Whether we like it or not social media is playing an ever-increasing role in our personal and business lives. Things are constantly changing and new words seem to be appearing every day. Is your social media experience drowning in this digital jargon and strange acronyms?
We feel that it is important to know the basics and then expand on this to become a guru. So breathe a sigh of relief as we have put together 20 terms that you need to know which will give you a kick-start in making sense of everything social on the World Wide Web.
Here they are in no particular order:
1. Tweeps: Twitter + People = Tweople.
2. Tag: Indicates or labels what content is about.
3. Blog: A site updated frequently by an individual or group to record opinions or information.
4. E-Book: A book in digital form often available to download from websites.
5. Trending: A word, topic or phrase that is popular on Twitter at a given moment in time.
6. Viral: When media such as YouTube videos are rapidly shared and passed across social networks.
7. Engage: Communicating to other social media users.
8. Chat: Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet but traditionally refers to one to one or group communication through a text based chat app commonly referred to as instant messaging on social media.
9. Traffic: is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site and can be determined by the number of site visitors and the number of page visits.
10. Like: An action within Facebook where the user can click a ‘Like’ button to show approval of a status or message instead of actually writing a message or comment.
11. Hashtag: A hashtag can be used on Twitter as a way to annotate a message or update making it directly searchable and in large cases become a trend. The hashtag will precede a word such as #unit36.
12. Follow: This is the action of following a person or company on Twitter and Instagram. Once you follow someone you can see their updates and if they follow you back you can then direct message one another.
13. Friends: These are people you have connected with on Facebook who you consider friendly enough to view your profile and engage with.
14. Favourite: This is a similar action as ‘Like’ on Facebook however on Twitter its called favourite and is represented by a little gold star.
15. Comment: This is the action on Facebook which allows a user to write a comment on an update, conversation, event or photo for example which in many instances starts a conversation.
16. B2B: Business to Business.
17. B2C: Business to Consumer.
18. Lol: A short hand for ‘Laugh out loud’ and is used widely across social media when a user finds something amusing.
19. Pinterest: Is a pin board styled website with which users can create themed image collections such as events, interests and hobbies which can be viewd and shred by other users.
20. Retweet: Is when a Twitter uses re-shares your tweet to his or hers followers.
These are obviously just a select few that we feel are important to understand in the world of social media on the web. There will be new ones being created as we speak. Embrace them and use them and they will very soon be part of your digital vocabulary. They will help you make the most of social media, whether it be your personal account or business account.
Are there any social media terms or words that you find difficult to understand that we have missed out? Tweet us @unit36 with our suggestions and we’ll add them to our list to help future viewers of this blog gain that vital knowledge of social media.
