. People were discovering something nearby and considering whether to try it.

Local voices can play a role in larger campaigns too. For the Bulmers Italia ’90 Roadshow Tadhg and Derry Fleming hosted stops in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Clonmel.

Jailbird invited local creators to attend and share the experience, including Alanna O’Flynn and Rosie Ford in Cork, and FPL_eire in Galway. Local pubs with established social followings created content too. Each event was at capacity.

The campaign gave people several ways to encounter it. The headline names provided national recognition, while creators and pubs connected the activity to each place.

Influence has a context

Reach tells us who might see something. Engagement tells us who reacted. Expertise helps explain why someone might act on it. All three matter. But as audiences split into increasingly specific communities, the reason people listen deserves more attention.

This is where smaller creators with established audiences can hold disproportionate value. People return because their recommendations have been useful before. That authority may only exist within one interest, one community or one part of the country, but its boundaries are what make it relevant.

A creator does not need to be influential everywhere to matter enormously somewhere.

The digital garden wall gives us a way to understand that influence: someone knows their patch, people listen, and their recommendation carries weight.