Whether you’re planning to hire an agency to look after social media for your business or handle things on your own, there are a few key terms you should be aware of. We’ve put together a short glossary of some of the most relevant social media marketing terms you should know.
B2B: This stands for business-to-business. B2B businesses use social media to target and communicate with other businesses to whom they’d like to sell products or services.
B2C: This stands for business-to-customer. B2C businesses use social media to target and communicate with current and potential customers.
Boost: Boosting a post turns your organic post into a paid advertisement. Boosting your posts will get your content in front of people who don’t already follow your account.
CTA: This stands for Call To Action. Using a CTA on social media posts encourages followers to take a specific action, such as “Visit our website to learn more” or “Book now!”
Carousel: A carousel is a post using multiple images or videos that users can swipe or click their way through.
Clickthrough Rate: If you’ve included a link in your post, the clickthrough rate (CTR) tells you the number of people who clicked on your link.
Engagement Rate: This refers to the number of people who have interacted with your post, including likes/reactions, comments, shares, saves, and click-throughs.
Evergreen Content: While posts marketing a specific event or promotion are only relevant for a short period of time, evergreen content is relevant no matter when it’s posted. Examples include FAQs, services/products offered, and other basic information about your business.
Feed: Sometimes also called a News Feed, this is the list of content that social media users will see displayed. Feeds are constantly updated with new content, and include both organic and paid content. While some social media feeds are chronological, most are regulated by algorithms.
Hashtag: A hashtag is a keyword or phrase that is preceded by the # sign. Hashtags are used to categorize your posts, help users find content they’re interested in, and help you increase your organic reach.
Impressions: This is the number of times your content is displayed. The same post can have multiple impressions if it is displayed in someone’s feed more than once (e.g. the post is shared by multiple people in an individual’s feed).
Reach: This is the number of unique accounts that have viewed your content. Reach can be divided into two categories: organic and paid. Organic reach refers to the number of unique accounts that viewed your content without paid promotion, either by following your account, viewing content that was shared by other people they follow, following a particular hashtag, or finding your content through a keyword search.
Throwback Thursday: #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT is a popular hashtag used mainly (but not exclusively) on Instagram. This is a simple and effective way to re-share older content.