50 Social Media Terms You Should Know: A Glossary to Guide You
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Social media is constantly changing, and it can be hard to keep up. There’s a lot of jargon in the marketing industry as a whole, and the social media niche is jam-packed with its own befuddling buzzwords. To make it all a bit more accessible, I’m walking you through 50 social media terms you should know.
Big Picture
1) Algorithm - Social media algorithms are the subject of much discussion (and frustration). The algorithm is how each platform determines which content to display to a particular user at a given time. Instagram hasn’t been chronological in years; instead, it serves content to the top of your feed based on whose posts you engage with the most.
2) Brand ambassador - Someone who loves your brand so much that they eagerly share about your business on their personal social media. You can empower these folks to share even more by reaching out to them, thanking them for their support, and offering them free swag to make them feel valued.
3) Content curation - Not every post needs to be original content! Sharing high quality, useful content from others in your industry can be a great way to keep your followers engaged while being efficient in your workflow. It also helps to establish you as a thought leader in your niche, sharing relevant content and not solely self promoting.
4) Crowdsourcing - You have a loyal audience, so why not ask them for feedback regularly? Crowdsourcing is when you go straight to your followers to ask them for ideas on possible future products to launch, new social media campaigns, and more.
5) Evergreen content - This is my favorite kind of content! It’s blog or social media content that can be used again and again, because it’s always relevant and never expires. Make sure you’re creating valuable content like this for your followers regularly! Check back and update it periodically to ensure it doesn’t fall out of date.
6) Influencer - An influencer is a social media user with a sizable following who can increase awareness about a topic or product. Through influencer marketing, brands can partner with individuals to promote their products or services. These collaborations are typically paid partnerships. For more about influencer marketing, check out my interview with Stephanie Hanna.
7) Organic reach - You’ve probably heard someone lament the decline of organic reach. Increasingly, Facebook is becoming pay-to-play. Organic reach is how many people see your post without the help of a paid promotion behind it. Unfortunately, the percentage of your total followers that an organic post reaches is relatively small- it can be as low as 6%.
8) Scheduling - I always encourage folks to schedule their content in advance. This practice is beneficial because you don’t have to craft posts on the fly, remembering to do it and hoping your caption is on-message and grammatically correct. Scheduling helps improve your efficiency and quality.
9) Social listening - It’s a good idea to pay attention to what people are saying about your brand online. Search your company’s name regularly and monitor the conversation. You may find compliments or actionable feedback! This helps you assess the sentiment, how people are feeling about your brand rather than just how much people are talking about it.
10) Social proof - Psychologically, seeing positive engagement from others makes us more likely to trust and engage with a brand. Everything from posts with lots of likes and comments to great testimonials and celebrity endorsements can contribute to followers wanting to use your product or service.
11) Spam - It’s everywhere. I tend to see the most of it on Instagram. If you see content from bots, report it and block the account.
12) User-generated content - This is content created by users who follow and support a brand. You might put out a call for people to post wearing their new shoes from your company and use a specific hashtag, then repost the best photos. That’s user-generated content, and it’s awesome!
13) Verified - Verification shows that you’ve proven your identity to the platform, so you’ve received a checkmark. This is a bigger deal (and harder to get) on Twitter, and is most commonly seen among big brands, journalists, and celebrities.
14) Viral - When a post receives an extraordinary number of shares, that means it’s going viral. Please don’t ask your social media manager to “make you go viral.” There’s no easy recipe for virality.
Nitty Gritty
15) Average response time - This metric tracks how quickly you respond to customers who write to you with questions or complaints. Customers have high expectations for speedy replies; 42% of customers anticipate a response in 60 minutes or less.
16) Bio - The section of your profile where you explain who your brand is and what you’re all about. You don’t have much space to write this, so be concise! It’s also a great place to incorporate keywords that people might use when searching for you.
17) Carousel post - A while back, Instagram started allowing people to share multiple photos in one post. This was earth-shattering at the time! When you share a slideshow of up to ten images in one post, it’s called a carousel post.
18) Cover photo - This is the image that’s displayed at the top of your Facebook page; on Twitter it’s called a header image. You can use this to showcase new products or services. If you’re a nonprofit and participating in Facebook fundraising, you’ll want to include a clear call to action like “give today” or “donate” in your cover photo, as that’s the image automatically pulled into any birthday fundraisers your supporters create for you.
An example of the CTA in the cover photo of Cameron Community Ministries
19) DM - This is a direct message sent to a private inbox. If you’re not following the sender, these will show up in a secondary inbox that you have to check, unless you update your settings to allow all messages to go to your primary inbox.
20) Follow for follow - A terrible tactic for growth on Instagram. Some accounts will follow you in exchange for you following them back. This often leads to people following hundreds of accounts irrelevant to their industry. Don’t do that. It’s a fast way to get followers, but the quality of your followers is awful.
21) Geotag - This is when you utilize a location tag on a post or Story. It can help your post be seen by more people in case they’re searching by geographic area, like “downtown Rochester.”
22) GIF - Do you know what GIF stands for? It’s Graphics Interchange Format. What does that mean? It’s an animated image that makes people laugh. You can use these in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Stories to be more playful.
23) Go Live - You can live stream a video feed from your business in real time on Facebook or Instagram. This gives you a boost in the algorithm and lets you interact with your followers live. It’s a great option for Q&As and events.
24) Handle - Your unique username for social media accounts. It’s a good idea to use the same handle across all platforms, so you don’t have a slightly different username on Twitter versus Instagram. You don’t want to confuse your audience or lose out on potential followers!
25) Hashtag - The # has a new life thanks to social media. Using # before a word will cause it to fall into a larger conversation about that topic. They are searchable, similar to keywords, and are big on Twitter and Instagram.
