Anyone working with social media, whether for business or personal reasons, knows the pain of too many terms and acronyms.
What’s the actual difference between impressions and reach? And don’t even get me started on the acronyms: AMA, DM, FYP, PPC, RSS…these days, it seems like you need a university degree in social media terminology to know what the terms stand for and what they mean for your social media account(s).
Until now…
Here’s a helping hand.
To set the record straight, we’ve put together this glossary of the most common social media buzzwords, keywords, terms and phrases…plus their definitions - all in alphabetical order, so if you’re looking for a specific social media term, you can find it with ease. Check it out:
1) AMA
This is an acronym that simply stands for "ask me anything". Users use the term to prompt questions from other people on the platform they are using.
2) Analytics
This is data that helps you track the performance of your social media content, and often includes page views, time on page/profile, clickthrough rate, and engagement rate.
3) 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 sites like Facebook and Google use these for developing specific strategies, mainly content promotion.
4) Application Programming Interface (API)
An API is a documented interface that allows one software to interact with another.
5) Avatar
In the movie industry, avatars are tall blue aliens but in the social media world, it's a little different. An avatar is an image or username that represents a person online - most often within forums and social networks.
6) Bio
A bio on social media refers to a short piece of text that explains who the user is, what they do for a living, their areas of interest etc.
7) Bitly
Bitly is a free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bitly is used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter (due to the low character count Twitter has, this service is incredibly helpful when it comes to tweeting and including a URL).
8) Bitmoji
A Bitmoji is an avatar or emoji that users can create to look like them. Bitmojis can then be added to your personal or Snapchat keyboards so you can send them to others or use them as profile pictures for your accounts.
9) Blog
Blog is a combination of two words: web and log. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or a business with regular entries of content on a specific topic, descriptions of events, or other resources such as graphics or video. Also, the word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Here are the 6 main benefits of having a blog on your website and the top tips to write a great blog post.
10) BoardReader
BoardReader is a free search engine that allows people to search for keywords only in posts and titles of online forums.
11) Bookmarking
This term follows the same idea of placing a bookmark in a physical book as it does online - you simply mark something you found important, enjoyable, or want to continue reading later.
12) Canva
Canva is an easy-to-use design tool for non-designers and designers alike. The tool offers several templates that adhere to the required dimensions for social images on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
13) Clickbait
Clickbait is a term used to describe materials that employ a sensationalised headline to attract clicks. They rely heavily on the "curiosity gap" by creating just enough interest to provoke engagement.
14) Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
Put simply, click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. If you have a high CTR, users are finding your content to be highly relevant. If you have a low CTR, users are finding your content to be less relevant.
15) Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision-making in social networks.
16) Comment
A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer or reaction to a social media post on most platforms currently online.
17) Community Manager
A community manager is responsible for building and managing the online communications for a business in an effort to grow a community on the web.
18) Connections
Connections are the LinkedIn equivalent of a Facebook 'friend'. Because LinkedIn is a social networking site, the people you are connecting with are not necessarily people you are friends with, but rather professional contacts that you've met, seen at an event, done business with, or know through another connection. Connections are categorised by: 1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree.
19) 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, voting in a poll etc).
20) Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, following the rules of copyright. It provides the legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry.
21) Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing, similar to outsourcing, refers to the act of soliciting ideas or content from a group of people, typically in an online setting.
22) Direct Message (DM)
These are private conversations that occur on social media between two or more people. When this term is used, you typically see it added to the end of someone's post. "DM me to learn me" or "send me a DM now to be added to the list" - something along those lines, which means for them to message them through the messaging tool of the social media platform they're using.
23) Discover (or Snapchat Discover)
This is a section on the Snapchat app that is dedicated to large brands, influencers, and longer forms of story content.
24) eBook
An eBook is an electronic version of a book. However, most eBooks are not actually available in print (unless you print them off yourself). eBooks commonly serve as lead generating content, in that people need to fill out a form to receive a copy/link of the PDF.
25) Emoji
Emojis are small cartoon like images that can be sent in the text of social media posts and in private messages.
26) Endorsement
An endorsement on LinkedIn refers to an instance in which another LinkedIn user recognises you for one of the skills you have listed on your profile.
27) Engagement Rate
This is a popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction -- likes, shares, saves, comments -- posted content receives.
28) Eventbrite
Eventbrite is an online provider of event management and ticketing services. If your event is free, so is the use of Eventbrite. However, if you sell tickets to your event, Eventbrite collects a fee per ticket.
29) Facebook
Facebook is the very popular 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 different content such as photos and status updates. According to a recent Google search, the platform has 2.912 billion users.
30) Flickr
Is a social network for online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets, and other methods. For the Flickr website, click HERE.
31) Forums
Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion website. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dial-up bulletin board system.
