Learn Our Lingo: The Ultimate Glossary of Social Media Terms You Should Know
For many people, posting a tweet, hashtagging an Instagram caption, and sending out an invite for a Facebook event on Facebook has become common practice. In fact, for the highly experienced social media managers at The Burnette Agency, we can simultaneously do all three at once.
But with new social media networks and innovative software popping up daily, even seasoned social media managers are bound to run into a term or acronym that leaves them puzzled. Whether you're still hung up on the difference between a mention and a reply on Twitter or you just want to brush up on your social knowledge, check out the following roundup of social media business terms to keep yourself in the know.
B2B → Business to Business
This is a type of transaction that exists between two businesses, such as one involving a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer.
B2C → Business to Consumer
Any transaction that is conducted directly between a company and their consumers.
CPC → Cost Per Click
This refers to the actual price a business pays for each click in a boosted marketing campaign.
PPC → Pay Per Click
Not to be confused with the CPC, the Pay Per Click is simply a type of business advertising where a company that has placed an advertisement on a website (such as Facebook) pays a sum of money to the host website when a user clicks on the advertisement.
CPM → Cost Per Thousand
The CPM is a social media marketing term used to calculate the price of 1,000 impressions on one webpage. For example: if a website publisher charges $2.00 CPM, that means an advertiser must pay $2.00 for every 1,000 impressions of its ad. Where does the “M” come into play? The "M" in the acronym represents the Roman numeral for 1,000, because we’re fancy social media marketers.
CR → Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action. For example, if a business ran an ad on Facebook with the desired action of website sales, the conversion rate would be the percentage of website visitors who buy something on the website.
CTR → Click Through Rate
The click through rate is simply a ratio that shows how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. At The Burnette Agency, we use CTR to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.
ROI → Return of Investment
Generally speaking, the definition of Return of Investment is the measurement of the gain or loss generated to the amount of money invested. A social media ROI, however, is what a company is getting back from the time, money and resources they’re putting toward social media marketing. Ideally, we would measure the return in terms of dollars.
UGC → User Generated Content
User Generated Content is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by unpaid contributors. In better terms, the UGC refers to the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand itself. This can be pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blog posts, and everything in between.
SEO → Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. Search engine optimization is a science that includes a number of strategies, techniques and tactics. The idea is increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
Tagging → A type of link that is commonly used to identify users in a photo and connects other users directly to their profile.
Mention → Any social media post that has mentioned someone specifically by their username.
News Feed → The homepage for social media users that displays all current statuses and updates from other users they follow.
Viral → A term used to describe photos, videos, or any other form of content that is being rapidly circulated on the Internet.
Vlog → Made popular by YouTube, a vlog is a blog in video-format. Essentially a vlog is any type of video content in which a specific topic is addressed.
Subscribe → The action of receiving a particular user’s statuses and updates on any social media platform.
Social Media Monitoring → The routine observation of specific topics, conversations, and social media posts that are relevant to a person, business, or organization.
Geotagging → Attaching location-based data to a social media platform such as photos, videos, or texts.
Boost/Promote → Paying to have content included in the feeds of potential customers who do not follow you or your brand’s official page.
Social media has a lingo all its own, and we hope this gives you some insight into social media's evolving landscape. If you have any further questions, think we missed a term, or simply want to leave the social media marketing up to the experts, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Email us at info@theburnetteagency.com or give us a call at 404-850-2081.