With businesses’ growing need to stay on top of social media trends, it can be hard to keep up with the seemingly ever-changing lingo. The marketing squad knows there’s some language we might use day-to-day that doesn’t necessarily always make sense to you. So, today, we’re here to help with that. Below are some key terms surrounding social media and their definitions. That said, if you ever have questions about these or other words you might see floating around, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Algorithm – Social media algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a users' feed based on relevancy instead of publish time. Social networks prioritize which content a user sees in their feed first by the likelihood that they'll actually want to see it
Content – Content is what you choose to post and share with your audience on social media platforms or blogs. This can include photos, images, videos, infographics, articles, status updates or audio. The point of content is to share information that your target audience would potentially be interested in
Engagement – The measurement of public interactions (public shares, likes and comments) for an individual or business’ social media efforts
Hashtag – Social media’s version of keywords, which can be used to organize messages on a social media platform. Hashtags help facilitate the searching and grouping of posts with the same hashtags (e.g. #pizza)
Influencer – A user on social media who has established a large following, as well as credibility, in a specific industry. They have access to a large audience and can persuade their followers with authenticity and reach, which is why many businesses partner with them to sponsor products, specials, events and more
Influencer Marketing – The act of working with an influencer to market your product or service in exchange for payment
Optimized Content – Content tailored specifically to a certain social media platform – whether in image dimensions, character counts or general best practices
Organic – Anything that happens on social media without paid promotion
Platform – A web-based technology that enables the development, deployment and management of social media content (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+)
Ranking – A metric that represents a social media account’s visibility on its respective social media platform
Social Listening – The process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand and industry online
Tagged Location – A geotagged location in a social media post – utilizing these can help with your ranking
User-Generated Content (UGC) – Any form of content that has been created and posted by users of a social media platform; useful for reposts and engaging with followers by recycling content they posted
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