What is the CTR of your Facebook ad? How much do you pay for PPC ads? Have you checked your KPI lately?

Wait, what?

Don’t you come across these terms in your everyday life? Do you know the meaning of all these acronyms? There is no shame if you do not. If you are a marketer, social media marketing is a part of your job. However, the acronyms used in social media sometimes may be a little overwhelming.

So, here I come with the ABCD of social media marketing terms that will help you in your marketing project.

Just a disclaimer: When I say ABCD, I really mean to discuss the terms that start with these four alphabets. There are lots of other terms that you may come across in social media. But I am highlighting only those that are related to social media marketing. You can also find that some of these terms are used in email marketing and search engine marketing as well.

So, without wasting any more time, let us dive into the glossary of terms.

• A/B Testing

When you are managing more than one social media channels, you would want to know how your posts are performing on different platforms. A/B testing is the ideal way to test the performance of the posts on different social media channels. Making a small change in the heading or the content helps you to differentiate the posts published on different platforms. Thus, you are able to identify which post is doing well on which platform.

• AddThis

It is a technology company that is expert in web tracking. The company offers social media tools that you can use to increase the number of followers on different social media channels of yours. The tools are also helpful to enhance the engagement on your website.

• Ads Manager

Do you want to run ads that you have created on Facebook? Would you like to analyze the performance of those ads? Ads Manager is a tool that is meant for you. No matter which social media channel you are using, the tool works on a variety of platforms.

• Algorithm

Algorithm is a process that is used for solving problems or in calculations. However, when it comes to social media, algorithm is used to determine which posts the viewers see first. Facebook decided a year back that it will highlight the posts that have most comments. The news feed displayed posts accordingly. On the other hand, Instagram algorithm update has changed the way photos or videos get displayed on your feed.

• Analytics

Analytics help you to understand how your social media posts are performing. You can use analytics to improve your social media strategy. Suppose you want to check which of your posts are more captivating than others. Using analytics tools will help you in the process.

• API

API is Application Programming Interface that is used by developers to create new programs. In case of social media, developers use APIs to create software applications that work with their own networks.

• Average Response Time

Average response time is the time that a brand takes to respond to the complaints of the customers on social media. According to the research published by Convince and Convert, 32% of the consumers expect that the companies would respond within half an hour and 42% expect to be responded within an hour.

• Bio

Bio is a short text that you can use on social media channels to explain who you are. While Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook use the word Bio, on LinkedIn, it is known as a summary. Check out the bios here:

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• Boosted post

When you put money on an organic post to increase its reach, it becomes a boosted post. A boosted post is different from Facebook ads. However, you can target a specific audience for a boosted post just like Facebook ads and depending on your budget the duration of the boost is decided.

• Bitly

Posting links of your blogs on your social media pages is one of the most effective social media marketing techniques. Now, sometimes you may see that the links are too big to be posted on social media pages. Bitly comes handy in this case. The website allows you to shorten the URLs and make those easy to be posted.

• Brand advocate

If you have a satisfied customer who posts a positive review of your product or service, the customer is your brand advocate. Having brand advocates on social media is an additional benefit as they can influence other customers to try out your product or services through word of mouth.

• Buyer Persona

Creating a buyer persona is an old marketing technique. However, it is equally relevant for you when you are a social media marketer. Creating a buyer persona helps you to understand what your prospects look like. However, a buyer persona is the result of intense research. When you are creating a buyer’s persona, you have to keep in mind the behaviors of your customers, their buying motivation, their purchase habits, and goals. As a marketer, you must pay attention to the demographics you are targeting while creating the buyer’s persona.

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• CAC

CAC stands for Customer Acquisition Cost. To elaborate, you can measure exactly how much have you spent to acquire each customer. You just have to calculate CAC as shown below:

• Chatbot

A chatbot is a program supported by AI and it can automate the customer interaction process on behalf of a company. Many social media websites including Facebook have implemented Chatbots.