32) Follower
In a social media setting, a follower refers to a someone basically subscribing to your account in order to receive your content and updates.
33) For You Page (FYP)
FYP acts like an individual landing page for users which algorithmically shows content that TikTok thinks they might watch or like.
34) Geotag
A geotag is the coordinates that can be attached to a piece of content online. For example, Instagram users often use geotagging on posted images to highlight the location in which their photo was taken.
35) GIF
GIF is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. In social media, GIFs serve as small animation/ film clips.
36) Groups
Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offer a 'Groups' feature where people in similar industries or with similar interests can join a group and discuss topics related to it. For example, we have a Avanty group over on Facebook where we like to post blog content and advice for all things web building, marketing, social media etc. Also with our Avanty Facebook Group, people can ask questions and seek advice for pretty much anything within our industry. As after all, we're building a community over there - meaning there's always support on hand.
37) Handle 
This is the term used to describe someone's @username on a social media platform like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. For example, Avanty's Instagram handle is @avantyplc.co.
38) Header image
A header image refers to the large photo displayed at the top of your profile. The header image is included in every Twitter account as well as commonly referred to as the banner image on LinkedIn or the cover image on Facebook.
39) Hashtag
A hashtag is a tag used on a variety of social networks as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a “#" symbol followed by a word or phrase (i.e. #AvantyPLC, #socialmedia, #digitalmarketing, #likeaboss etc). Social networks use hashtags to categorise information and make content easily searchable for users.
40) 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. HTML has changed over the years, and it is on the cusp of its next version: HTML5.
41) IGTV
IGTV is where verified accounts on Instagram can host long-form videos or place longer live streams after they've aired.
42) Impressions
An impression refers to a way in which marketers and advertisers keep track of every time ad is "fetched" and counted.
43) Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that uses permission-based marketing techniques to get found by their target audience, convert them into leads, and analyse 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, personalisation, and CRM.
44) Insights
Most social media networks offer insight pages to their business account holders. These pages often allow the user's to see valuable analytics about their page and how they're performing compared to others.
45) Instagram
Instagram is a photo sharing platform that lets users take photos, apply filters to their images, and share the photos instantly on the network and other social networks like Facebook. After a quick Google search, it seems Instagram currently has 30.6 million users.
46) Instant Messaging (IM)
Instant messaging is a form of real-time, text-based communication between two or more people. The more advanced instant messaging software social media platforms can have also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as voice messaging or video calling.
47) Instagram Live
Instagram Live is where individuals and businesses on Instagram can share a live feed of what's going on in their lives - real-time video content.
48) Kik
Kik is a freeware instant messaging mobile app. A platform to chat and message friends, family, work colleagues etc, no matter what device you're using.
49) Klout
Klout is a measure of social influence. The service allows users to connect various social accounts such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc., and then provides every user with a Klout score. The score is out of 100 -- the higher the score, the more influence it estimates you have in the social world. Note: Effective May 25th, 2018, Lithium stopped providing the Klout service.
50) Like
A 'Like' is an action that can be made by a Facebook or Instagram user. Instead of writing a comment or sharing a post, a user can click the 'Like' button as a quick way to show approval.
51) Link Building
Link building is an aspect of search engine optimisation in which website owners develop strategies to earn links to their site from other websites with the hopes of improving their ranking on search engines such a Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc. A popular method of link building is blogging.
52) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site with over 830 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. LinkedIn primarily is used for professional networking.
53) Live streaming
Live streaming is the delivering video content over the internet in real-time.
54) Lurker
A lurker online is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, social network, or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates in the actual discussion. You could say they observe from afar.
55) Mashup
A content mashup contains multiple types of media drawn from pre-existing sources to create something new. Digital mashups allow you to create new pieces of content by combining multiple online content sources. The most common form of mashups are songs from different artists, genres etc being edited together to make a new sound.
56) Meme
A meme is a piece of content used to describe a thought, idea, joke, or concept that's widely shared online. It is typically an image with text above and below it, but can also come in video and link form. For some of the best memes created so far, click HERE.
57) Mention
A mention is a commonly used term to describe an instance in which a user includes someone else's @username in their post or comment to attribute a piece of content or start a conversation.
58) News Feed
A news feed is literally a feed full of news. On Facebook, the 'News Feed' is the homepage of content you see from the 'friends' you have on the platform or posts from groups you are members in with all the latest updates. The news feed on Twitter is called Timeline.
59) Permalink
This is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog or website that remains indefinitely unchanged.
60) Pinterest
Pinterest is a photo sharing social media platform that provides users with a place for uploading, saving, and categorising "pins" through collections called "boards." Boards are typically organised by theme - such as: Home Decor, Women's Fashion, Gardening, Parenthood etc. Users have the ability to "pin" and "repin" content that they like to their respective boards.
61) Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually audio, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed (definition for RSS feed is below).
