The Only Marketing Glossary You’ll Need

Social media marketing can be full of terms and ‘buzzwords’. Here’s your glossary of the most important terms. We’ve got you 😉

New to the social media marketing game or a small business owner trying to get your head around social media? We’ve been there before (we all have to start somewhere!) and it can feel overwhelming to start. Here’s a list of the key terms you’ll need to know. You’re welcome!

Organic social media marketing 🌱

Let’s get into the basics of organic social media marketing. Organic social media marketing is just a technical way of referring to the process of promoting a brand, product, or service on social media platforms without paying for advertising or sponsored posts. Marketing professionals use the metrics below as a way to measure the performance of social posts or you may have heard it called ‘reporting’, as it’s usually what’s included in social media reports. They’re a great way of measuring the “success” of your content (although this is nuanced!).

Insights: Metrics and data provided by social media platforms that offer a deeper understanding of your audience, content, and performance.

Engagement: The measurement of interactions that your content receives from users, including likes, comments, shares, and clicks. This is sometimes turned into an ‘Engagement Rate’, which is just a calculated percentage of how many people interact with your content. High engagement indicates a strong connection with your audience.

Organic Reach: The number of users who see your content without paid promotion. Achieving a high organic reach requires engaging and shareable content.

Reach: The total number of unique users who have seen your content. It's a vital metric for gauging your content's exposure and potential audience size. This can also include paid promotion.

Impressions: The number of times your content has been displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or not. A user may see multiple impressions of the same content.

Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, after interacting with your content or advertisement.

The basics... 📹

Influencer: A person with a significant following on social media who can impact consumer opinions and purchasing decisions through their authority. Think Emma Chamberlain, Molly Mae, Bretman Rock or Khaby Lame.

Filipino-American beauty influencer and social media personality Bretman Rock rose to Influencer fame as a teenager.

Algorithm: The mathematical formula used by social media platforms to determine the content that shows up on users feeds. Algorithms are constantly evolving, attempting to give users the best possible experience, so marketers are experimenting with content and updating strategy regularly is important.

Viral: Content that spreads rapidly and extensively across social media platforms due to high levels of engagement and sharing.

CTA (Call-to-Action): A prompt that encourages users to take a specific action, such as "like," "comment," "share," or "click the link.”

Here we’ve used a CTA to prompt our followers to comment on the post!

User-Generated Content (UGC): Content created by your audience that features your brand. UGC is a powerful tool to build trust, credibility and an engaged community.

Social Listening: Monitoring and analysing online conversations to understand what users are saying about your brand or industry, helping you identify opportunities and challenges.

Copy: "Copy" refers to the written content or text used in posts, usually in the form of captions. But this can also be the text used in designs. It conveys the brand's message, personality, and call-to-action to the audience.

Community: “Community" refers to a group of individuals who share common interests, values, or affiliations and engage with a brand or each other on social media platforms. building a strong and engaged community is a key objective for social media marketers as it fosters brand loyalty. Read more about this here!

Community Management: The practice of building, nurturing, and engaging with a brand's online community or audience across various social media platforms. It involves managing interactions, responding to comments and messages, and fostering a positive and interactive environment for followers.

Trends: A trend or anything that’s ‘trending’ refers to a topic, hashtag, challenge, or content format that becomes popular and widely discussed or shared among users within a specific period. Trends are often driven by a large number of people posting about the same subject. Think Barbie right now! 💅

You’ve probably seen this viral barbie trend, where users are showcasing barbie inspired outfits alongside an audio from the movie. Here fashion creator @itsdenval has jumped on the trend!

Types of posts on Instagram 📱

Let’s break down the most popular types of posts on Instagram….

Reel: Short-form videos up to 60 seconds, similar to TikTok, which are designed for creative and engaging content.

Photo Posts: Single images or graphics that users can share with captions and hashtags.

Carousel: A type of post that includes multiple images or videos that users can swipe through. You’re probably used to seeing these mostly on Instagram, but TikTok also utilises this feature. Photo dumps are a great example of this!

Live Streams: Real-time videos that users can broadcast to their followers, allowing for direct interaction through comments and reactions. This is sometimes shortened to ‘lives’.

Stories: Short-lived vertical photos or videos that disappear after 24 hours, and appear as the little circles at the top of the screen when you open Instagram. Stories can include interactive elements like polls, questions, stickers, and links.

Stories are the icons that appear at the top of you Instagram home page. Tap these icons to reveal other users stories!

Types of posts on TikTok 🤳

And the same for TikTok… Here’s a quick rundown of the most popular types of posts on the app.

Videos: The primary format on TikTok, allows users to create engaging videos with a duration of up to 3 minutes (or up to 10 minutes if you’re uploading a video from outside the app, rather than recording in app).

Duets: A feature that enables users to create split-screen videos alongside another user's video. This encourages collaboration and interaction between creators.

Stitch: Similar to Duets, Stitch allows users to take a segment of another user's video and add their own content before or after it.

Livestreams: Like Instagram, TikTok also allows users to host live streams, interacting with their audience in real time.

Photos: Similar to carousels on Instagram, this allows users to show images in a slideshow-type format. These are usually paired with a song or sound in the background.