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• Clickbait

Clickbait is a negative marketing approach where the marketers create a catchy headline to attract the readers to click on the link shared on the social media channels. Clickbaiting continuously can harm the brand value of a company and it should not be used.

• Circle

The circle is a feature available on Google+ only. You can create different circles such as Customers, Prospects, Connection, etc. Now, when you add a person to your friend list, add him/her to the related circle. Suppose you want to share a piece of content with your prospects, just click on the Circle you want to post the content and the content will reach your target audience.

• Content marketing

Content marketing is an integrated part of social media marketing. Many companies attract their prospects through content marketing. What is it? You have to create content that your prospects and your customers will find helpful. The content can be shared in the form of blogs, videos, infographic, images, white papers, newsletters, guides, etc. Instead of directly selling your service or product, create content that will add value so that you gain the trust of your customers and prospects. You can request a proposal once you have interacted enough with your prospects.

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• CTR

CTR refers to Click through Rate. CTR shows you the percentage of users who have clicked on your link. The percentage is calculated as shown below:

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• Conversion rate

When your target is to engage and attract customers through social media channels, you want to measure your success through the conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of people who take action after seeing your social media post. The action can be to make a purchase, to subscribe to your newsletter, to download your video and a lot of other things. The conversion rate is a very important benchmark to understand whether your social media ads are performing well.

• CPC

Again a social media marketing metrics is CPC or Cost per Click. It tells you the exact amount that you are spending for each of the clicks that your ad receives on an average. Low CPC denotes that you are paying low to get more traffic. On the contrary, high CPC means that you are spending high amount in comparison to average click that you receive.

• CPI

CPI or Cost per Impression refers to the number of times your ads appear on a social media website and whether your target audience interacts with the ads. CPI measures the number of times your ad has been displayed in contrary to the number of people who have seen your content.

• Crisis management

Crisis management is a term that all marketers are aware of. However, if you have been thinking that the term has nothing to do with social media, I will ask you to think again. What will happen if some of your unsatisfied or dissatisfied customers post an angry review on your social media page? Or assume that someone hacked your Twitter account! What will you do? You will need a crisis management policy to take care of situations like this.

• Cross-channel

When we are talking about social media, each of the channels is a marketing channel. Now, when you post something that is posted across all the marketing channels, you are using cross-channel marketing strategy.

• Crowdsourcing

Many a time, marketers ask their followers to share ideas. This is one of the best social media strategies to follow. On one hand, you engage your customers. They feel valued and connected to your brand. On the other hand, this is a magnificent way to come up with newly generated ideas for your product, service or content. This technique is known as crowdsourcing.

• Dark social

Sometimes you will notice that you are getting web traffic from the source that the analytics tools are not being able to track. This is known as dark social. Dark social happens because quite a number of people share links in chats. You will be amazed to know that above 80% of the outbound links are shared through personal chats.

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• DM

You have probably heard this a million times. DM is the short form of direct message. Though the term is an Instagram cult favorite, it is being used by marketers as well. Suppose you do not want to reveal the amount that you charge for your service or product. Use engaging content to mention the features of the product or service. Ask the users to DM (Yes, DM is used as a verb!) you for pricing details.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of social media marketing terms. As I mentioned before, sometimes it can be mind-boggling to learn and remember the terms. To some of you, it might feel like learning a whole new language overall. I agree that it can be annoying at times. Especially when you find some known marketing terms that mean something else when it comes to social media marketing.

However, learning the terms is worth your time. Once you know what these terms mean, you will be much more prosperous social media marketer. I tried to be as specific as possible to provide you the terms starting with the first four alphabets. I could have jotted down an article where I could have stuffed all the related terms from A-Z. However, on the one hand, there are many other websites that take the same approach. On the other hand, I wanted to provide a list of terms that are specific enough so that you can bookmark this page for your reference.

So, what do you think? Will you now start using these terms to refer to your social media marketing approach? Share with us how knowing social media marketing terms have helped you in your work. Also, let me know whether you would like an ultimate glossary of the social media marketing terms.