We understand your aversion to buzzwords. As a result, we’ve put up an A-Z lexicon of the most widely used (and misunderstood) social networking phrases and concepts.
Too many jargon and acronyms are a problem for anybody working in social media or digital marketing.
What exactly is the distinction between impressions and reach? What is the difference between dark posts and dark social? And don’t get me started on the abbreviations: CPC, CPA, CTR, PPC…being a marketer these days appears to need a degree in social media jargon.
To clear the air, we’ve compiled a dictionary of the most often used social media buzzwords, keywords, terms, and phrases…along with their explanations. It’s alphabetized, so if you’re looking for a certain social media phrase, simply click the links below:
Social media glossary
A/B testing
A/B testing, often known as split testing, compares the performance of two social media postings to evaluate which works better. The most popular strategy to employ A/B testing is to modify only one aspect of the post between the two versions (title, picture, CTA, etc.) so that any variation in performance can be traced back to that modification. Both organic and sponsored posts may be A/B tested.
Ads Manager
Facebook’s Ads Manager is a platform for generating, executing, and evaluating social advertisements. It can handle your Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network ad campaigns. It also includes a number of capabilities for ad targeting, budgeting, and optimization.
Algorithm
An algorithm is a collection of rules that is used to solve a problem in general. However, in social media jargon, the term “algorithm” is frequently used to refer to a social network’s “feed algorithm,” which is a collection of rules that determines whose items appear first in your feed. For instance, if Facebook decides to emphasize posts with a lot of comments (like it did with recent algorithm modifications), the rules of its feed algorithm are adjusted to push such items up.
Analytics
The process of interpreting and discovering patterns in data is known as analytics. In the context of social media, analytics is the act of tracking metrics on your performance and using that information to enhance your approach. One method to use social analytics is to track your engagement rate over time to determine if your postings are getting more or less attractive to your followers.
Application Programming Interface (API)
A programming interface (API) is a collection of building elements that programmers may use to create computer applications. In terms of social media, all of the main networks have their own APIs, which allow programmers to design their own software that interacts with the networks. Social media APIs are used by third-party social media applications like Falcon to connect to networks like Facebook.
Audience
Your social media audience is the group of individuals you can reach with your content. This includes all of your followers, as well as everyone who views or engages with your posts in their feed. One of the most effective strategies to raise brand exposure is to expand your social media audience.
Avatar
A little image that represents you on a social network is your social media avatar, often known as your profile photo. It might be a genuine photo of you, a company logo, or anything else you want your followers to associate with you on social media.
Average response time
A social customer service measure is average reaction time. It’s the average amount of time it takes a company to respond to a customer’s inquiry or complaint on social media. In recent years, customer expectations for social customer service response times have risen dramatically, with 42% of customers anticipating a response within 60 minutes.
Business-to-Business (B2B)
A B2B company, such as a consulting firm or a business software company, offers products or services to other companies. B2B businesses commonly use social media to portray themselves as industry thought leaders and offer expert advice to their business peers.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
A B2C business, such as a hotel or a retail store, deals directly with customers. B2C organizations generally focus on building a community around their brand and offering exceptional social customer service when it comes to social media marketing.
Bio
Your social media bio is a brief summary of yourself that appears on your profile. It’s also an excellent location to promote your website or other social media sites. It’s referred to as a bio on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and as a summary on LinkedIn. The Instagram bio of Airbnb shows how to represent your brand while also using crucial hashtags and landing pages.
Boosted post
A boosted post is a Facebook post that you pay to have more people see. Boosted posts, also known as promoted posts, vary from Facebook advertising in that they begin as organic posts and then receive additional paid reach based on your budget. You may also use them without using Ads Manager by launching them directly from your Facebook Page. Boosted posts, like Facebook advertisements, allow you to target a certain demographic and establish a specified boost period and budget.
Brand advocate
A client that writes nice remarks, gives favorable reviews, or generally supports your company on social media is known as a brand advocate. Through word-of-mouth marketing, brand supporters may also persuade other people to utilize your products or services.