26) Instagram pod - Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes posts that get lots of engagement, fast. Some users have formed “pods,” or message groups where they tell others “I have a new post up,” and everyone is expected to go like and comment on the post quickly. It’s meant to be mutually beneficial, but it’s not an authentic or meaningful form of engagement. I recommend avoiding Instagram pods.
27) Link in bio - While platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it easy to link to a product or service, Instagram is all about the visual, so if you include a link in the caption, it’s not clickable. The link in your bio is the best way to get people to click over to your website. Update your link in your Instagram bio regularly to direct people to new blog posts or products.
28) Meme - Oh, the joy of memes. Memes are graphics with text atop them, funny jokes that follow a specific format that can be iterated upon.
A topical meme. h/t to my friend Quajay for this one!
29) Mention - This term is typically used for Twitter and refers to when a user replies to you or tags you in their tweet. Getting a lot of mentions can help your brand awareness, as it gets you in front of more people.
30) Pinned Highlight - At the top of your Instagram page, you can pin your favorite Stories you’ve shared under different themed “Highlights.” For example, a restaurant could do four different highlights, such as Lunch Menu, Dinner Menu, Desserts, FAQs. Pinning to the Highlights section keeps those Stories from disappearing after 24 hours.
My pinned highlights section
31) Poll - Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all offer a poll function where you can ask your followers for feedback. Do it! People love having their voices heard.
32) Reaction - Both Facebook and LinkedIn now have reaction options besides the simple “like.” You can love a post, laugh at it, share your sadness or anger, or even “celebrate” on LinkedIn.
33) Regram/retweet - Instagram does not offer a built-in option for reposting (or “regramming”) someone’s photo, so most people use a third-party app to do so. On Twitter, a retweet, or re-share of someone’s content, is quick and easy with the tap of a button. Both signify appreciation of and agreement with that person’s post.
34) Share - You want to strive for shares- they’re the modern day equivalent of word-of-mouth. This means that someone likes what you have to say so much that they’re willing to share it with all their own friends. On Facebook, someone can click the “share” button to share your post with their audience; on Instagram, they can tap the paper airplane to share it to their own Story or message to a friend privately.
35) Stories - Sometimes called disappearing or ephemeral content, Stories are posts that are available for just 24 hours. While this was originally the entire concept of Snapchat, it was quickly copied by Instagram and is now used by 500 million people daily. Facebook also offers Stories, but they haven’t achieved the same level of popularity as Instagram Stories.
36) Tag - On all platforms, you can “tag” a user, meaning you type the @ symbol and their name, and it associates the post with them. You can also tag them in a photo, and the photo will show up on their profile. If the user doesn’t like the photo, they can untag themselves.
37) Thread - Threads are popular on Twitter; it’s a string of multiple tweets telling a story too long to fit in one 280 character tweet.
38) Trending - Particular topics that are posted about frequently are called “trending topics.” These show up in a sidebar on Twitter and highlight what topics are hot at the moment. Be careful before you jump on a trending topic with a witty tweet; be sure to research it first and make sure you understand the sentiment of the conversation before trying to be edgy and making a cringey faux pas.
39) Twitter Lists - These are a way of staying organized on Twitter. You may not want to follow 100 local journalists, but you can create a list of all of them and look at their tweets whenever you like. If someone adds you to a list, it increases your chances of getting a follow from the list creator’s followers.
Advertising & Analytics
40) Boost - When you have an organic post that’s performing well, Facebook will often prompt you to boost it. This means you spend a small amount of money (even just $10) to get it in front of more people. Boosting posts can be an effective way to get more eyes on your content.
41) Sponsored post - These are the result of a paid partnership between a brand and an influencer. According to FTC guidelines, they must always disclose that the post is sponsored, typically with #ad or #sponsored.
42) Dark social - While social media has plenty of metrics you can track, there are some aspects that are more difficult. Dark social is when someone shares a link with a friend via email or DM, and the brand can’t track it.
43) Engagement - Any type of interaction with your brand on social counts as an engagement--this can be likes, comments, shares, etc. Your engagement rate is a reflection of what percentage of people who see your post choose to engage with it.
44) Impressions - This metric tracks how many times a person was exposed to a particular post. For example, Sally might see the same post from her hair salon five times. Under impressions, it will be counted five times.
45) Reach - Instead of counting how many times a post is seen, reach instead counts how many individual humans saw a given post. Sally, who saw the salon’s Instagram post five times, will only be counted once under the reach metric.
46) Vanity metric - These are metrics that look good but aren’t all that meaningful. For example, you can have a high follower count or tons of likes, but it’s not valuable if your followers don’t engage with your content or click through to your website.
Common Sayings
47) FOMO/JOMO - FOMO is the Fear of Missing Out; its flipside is JOMO, or the Joy of Missing Out. FOMO is often used to market events or limited-time sales, encouraging followers to not miss out on an exciting offer. JOMO is used by brands like Girls’ Night In, a self-care brand that encourages women to stay in and relax.
48) Get Ratioed - This one’s just for Twitter. If you get ratioed, that means the amount of replies to your tweet far outnumbers the amount of likes and retweets. Usually that’s considered a signal that your tweet was BAD.
49) h/t - Hat tip! Hat tip? This is a way of saying thank you to someone who has pointed you towards great content. If you re-share an article from a friend, you might say “h/t to Mary for this awesome read from The Atlantic!”
50) ICYMI - This acronym perplexed me for awhile, but once I got it, I started using it all the time. It’s simply, In Case You Missed It. Comes in handy for resharing a piece of content that’s still relevant and useful!
Any terms I missed? I’d be happy to unpack them for you! Just tweet me @servemethesky. And in the meantime, if you’re looking for more great social media content, be sure to check out my unboring email newsletter.
