Social Media Glossary

The For You Page, or FYP, is TikTok's main feed of algorithmically ranked videos chosen for each user instead of a followed-accounts timeline.

A Broadcast Channel is a one-to-many messaging space on Instagram where a creator posts text, photos, video, polls or voice notes to subscribed followers.

A LinkedIn Newsletter is a recurring, long-form article series that notifies every subscriber by push and email, bypassing the normal feed ranking.

Threads is Meta's text-based conversation app, tied to an Instagram account, that is also opening up to the wider fediverse via ActivityPub.

Bluesky is a social network built on the open AT Protocol, which separates identity, data storage and feed ranking so anyone can run their own server.

The fediverse is a network of independently run social apps, such as Mastodon, that interoperate through a shared protocol so users on different servers can follow each other.

Percentage of followers who interact with a post (likes + comments + shares + saves divided by reach or followers).

Number of unique users who saw your post at least once.

Total number of times your post was shown, including repeat views.

Percentage of people who took the desired action after seeing your content.

Click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked a link or ad out of everyone who saw it.

Cost per mille is what you pay for one thousand ad impressions.

Cost per click is the average amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad.

Return on ad spend is the revenue you earn for every dollar spent on advertising.

Follower growth rate is the percentage by which your audience grew over a set period.

Share of voice is the percentage of all conversation in your market that mentions your brand.

Video view rate is the percentage of viewers who watched your video past a defined threshold.

Save rate is the percentage of viewers who bookmarked your post to return to it later.

CPA is the average amount you spend to get one completed conversion, such as a sale, a sign-up or a qualified lead, however you define it.

Social media ROI compares the value your social media activity generates against everything it costs to run: tools, ad spend and time.

Video completion rate is the percentage of viewers who watch a video all the way to the end instead of dropping off partway through.

Watch time is the total accumulated minutes people spend watching your video content, not just how many people pressed play.

Click-through attribution only credits a conversion if someone clicked first; view-through credits one if they merely saw the ad and converted later.

Organic reach is the number of unique people who saw your post through unpaid distribution, meaning followers' feeds and algorithmic recommendations only.

The ranking system each platform uses to decide whose content appears in whose feed.

A keyword prefixed with # that groups posts on the same topic and makes them discoverable.

The consistent personality, tone, and vocabulary that distinguish your brand's communication.

A core topic or theme your brand consistently posts about.

The specific group of people you want your content to reach and resonate with.

Content created by your customers, fans, or community — not by your brand directly.

The hours when your specific audience is most active and the algorithm rewards early engagement.

An explicit instruction to the viewer for what to do next.

Social media marketing is the practice of promoting a brand, product, or service through content and paid ads on social platforms to reach and engage an audience.

Social media management is the ongoing process of planning, creating, scheduling, publishing, and analyzing content across social platforms, plus engaging with the audience.

A social media strategy is a documented plan that defines goals, target audience, platforms, content pillars, and metrics for a brand's social media presence.

Content repurposing is the practice of reshaping one piece of content into multiple formats or platform-specific versions to extend its reach and value.

Social listening is the process of monitoring social platforms for mentions of a brand, competitors, or topics to gather insights and respond.

Influencer marketing is a strategy where brands partner with creators who have trusted audiences to promote products through authentic content.

Social commerce is selling products directly within social media platforms, letting users discover and buy without leaving the app.

Evergreen content is content that stays relevant and useful long after publishing, instead of being tied to a trend or moment.

Brand awareness is how readily your target audience recognizes and recalls your brand when they think about a product category.

Social proof is the psychological effect where people copy the actions of others to guide their own behavior, especially under uncertainty.

Growth hacking is a rapid, data-driven approach to growing a user base by running many cheap experiments and scaling whatever works.

Omnichannel marketing delivers one seamless, consistent brand experience across every channel a customer uses, online and offline.

Content curation is the practice of finding, filtering, and sharing the most relevant third-party and owned content for your audience.

Community management is the ongoing work of building, engaging, and moderating a brand's audience across its social channels.

A social media funnel maps the stages a follower moves through, from first discovering your brand to becoming a paying, loyal customer.

Viral marketing is a strategy designed to make content spread rapidly through organic sharing, so each viewer recruits more viewers.