Brand awareness
Consumers’ familiarity with your brand is measured by brand awareness. It’s frequently regarded as one of the primary objectives of social media marketing. In Ads Manager, it’s also one of the objectives you may choose for your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. Brand awareness may be quantified in terms of impressions, reach, or ad recall lift, which is more precise (an estimation of how many users would remember your brand after seeing the ad).
Business Manager (Facebook)
Facebook Business Manager is a tool that allows businesses to manage their Facebook pages, ad accounts, and employees. It acts as a central center for a company’s advertising, money, users, and Pages, allowing for easy management. It also assures that the company, rather than an individual user, has legal and practical control over company data and account access. Chatbot
A chatbot is an artificial intelligence application that allows a business to automate client conversations. Chatbots may be used with a variety of social messaging systems, including Facebook Messenger and Slack. They can offer customer support, answer inquiries, and even schedule appointments for you. An example of what a Facebook Messenger chatbot can perform is shown below.
Clickbait
Clickbait is content that entices visitors to click by using deceptive copy. Exaggeration and withholding information are common tactics used in clickbait to entice people to click. For example, an article with the heading “Doctors HATE him for utilizing this one WEIRD TRICK…” but no real substance is termed clickbait since it entices readers to click it to learn more while being short on genuine material. Clickbait is considered spammy by social media platforms such as Facebook, which reduces its reach as a result.
Clickthrough rate (CTR)
The clickthrough rate on social media is the percentage of people who view your post and click on it. What constitutes a “click” and what constitutes “viewing your post” differs per social media platform. CTR on Facebook is calculated as (link clicks / post impressions) x 100%.
Conversion rate (CVR)
The conversion rate on social media refers to the percentage of people that notice your post or ad and subsequently perform a certain action. A conversion is an action that can include buying something, joining up for a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or a number of other things. If one of your social media marketing goals is to improve conversions, your CVR is a crucial measure to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of your post or ad.
Cost per click (CPC)
The average cost per click on your ad is a social media advertising indicator that informs you how much you’re paying for each click. If your social media marketing aim is to drive visitors to a landing page or piece of content, a low CPC indicates you’ll receive more traffic for less money, whereas a high CPC implies you’ll pay a lot for traffic. The cost per click (CPC) varies depending on a number of factors, including who you’re targeting with your ad, where you’re targeting, and how relevant your ad is to your target demographic.
Cost per mille (CPM)
Another social advertising statistic is cost per mille. It refers to the cost per 1,000 impressions (‘mille’ in Latin meaning 1,000). CPM is a vital measure to track if your objective is to get your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible and spread brand recognition. CPM, like CPC, fluctuates depending on your targeting options and ad quality.
Crisis management
How you handle incidents or interactions on social media that might possibly harm your company’s reputation is known as social media crisis management. A few angry comments from consumers might not constitute as a social media crisis, but inappropriate posts by someone within your firm or a social media boycott against your brand would. In order to de-escalate the situation at hand, crisis management needs social media managers to respond promptly and execute a strategy.
Cross-channel
Each social media network (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) serves as a marketing channel in social media marketing. Something that is cross-channel, on the other hand, is shared across all of your social media accounts. A cross-channel social strategy, for example, is one that aligns your objectives across all of the social networks where your brand is active.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing on social media refers to leveraging a social network to create ideas, services, or content from a big number of people. It allows your followers to feel active and interested in your brand’s activities while also producing ideas or material for your company. Inviting your fans to vote on names for your new product or requesting music submissions for your next ad are two examples.
Dark post
A social media ad that does not display on the advertiser’s timeline is known as a dark post. Dark posts, unlike organic or promoted content, only appear in the feeds of the folks they’re targeting. On Facebook, they’re known as “unpublished page posts,” on Twitter, they’re known as “promoted-only tweets,” on LinkedIn, they’re known as “direct sponsored content,” and on Instagram, all advertising are dark posts by default.