62) PPC
PPC stands for pay per click. Pay per click is an online advertising model in which people display ads on various websites or search engines and pay when a visitor clicks through.
63) Quantcast
Quantcast is a service that provides website traffic and demographics for websites. The tool is primarily used by online advertisers looking to target specific demographics. Visit the Quantcast website by clicking HERE.
64) Real-Time Search
Real-time search is the method of indexing content being published online into search engine results with virtually no delay.
65) Real-Time Marketing
This is a strategy that requires marketers to publish timely content as news breaks.
66) Recommendation
A recommendation is a term used on LinkedIn to describe a written review from another LinkedIn member that aims to reinforce the user's professional credibility or expertise.
67) Reddit
Reddit is a social news website that contains specific, topic-oriented communities of users who share and comment on stories. To head over to Reddit, click HERE.
68) 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.
69) Retweet
A retweet is when someone on Twitter sees your 'tweet' and decides to re-share it with their followers.
70) RSS Feed
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content, for example blogs, in a standardised 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).
71) RSS Reader
An RSS reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of a RSS reader is to allow for a faster and more efficient information consumption.
72) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines. To learn more about SEO and the impact it has online, check out our blog titled 'What is SEO? An Introduction to SEO Basics'.
73) Selfie
A selfie is a self-portrait that is typically taken using the reverse camera screen on a smartphone or by using a selfie stick (a pole that attaches to your camera). Selfies are commonly shared on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.
74) Skype
Skype is a free service online that allows for text, audio, and video chats between users. To visit the website and learn more about Skype and the services it offers, click HERE.
75) Snapchat
Snapchat is a social app that allows people to send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos known as "snaps," which are hidden from the recipients once the time limit expires (but images and videos still remain on the Snapchat server). Users can add text and drawings to their snaps and control the list of people in which they send them to.
76) Snap Map
This is a feature on Snapchat that allows you to see where your friends are as well as hot spots where people are publicly posting stories.
77) Story
Popular on networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, stories are a string of posted videos or images that lasts for 24 hours. People can choose to create stories to be shared publicly or just a customised group of recipients.
78) Social Media Monitoring
Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.
79) Spotify
Spotify is a music streaming service with a social media twist. Not only can you share what you're listening to with other social networks like Instagram and Facebook, but you can also see what your friends are listening to or listen to their playlists directly from the platform.
80) Tag/ Tagging
This s a social media functionality commonly used on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram that allows people to create a link back to the profile of the person/business shown in the picture.
81) Thread
A thread is a series of comments on a post or in a subreddit.
82) TikTok
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms of all time, The app highlights bitesized looping videos that can also have musical overlays.
83) Trending Topic
This term refers to the most talked about topics and hashtags on a social media network. These commonly appear on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and serve as clickable links in which people can either click through to join the conversation or simply browse the related content.
84) Troll
This term refers to a person who is known for creating controversy in an online setting. They visit different areas on the web with the intent of disrupting the conversation on a piece of content by providing commentary that aims to evoke a reaction.
85) Tumblr
Tumblr is an online platform that allows people to post text, images, video, audio, links, and quotes to their blog. There people can also follow other blogs and repost other users' content to their own blog.
86) Twitch
Twitch is a live streaming platform which gained notoriety when gamers used it to stream their video game skills. Recently, brands have also begun to experiment with the platform. To learn about what Twitch has to offer, visit the website.
87) Twitter
Twitter is a real-time social network that allows users to share 280-character updates with their followers on the platform. People can favourite and retweet the posts of other users, as well as engage in conversations using @ mentions, replies, and hashtags.
88) User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content is content such as 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 specific campaign.
89) Vine
Founded in 2012 and discontinued in 2017, Vine was a video sharing service online where people could create and engage with six-second long video clips. From there, videos published on Vine were easily shared across other social platforms such Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
90) Viral
This is a term used to describe an instance in which a piece of content achieves noteworthy awareness. For something to become viral, the people sharing the content rely heavily on word of mouth and the frequency of people sharing it all over the internet.
91) Vlogs/ Vlogging
A vlog is a piece of video content used to tell a story, report on information and show the day-to-day life of the person vlogging. Vlogs are most common on YouTube than anywhere else.
92) Webinar
A webinar is an online seminar or presentation that is hosted by an individual or a company. Mostly webinars are held to educate audiences about a particular topic while opening up the floor for a discussion to occur on social media - often using the unique hashtag for the webinar (i.e. #BecomingASocialMediaExpertWithAvanty).
93) WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a messaging app that allows people to connect internationally over a Wi-Fi network.
94) Zapier
This is a software that leverages "zaps" to connect apps and provides users with a way to automate tasks. Zaps are automations that contain both Triggers and Actions. For example, you can connect Facebook and Twitter to tweet posts from a Facebook Page. To learn more about Zapier and the services it has to offer, click HERE.