A/B testing runs two versions of the same post, caption, image or ad against each other to see which performs better before you commit to one.

A content calendar is a shared schedule that plans which post goes out on which platform and date, weeks or months ahead.

An editorial plan sets the themes, goals, and content pillars a brand covers over a quarter, before any single post gets scheduled.

A micro-influencer is a creator with roughly 10,000 to 100,000 followers, prized for higher engagement and a tightly focused niche audience.

Employee advocacy means encouraging staff to share company content and updates from their own personal social media profiles.

A hook is the first line or first 1 to 3 seconds of a post that decides whether someone keeps watching or reading, or scrolls past.

Storytelling in social media means framing a post as a narrative, with tension and a payoff, instead of a plain announcement or feature list.

Posting frequency is how often a brand publishes on a given platform, and getting it right matters more than posting as much as possible.

Cross-posting means publishing the same or adapted content across multiple social platforms at once, instead of manually posting to each one.

A social media audit is a structured review of every account's performance, consistency, and setup to find what to fix or double down on.

A shadowban is an unannounced drop in a post's or account's distribution, applied by a platform without a notice, ban message or explanation.

AI-generated content labeling means marking media that was created or meaningfully altered by AI, both visibly on the post and invisibly in its metadata.

A prompt is the instruction, question or context given to an AI model to produce a specific piece of text, image or video output.

A multi-slide post (typically 2-10 images or videos) users swipe through.

Short-form vertical videos on Instagram (9:16, up to 90 seconds).

Vertical 9:16 posts that disappear after 24 hours (Instagram, Facebook, Threads).

Short-form video is vertical video content typically under 60 seconds, built to grab attention fast and loop or autoplay in a feed.

Long-form video is video content longer than a few minutes, built for depth, watch time, and stronger trust rather than quick reach.

An infographic is a visual that combines data, icons, and short text to explain a topic or statistic at a glance.

Live streaming is broadcasting real-time video to an audience that can watch, comment, and interact as it happens.

A thread is a connected series of posts that tell one story or argument in sequence, mostly on X or Threads.

Link in bio is the single clickable URL in a social profile, often a landing page that routes followers to multiple destinations.

Meme marketing is using popular meme formats and humor to spread a brand message in a relatable, highly shareable way.

A pinned post is a post fixed to the top of a profile or feed so it stays visible above newer content.

YouTube Shorts are vertical videos up to 3 minutes long that appear in a dedicated Shorts feed, on the home page and in search.

Idea Pins were Pinterest's multi-page, story-style format for photos and video; Pinterest phased them out by 2023 in favor of standard multi-page and video Pins.

Alt text is a written description attached to an image so screen readers can voice it and platforms can index the image for search.

Aspect ratio is the proportion between an image or video's width and height, written as two numbers such as 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 16:9.

Captions and subtitles are on-screen text of a video's spoken words, added for viewers who watch on mute or in a different language.

Paid social is any social media content you pay a platform to distribute to a targeted audience, as opposed to unpaid organic reach.

Retargeting is advertising that shows ads to people who already interacted with your brand, such as site visitors or video viewers, to bring them back.

A lookalike audience is a new ad audience the platform builds by finding people who resemble an existing source list, such as your customers or followers.

A boosted post is an existing organic post you pay to show to more people, the simplest entry point into paid social.

A social media scheduler is a tool that lets you plan and queue posts in advance so they publish automatically at set times across platforms.

A social media dashboard is a single interface that unifies posting, analytics, and engagement across all your social accounts.

An AI content generator is a tool that uses generative AI to draft social media captions, images, or videos from a short prompt or brief.

Social media automation is the use of software to handle repetitive tasks like posting, replying, and reporting without manual effort each time.

Sentiment analysis automatically classifies comments, messages and mentions as positive, negative or neutral using language processing.

UTM parameters are tags added to a link's URL so analytics tools can tell exactly which post, platform or campaign sent a visitor.

An approval workflow is the review and sign-off process a draft post goes through before it publishes, especially with clients or larger teams.

C2PA Content Credentials are tamper-evident metadata attached to a media file that record how it was made, including whether AI was involved.

An AI agent is software that plans and carries out a multi-step task on its own, choosing and calling tools, instead of just answering one prompt.

A unified inbox collects comments and direct messages from every connected social account into one screen, so a team never has to switch apps.