Social platforms enable the development and management of social media solutions and services. With so many social media platforms on the market, it can be difficult to keep track of all the social media terms and jargon.
However, knowing what each term means is critical to your brand’s success.
To familiarize yourself with everything you need to know, we’ve created this social media marketing glossary covering terms that apply to most social platforms. We recommend bookmarking this social media glossary for convenient reference.
Ad Fraud
Ad fraud is any deliberate activity that prevents the proper delivery of ads to the right people at the right time and in the right place. Most often, ad fraud refers to non-human or bot traffic.
See this article for more information about Ad Fraud: What is Ad Fraud?
Algorithm
An algorithm is a sequence of steps used to solve specific problems. In social media terms, it is a way of sorting through posts in a user feed to show relevant content to an individual user depending on interests and demographics.
Bot
Short for “robot,” a bot refers to a software program that carries out automated tasks on the internet. There are good bots, like those that crawl pages for web browsers, and bad bots, designed for fraud. Both can intentionally or unintentionally view ads, watch videos, click on ads, and generate false impressions.
For more information on bot traffic, see our article How Does Bot Traffic Vary Over Time?
Brand Safety
Being brand-safe means keeping brands’ campaigns—and reputation—safe from association with risky online content or environments.
Brand Suitability
Brand suitability goes a step further than brand safety to offer advertisers customizable control over what content their ads appear near on the feed.
Clickbait
No social media marketing glossary would be complete without clickbait. This refers to content designed to gather clicks often using sensationalist headlines and thumbnails to attract attention.
Direct Message
Direct messages (DMs) are a way for social media users to engage in private conversations outside of engaging on any public feeds. Companies can also use DMs to address individual customer concerns.
Engagement
Interactions between people and brands on social networks. For example, likes, comments, and shares.
Fake News
This is when websites or webpages actively create and distribute deliberately inaccurate content while presenting it as news. Fake news is one of the more recent social media terms to make it into the mainstream.
To learn more about fake news, see our research on How Fake News Impacts the Digital Advertising Industry.
Handle
Different from a username, this is the name that appears at the end of a user’s unique URL.
Hashtag
You most likely don’t need a social media glossary to know what a hashtag is, but it is an integral part of any social media platform. A hashtag is a word or multi-word phrase following the # symbol. This is a way to categorize content on social media channels.
In-Stream
Video ads that appear in the video player itself and appear before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), and after (post-roll) the video.
Live Streaming
A live stream is when content is delivered to an audience in real time. This social media term was popularized by today’s largest social media platforms, and you can live stream on most of them.
Meme
Meme is a word coined in 1976 to describe an idea, behavior, or style that spreads through imitation from person to person within a culture.
In social media terms, memes are usually images with text but are more recently being created as videos.
Newsfeed
The continuous feed of news and posts presented on a particular platform. Examples could include a homepage, blog, or timeline.
Native Advertising
A form of paid media in which the advertising experience follows the form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.
Paid Social Media
The use of social media for ad placement. The most common types are native advertisements such as ads, promoted posts, and sponsored videos. Other forms of paid social media include traditional display ads on social networks and promoted accounts.
Programmatic
The automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory. Buyers and sellers employ algorithm-driven software and artificial intelligence to create a results-driven exchange.
If you want to learn more about programmatic advertising, read our article on What is Programmatic Advertising?
Social Media Etiquette
This entry in our social media glossary refers to the guidelines that companies and individuals use to preserve their online reputation. Social media etiquette differs from platform to platform.
Social Media Monitoring
One of the most literal social media terms, social media monitoring simply refers to monitoring your social accounts and responding to mentions related to your business.
Social Selling
Social selling is a lead-generation strategy that helps salespeople interact with prospects more directly through a social media platform. Having a business page on a social media platform is the easiest way to engage in social selling.
Trending
A trending topic on social media encourages discussion and engagement among a platform’s users. Trending was a concept first popularized by a 2006 flagship social media network and has since been adopted by other platforms.
Viewability
The ability for an ad to be seen by a consumer. By industry standards, to be considered “viewable,” an ad must meet the minimum requirements in the MRC Viewable Impression Guidelines.
Viral
This is a phrase you’ll find in most social media glossaries. Viral content—such as a post, video, or image—is something that gains extreme popularity in a short amount of time and is shared by a large number of people across social media platforms.
Walled Garden
A browsing environment that exists outside of the open web and whose advertising systems do not conform to industry standards. Walled gardens include any advertising platform that requires non-standard campaign operations.
Watch Time
Watch time on popular video-sharing platforms refers to the amount of time viewers spend watching your videos. This is a critical metric that measures overall audience engagement and often acts as a criterion to get monetized on a platform.
We know more than just social media terms
If you found our social media marketing glossary helpful, make sure to read our programmatic advertising glossary, and learn more about our social capabilities here.
To make the biggest difference in your social media advertising efforts, leverage our proven solutions. No matter the challenge you’re up against with your ads, our tools are here to help drive superior results. You can get better insights into real vs. fake clicks, optimize your ads for real people (not bots), show your ads at the right times and on the right channels, and so much more.
Reach out to us to start enhancing your advertising today.