Dark social
Dark social is sometimes mistaken with dark postings on social media, however the two concepts have nothing in common. Dark social refers to online traffic originating from social media that is difficult to detect using analytics tools. This is frequently due to individuals privately sharing links on social media in conversations or direct messages. According to one survey, dark social accounts for 84 percent of consumer content sharing.
Direct message (DM)
A private communication delivered straight to a user’s inbox on social media is known as a direct message. In contrast to public forms of social media engagement such as commenting on an image or publishing on a user’s timeline, DMs exist.
Disappearing content
Disappearing content, often known as ephemeral content, refers to social media posts that disappear after a certain period of time has elapsed. Instagram and Snapchat Stories are good instances of this, as these collections of photographs and videos vanish after 24 hours. Disappearing material is used in social media marketing to be spontaneous and relevant while pushing consumers to participate through FOMO.
Employee advocacy
When coworkers at your company support and promote your brand on social media, this is known as employee advocacy. Sharing branded material, reinforcing your firm’s brand message, and like and commenting on company postings are all examples of this. Employees shared branded messages 561 percent more than when they were posted through branded channels, according to one survey.
Engagement rate
The engagement rate is a social media indicator that indicates how motivated people are to participate with a post. It’s calculated by multiplying (the number of individuals who engaged with your post / the number of people who viewed it) by 100 percent. A greater engagement rate usually indicates that your piece was more interesting (or at least more likely to provoke a response). It’s tough to compare engagement rates across social networks since what constitutes “engagement” and “viewing your post” differs by network. “Seeing your post” might relate to impressions or reach, whereas “engagements” could refer to likes, comments, shares, and responses, among other things.
Evergreen content
Evergreen content in content marketing is material that matures well and retains its worth over time. Because it does not lose relevance dependent on the date it is uploaded, evergreen content is great for recycling and reusing on social media. An article about the difficulties of being a social media marketer, for example, is more likely to remain evergreen than one promoting Tik Tok’s newest feature upgrade.
Feed
The stream of material you view from other users on social media is referred to as a feed. The feed, which serves as a homepage on most social networks, is the most frequent way to see and interact with other people’s postings.
Follower
A follower is a social network user who has chosen to receive your postings in their newsfeed. Followers may be found on both personal and commercial accounts. Your follower count, or number of followers, is an important indicator for tracking how your social media following grows or shrinks over time.
FOMO
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is an abbreviation for “fear of missing out.” FOMO is the emotion people get on social media when they read postings about events or chances they want to attend. FOMO is frequently used by social media marketers by creating exclusive or limited-time offers that users must act swiftly to risk missing out on.
Frequency
The term “frequency” refers to how many times your ad was seen to the typical person in your target demographic on Facebook or Instagram. Total ad impressions are divided by total ad reach to arrive at this figure. If your frequency is more than 1, it suggests that at least some users viewed your ad many times. If your objective is to increase brand recognition and ad recall, this may be a good thing, but if your frequency is too high, you may be squandering money and advertising to each user too many times.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is a strategy used in social media marketing to alter ad content based on a user’s location. Users can be included or omitted from a target audience in Facebook advertising manager depending on their area, nation, state, city, postal code, or address. Advertisers may now construct and target ad packages to appeal to people in specific geographic areas.
Hashtag
A hashtag (#) is a means to link your social media posts to others on the same topic or hot topic. Users may locate all public postings that contain a given hashtag by searching for it. Users looking for information regarding the World Cup, for example, may hunt for posts using the hashtags #WorldCup or #FIFA. To discover what’s trending on social media, social media marketers frequently track the popularity of hashtags over time.
Header image
Your cover photo, also known as your header image, is the graphic that appears at the top of your social network page. Header photographs, which are often in landscape format, are significantly larger than your profile picture/avatar and may be used to present you or your brand to visitors to your profile. They may be used to enhance your profile image, demonstrate your personality, or promote a product or event you’re advertising.
Impressions
Impressions are a social media metric that counts the number of times your post has been seen in users’ feeds. You may count numerous impressions for a single person if they look at your content more than once, unlike reach. Each social media platform tracks impressions differently—on Facebook and Instagram, a post counts as one impression.
