Social Media Marketing Terms

Brand Advocate — A brand advocate is a brand-loyal individual with less than 1,000 followers. A brand advocate can also be considered a nano influencer.

Branded Hashtags — Unlike general hashtags, branded hashtags reflect the brand name, tagline, or motto. The purposes for these hashtags are for branding purposes, not necessarily for consumer use. However, the more a brand repeats these hashtags while building a social media presence, the more consumers will consider them.

Chatbot — Using the technology of artificial intelligence and the concept of “If this, then that,” a brand can use chatbots to help them answer commonly asked questions automatically. 

Clickbait — Clickbait is a catching or intriguing headline for an article that is intended to drive website clicks, but has no actual relevance to the content on the landing page. 

Click-Through Rate — A click-through rate (CTR) tracks how many times your audience clicks your ad on a platform.

Direct Message (DM) — A direct message is a private message sent from one user to another. It can also be a group of users within a private message. 

Engagement Rate — An engagement rate is a metric that measures the audience engagement with content on a respective platform. Engagement can be considered as likes, comments, shares, favorites, etc.

Evergreen Content — Evergreen content relates to messaging that remains relevant regardless of time, season, or content marketing campaign. Most evergreen content can be used throughout the year and still connects to any content strategy or campaign objective.

Facebook — Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, the social platform is designed to connect family, friends, and like-minded people to build an online community. The platform has 2.4 billion users around the world.

Geotargeting — Geotargeting allows for the direct focus of a specific user group by location, zip code, device, or IP Address.

Hashtag — A hashtag on social media connects similar content and like-minded people, acting as a real-time aggregator for content that reflects the same hashtags.

Influencer — A social media influencer is one who has significant influence within their community of friends and followers.

Influencer Marketing — Influencer marketing is a term used to address individuals in a specific niche or field that have a high number of people following them, and they have a significant influence on the purchasing behaviors within an online community. It would be like word of mouth advertising, but at scale (thanks to social media).

Instagram — This social networking platform is a photo- and video-sharing app that launched in 2010 and was acquired by Facebook in 2012.  Although it is a mobile-first platform, the app is accessible through desktop. Instagram is a part of Facebook’s family of brands.

KPI — A key performance indicator (KPI) is an analytic used to measure the performance of social media campaigns. These indicators can include a click-through rate, engagement rate, etc.

LinkedIn — With over 600 million users to date, LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform that allows you to bring your resume and portfolio beyond a written document. Users can build connections, showcase past work, and receive recommendations through the platform.

Macro Influencer — A macro-influencer is someone who has 1 million followers on one or a collective group of social media platforms.

Mention — A mention (or tag) is a way to notify or give attribution to another person or organization by using the @username of the individual or organization on the respective social media platform (e.g., Twitter and LinkedIn). On LinkedIn, however, users may block @mentions.

Micro-Influencer — A micro-influencer is someone who has 1,000 to 1,000,000 followers on either one or a collective group of platforms.

Optimization — Optimization is a process of monitoring content (often a paid or sponsored ad) and modifying its details based on current performance.

Pinterest — During its early years, Pinterest was an invitation-only visual discovery platform that allowed users (called pinners) to upload, save, and organize images. The network launched in 2009,  and its growth was by word of mouth, and the platform become open to all in 2012. It’s now ranked the third largest social platform in the U.S. 

Snapchat — Launched in 2011, Snapchat is a mobile app used for photo, video, and message sharing. The platform is known for its one-view limit, and content disappearing after it is first viewed. Now, recipients can save and replay content.

Social Listening — Social listening for social media marketers simply means actively listening to the conversations happening around your brand, your content, and your digital environment. If you’re curious to know how people feel about a specific topic or relevant circumstance, read the comments on social media.

Tag — A tag generally refers to using either @mentions or hashtags to associate a person, organization, or theme with a post or comment.

TikTok — Formally known as Musical.ly, the Beijing-based company, TikTok, is a social media platform designed for creating, sharing, and discovering short music videos and content. It is arguably one of the fastest-growing social networks in the new decade, with over 1.5 billion downloads and growing.

Trending Topic — A trending topic is a popular subject or conversation that spreads rapidly and quickly on social media. If a conversation spikes within a matter of hours, it can be considered a trending topic, regionally, nationally, or worldwide.    

Twitter — Launched in 2006, Twitter is considered a microblogging social networking platform because of its 280-character limit restriction, which is ideal for real-time updates around the world.

User-Generated Content — User-generated content involves social sharing of content from your clients or customers who showcase brand loyalty or brand love.

Vanity Metric — A vanity metric on social media includes any metric that doesn’t align with a conversion for your business goals. This can consist of followers, page likes, and subscribers.