Social Media Glossary (Terms You Should Know!)
A
1. Algorithm- An algorithm is a set of formulas developed for a computer to perform a certain function. This is important in the social sphere as the algorithms sites like Facebook and Google use are critical for developing content promotion strategies.
2. Application Programming Interface (API) - An API is a documented interface that allows one software application to interact with another application. An example of this is the Twitter API.
B
1. Bitly- Bitly is a free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bitly is popularly used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter.
2. Bookmarking- Bookmarking online follows the same idea of placing a bookmark in a physical publication -- you're simply marking something you found important, enjoyed, or want to continue reading later. The only difference online is that it's happening through websites using one of the various bookmarking services available, such as Pocket, or right within your browser.
C
1. Clickbait- Clickbait is a term to describe marketing or advertising material that employs a sensationalized headline to attract clicks. They rely heavily on the "curiosity gap" by creating just enough interest to provoke engagement.
2. Clickthrough Rate- Clickthrough rate is a common social media metric used to represent the number of times a visitor clickthrough divided by the total number of impressions a piece of content receives.
3. Community Manager- The community manager is responsible for building and managing the online communications for a business in an effort to grow an online community.
4. Conversion Rate- Conversion rate refers to a common metric tracked in social media that is the percentage of people who completed an intended action (i.e. filling out a form, following a social account, etc.).
E
1. Engagement Rate- Engagement rate is a popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction -- likes, shares, comments -- a piece of content receives.
F
1. Facebook- Facebook is a social media platform founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. The site connects people with friends, family, acquaintances, and businesses from all over the world and enables them to post, share, and engage with a variety of content such as photos and status updates.
G
1. GaggleAMP- GaggleAMP is a social media marketing platform that provides businesses with the ability to leverage its employee's online presence to increase brand awareness and expand its reach.
2. Geotag- A geotag is the directional coordinates that can be attached to a piece of content online. For example, Instagram users often use geotagging to highlight the location in which their photo was taken.
3. Google Documents- Google Documents is a group of web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations, spreadsheet analysis, etc. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.
H
1. Handle- Handle is the term used to describe someone's @username on Twitter. For example, HubSpot's Twitter handle is @HubSpot.
2. HTML- HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a programming language for web pages. Think of HTML as the brick-and-mortar of pages on the web. It provides content and structure while CSS supplies style.
I
1. Impressions- An impression refers to a way in which marketers and advertisers keep track of every time ad is "fetched" and counted.
2. Inbound Marketing- Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that uses permission-based marketing techniques to get found by potential customers, convert them into leads, customers, and advocates, and analyze the process along the way. Inbound marketing leverages tactics and tools such as SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing, marketing automation, surveys, personalization, and CRM.
3. Instagram- Instagram is a photo sharing application that lets users take photos, apply filters to their images, and share the photos instantly.
L
1. Link Building- Link building is an aspect of search engine optimization in which website owners develop strategies to earn links to their site from other websites with the hopes of improving their search engine ranking. Blogging has emerged as a popular method of link building.
2. LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site in over 200 countries and territories. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking.
3. LinkedIn SlideShare- LinkedIn SlideShare is an online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations as well as share them on other social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
4. Listed- The act of being "listed" on Twitter refers to when a user curates a custom list of Twitter users to more easily keep tabs on their tweets.
M
1. Mention- A mention is a Twitter term used to describe an instance in which a user includes someone else's @username in their tweet to attribute a piece of content or start a discussion.
N
1. Native Advertising- Native content refers to a type of online advertising in which the ad copy and format adheres to the format of a regular post on the network it's being published on. The purpose is to make ads feel less like ads, and more like part of the conversation.
2. News Feed- A news feed is literally a feed full of news. On Facebook, the News Feed is the homepage of users' accounts where they can see all the latest updates from their friends. The news feed on Twitter is called Timeline.
3. Newsjacking- Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success.
P
1. Permalink- A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog or website that remains indefinitely unchanged.
2. Pinterest- Pinterest is a photo sharing social network that provides users with a platform for uploading, saving, and categorizing "pins" through collections called "boards." Boards are typically organized by theme, such as: Food & Drink, Women's Fashion, Gardening, etc. Users have the ability to "pin" and "repin" content that they like to their respective boards.
3. Podcast- A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually audio, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed.
4. PPC- PPC is an acronym for pay per click. Pay per click is an online advertising model in which advertisers display ads on various websites or search engines and pay when a visitor clicks through. Bid-based PPC involves an auction in which advertisers compete with other advertisers by setting the max bid -- or highest amount they're willing to pay -- for each click. Each time a visitor triggers the ad spot, the auction process pans out to select which ad will be displayed.
Q
1. Quantcast- Quantcast provides website traffic and demographics for websites. The tool is primarily used by online advertisers looking to target specific demographics.
R
1. Real Time Marketing- Real time marketing is a strategy that requires marketers to publish timely content as news breaks.
2. Reddit- Reddit is a social news site that contains specific, topic-oriented communities of users who share and comment on stories.
3. Retargeting- Retargeting is an online marketing and advertising technique that allows marketers to display ads to people who have visited their website or are part of their contacts database. For more on how a retargeting campaign works, check out this beginner's guide.
4. RSS Feed- RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs and videos in a standardized format. Content publishers can syndicate a feed, which allows users to subscribe to the content and read it when they please from a location other than the website (such as Feedly or other RSS readers).
5. RSS Reader- An RSS reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient information consumption.
S
1. Search Engine Optimization- Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of unpaid traffic to a website from search engines.
2. Social Proof- Social proof refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people seek direction from those around them to determine how they are supposed to act or think in a given situation. In social media, social proof can be identified by the number of interactions a piece of content receives or the number of followers you have. The thought is that if others are sharing something or following someone, it must be good.
T
1. Tag- Tagging is a social media functionality commonly used on Facebook and Instagram that allows users to create a link back to the profile of the person shown in the picture or targeted by the update.
2. Twitter- Twitter is a real-time social network that allows users to share 140-character updates with their following. Users can favorite and retweet the posts of other users, as well as engage in conversations using @ mentions, replies, and hashtags for categorizing their content.
U
1. User Generated Content- User-generated content is content -- blogs, videos, photos, quotes, etc. -- that is created by consumers. Marketers typically tap into their audience in an online setting to collect this type of content to support a campaign or initiative.
V
1. Viral- Viral is a term used to describe an instance in which a piece of content -- YouTube video, blog article, photo, etc. -- achieves noteworthy awareness. Viral distribution relies heavily on word of mouth and the frequent sharing of one particular piece of content all over the internet.
2. Vlogging- Vlogging or a vlog is a piece of content that employs video to tell a story or report on information. Vlogs are common on video sharing networks like YouTube.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-terms