Key performance indicator (KPI)
A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a metric that you use to track your progress toward your company’s objectives. KPIs are the most critical numbers to measure in social media marketing to evaluate if you’re accomplishing your social strategy’s goals. If your primary goal on social was to enhance brand recognition, your KPIs may be post reach or ad recall rise.
Listicle
A listicle is a piece of writing that is based on a list. Because of its fast and easy-to-digest nature, this sort of material is quite popular on social media. Because of its point-by-point dissection, a post like 21 Tips to Massively Increase Instagram Engagement would be labeled a listicle.
Meme
While the term ‘meme’ (which rhymes with ‘team’) initially referred to any concept that spread, multiplied, and altered in a viral manner, it now refers to something more particular in the context of social media. On social media, memes are amusing pieces of text, videos, or images that become viral and allow users to join in the joke by creating and sharing their own variants.
Brands frequently try to connect with younger audiences by jumping on the newest meme, but this may backfire and make them appear out of touch if they don’t grasp the humor. Brands that are self-aware and have a good sense of humor, on the other hand, can occasionally pull off ‘meme jacking.’
Metric
A social media metric is a number that indicates how well your posts, adverts, or entire account are performing. Metrics are used by social media managers to determine which material or techniques are successful and which are not. Impressions, reach, followers, engagement rate, link clicks, and other metrics may be used.
Native advertising
On social media, native advertising is a strategy of displaying sponsored content to consumers in a way that appears natural. Promoted Facebook posts and promoted tweets are fantastic examples of native advertisements since they display in users’ feeds like regular postings but have a larger reach thanks to an ad spend. Consumers glanced at native advertisements 53 percent more than display ads, according to a recent survey.
Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the practice of using social media content to capitalize on current events. By linking their content to major hashtags and conversations surrounding the latest news, social media managers may appear topical and relevant while also earning attention. For example, after a power outage during the 2013 Super Bowl, which was seen by millions throughout the country, Oreo received a lot of attention with this real-time tweet.
Objectives
The results you intend to attain through your ad campaign are known as objectives in social advertising. These goals are used to identify which key performance indicators to track and how to best spend ad dollars. You may choose from a range of marketing objectives in Facebook Ads Manager, including traffic, engagement, conversions, brand recognition, and more.
Pay per click (PPC)
PPC is a word used in social media marketing to describe an advertising technique in which you pay each time a person clicks on your ad. It makes the most sense for advertisers to pay based on clicks when their primary purpose is to increase visitors to a website or landing page, therefore this is usually coupled with a traffic objective.
Platform
The terms “social media platform,” “social media network,” and “social media channel” are frequently interchanged. A social media platform, on the other hand, is the software that runs behind the scenes of a social network, including the API, backend, and markup language. Meanwhile, a “social media management platform” is a collection of software tools that assist SMMs in organizing their social media accounts.
Reach
The term “reach” refers to the number of individuals who have viewed your message on social media. It varies from impressions in that a user who reads your post many times only counts as one person reached. Reach is a crucial measure for determining the size of your content’s audience and tracking your success in increasing brand awareness.
Relevance score
On a scale of 1 to 10, relevance score is a measure in Facebook Ads Manager that informs you how well your target audience is reacting to your ad. Positive feedback, such as clicks or likes, negative input, such as people selecting “I don’t want to see this ad,” and overall ad performance all contribute to the score. The greater your relevance score, the more relevant your ad is to your target audience, and the more likely it will be chosen to be seen to that audience above other commercials.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a practice in social media advertising that involves showing adverts to visitors who have previously interacted with your page or website. For example, a social media marketer may retarget a user who clicked on a Facebook ad for new boots, proceeded to the checkout page, but did not finish the transaction. Retargeting may be done by using the Facebook Pixel to track user activity or by providing a list of former or future clients to target.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is the process of analyzing a piece of text’s mood using software. Sentiment analysis systems can automatically determine whether consumer feedback is good, negative, or neutral on social media. To get a sense of the general mood of their audience or the overall response to their content, social media marketers may look at the average sentiment of their customer interactions over time.
Shareable content
On social media, shareable content is content that people are likely to share with their networks. Content shareability is influenced by a variety of characteristics, including how useful, engaging, and inspirational it is. Strong emotions and reactions elicited by content are more likely to be shared.
Social customer service
Customer service via social media is known as social customer service (or social customer care). This may entail responding to consumer enquiries, managing complaints, and providing assistance. In 2020, private messaging applications are your greatest hope for social customer support, with 70% of customers preferring to “message us” rather than “call us.”
Social listening
With the use of a specialist software application, social media managers may track conversations around critical themes, phrases, brands, and more. Social listening software collects mentions, comments, hashtags, and pertinent posts from across social media to give you an idea of what people are talking about and how they’re talking about it. These insights are frequently used by brands to identify significant trends and observe what people are saying about them and their competition.
Social media monitoring
Although social media monitoring and social listening are sometimes conflated, there are several key distinctions between the two. Actively putting up projects to seek out conversations on certain themes and collect data on them is what social listening entails. Monitoring your mentions on social media, on the other hand, is a more passive method of keeping track of what your audience is saying.
Social media ROI
Return on investment (ROI) for social media is a calculation of how much income your social media activities generate for your organization vs how much you spend on them. Because many businesses’ social media goals are more about raising brand recognition than producing leads or sales, calculating social media ROI is notoriously tough. This is the formula for calculating it in general.
Social selling
Simply described, social selling is the use of social media to generate sales. This frequently occurs when salespeople engage with potential consumers on social media in order to create a relationship that may be leveraged for a future sale. This might be accomplished by responding to queries from prospects, sharing corporate material, or referencing their brand in a post remark.
Targeting
Targeting is a phrase used in social media advertising to describe how you choose the audience for your adverts. You may choose which consumers should see your advertisements based on age, location, gender, hobbies, and a range of other characteristics on most social advertising platforms. One of the most significant components of designing great social media advertising is the targeting possibilities.
Traffic
The amount of users that visit a certain website or page is referred to as traffic. Increased traffic is a popular marketing goal for social media marketers who aim to direct their audience to a blog, landing page, or other URL outside of the social network.
Trending topic
A hot topic is a subject or event that has gained a lot of attention on social media recently. Several social media platforms keep track of the most popular hashtags or topics on their platforms and provide a “trending topics” section. This feature on Twitter is now known as “Trends for you,” and it is customized and localized, whereas Instagram has a “Explore” section that allows users to see relevant material that is popular in their region.
User generated content (UGC)
User-generated content, or UGC, is content made by fans with the purpose of promoting a brand. Videos, photographs, postings, audio, reviews, articles, and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) are all examples of UGC. UGC is frequently used by brands to engage consumers in their social media efforts and to develop trust and loyalty among their followers. As part of their Feeling The Street campaign, Toyota, for example, invited people to submit films of themselves performing street music.
Vanity metric
On social media, a vanity metric is a number that appears to be a favorable sign of success but does not supply you with useful information. Impressions are a good example because they are generally larger than reach, but they simply show how many times users scrolled through a post in their feed, not how popular or engaging the post was.
Viral
The term “viral” refers to content that spreads rapidly on social media. This happens when a growing number of individuals share the material with their followers, who then share the content with their followers, and so on, generating a snowball effect. The holy grail of social media marketing is creating viral content, which means you may reach a massive audience without paying a dime.
Social media buzzwords: can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em
It’s like learning a new language when it comes to social media terms. It may be irritating at first, but after you’ve mastered the language, you’ll be a lot more successful communicator in the realm of social media management.
While all of these important social media terms and phrases may seem intimidating at first, they make discussing and planning your social media strategy a lot easier. Furthermore, you must be familiar with social media lingo in order to comprehend SMM-speak. So go ahead and visit the books (or blogs) to brush up on your knowledge!
