80 SMM Terms That Every Marketer Should Know. Part 1

When promoting a brand on social networks, you may encounter a large number of terms and abbreviations, which are very easy to get lost in. In order for you to understand SMM at a glance and correctly assess the effectiveness of advertising, we have prepared a dictionary of the basic concepts of the “SMM language”. Read, understand, and increase the impact of promotion on social networks. Right now!

 

Basic terms

AIDA (A — Attention, I — Interest, D — Desire, A — Action) — a concept, which describes a standard model of a buyer’s behavior: attention, interest, desire, action.

CTA — call to action. For instance: “Subscribe to our account”.

Giveaway — a contest on Instagram, in which you need to subscribe to a large number of sponsors (10 or more). For the contest, a separate account is created to describe the conditions of participation. The winner is chosen randomly. He receives a prize (e.g. iPhone, cosmetics, gadgets) purchased by the sponsors. After the announcement of the results, most followers unsubscribe from the sponsors.

LAL (look-alike) — technology on social networks that analyses the users’ behavior and finds similarities. For example, you can download customer data, and the system will find those who perform similar actions (interested in the topic of motherhood, cars, etc.).

KPI (Key Performance Indicators) — criteria by which the success of an advertising campaign is evaluated. KPIs are determined before the advertising starts running. For example, by the end of an ad campaign, a video should have at least 150 views and 500 clicks.

SMM (Social Media Marketing) — promotion of a company, brand or product through social networks.

SFS (Shout out for shout out ) — mutual promotion on Instagram, when users advertise each other on their accounts.

UTM-link — a variable that is added to the link of the advertised page of the site and allows you to track the source of traffic.

Autofunnel (sales funnel) — the path of a customer from the first acquaintance with the product or company till the purchase. The principles of the autofunnel are formulated in the concept of AIDA (mentioned above).

Auto-posting — automatic posting on your account or on the community wall.

Brand advocate

Brand advocate — a person who uses a product or service of the company and talks about it in social networks. This may be an employee of the company or a loyal customer.

Account — a page on a social network (for example, Facebook or Instagram) with the user’s personal data, photos, videos.

Activity (interaction) — any actions of the subscribers under a post in social networks: like, repost, comment. This is one of the main SMM metrics.

Retargeting base — a list of users who have interacted with the company. For example, the base includes those who went to the profile or watched a video, as well as users who have been collected by parsing, for example, in the “Cerebro” or TargetHunter programmes.

Exchange — a platform for buying and selling advertising posts in Vkontakte communities.

Blogger — a popular user who posts content in his/her account.

Virality — a way of free content distribution through reposts.

Viral outreach — the number of unique users who viewed the repost. For example, if a group subscriber made a repost, its audience outreach would be considered viral.

Vlog — a blog with video content.

Daily limit

Daily limit — the maximum amount that can be spent on advertising per day.

Clickbait — content (title, picture) that attracts attention and motivates users to click on the link, which provides the maximum number of clicks. Implausible headlines and shocking photos are often used. Example of clickbait titles: “A child is arrested at the protest”, “The thing that Donald Trump has been hiding all these years”, etc.

Content — material that is placed on social networks, for example, a photo or a video.

Content marketing — a set of activities that help to create and place useful materials for the target audience. The task of content marketing is to involve users in interacting with the brand and encourage them to perform target actions (for example, share their contact info or make an order).

Content plan — schedule of content publication on social networks.

Like — button in the form of a heart, which indicates that the user likes the content.

Landing — a single-page website, a page for selling the product. On this page, users can order goods or leave their contact data.

Landing pages are created in special website-designers (WordPress, Bitrix24, Tilda and others).

Lead — a potential customer who shared their contact details or made a request.

Lead magnet — a gift (for example, a check-list or some articles) to a potential client in exchange for his contact information or subscription to an account/newsletter. The lead magnet is often the first step in the sales funnel and introduces the future client to the company.

Lead generation — collecting contact information of people who are interested in a product or service.

Mass liking — mass liking of Instagram users that may be interested in the product or the service of the company. To do this, companies usually use special services or put the likes manually. For example, programs such as InstaPlus, Toligram are used. Mass liking can lead to permanent or temporary blocking of your account.

Mass following — mass adding of Instagram friends that may be interested in the product or service of the company. To do this, companies usually use special services or do it manually. For example, programs such as InstaPlus, Toligram are used. Mass following can lead to permanent or temporary blocking of your account.

Media plan — a schedule of advertising campaigns, which indicates the timing, budget, advertising performance, social networks, and other characteristics.

Cheat

Cheat — artificial (with the usage of programs) increase in the number of subscribers or likes. This may result in permanent or temporary account suspension.

Organic (natural) outreach — the number of unique users who viewed the content without the use of advertising. All you need to do to get organic coverage is to make posts in your community account.

Offer — a limited-time offer of the company. For example: “Leave a request for the manufacture of furniture and get a 25% discount.”

Outreach — the number of unique users who viewed the ad. For example, if one ad was shown to one user 3 times, the outreach is 1.

Parser — a service for collecting a database of users that correspond to certain parameters, for example, friends and relatives of people who have birthdays, users who are members of several target communities at the same time, etc.

It’s vital to take into account that the data collected with the help of parsers can’t be used to create an audience for Facebook and Instagram. In these social networks, you can only upload your database collected within the company.

Pixel — a tracking code that is installed on the site. The pixel allows you to set up advertising campaigns for those who visited the site and performed certain actions. For example, the tool helps to target those who visited the “Contacts” page or added products to the cart, but did not order anything.

Paid (advertising) outreach — the number of unique users who viewed the content as a result of a paid promotion (most often targeted advertising).

Placement — the place where ads are shown on Facebook and Instagram. If we talk about Instagram, it can be a news feed or stories (the definition of “stories” is below).

Displays — the total number of times the ad was viewed. For example, one ad was viewed by two users. One user saw it 5 times, the other 2 times so the number of ad displays is
5 + 2 = 7.

Seeding — mass advertising in third-party communities

A post — text, image, video posted on a social network.

Advertising office — a place of advertising management, where advertisements are created, edited and analyzed.

Repost — republication of a post from a community or from the page of another user.

Retargeting — a tool that allows you to show ads to people who have already interacted with the site or company profile, for example, to those who visited the landing page.

Support — support service.

Target Audience Segmentation — the division of the target audience into groups, united on a certain basis (for example, by type of product, consumer or motivation to make a purchase). Advertising messages, visuals and targeting are selected for each segment of the target audience.

Split-test (a/b split-testing) — a method that determines the best advertising for the target audience. It is used in targeted advertising. Split testing creates several variants of advertising (images and text), which are shown to the target audience. For further advertising, the most effective ad is selected. In this case, the number of clicks on the ad is estimated.

Stories — a format of publications in social networks that allows you to publish content for 24 hours. In Instagram, for example, stories can be pinned to your profile. This feature is called highlights.

Stream — online broadcast in social networks.

Targeting (targeted advertising) — a method that allows you to show ads to the target audience according to specified parameters. For example, you can set up ads for parents of children under 7 years old when promoting a children’s hair salon.

Traffic — referrals of users to the site or community.

TripWire — an inexpensive product that turns a lead into a customer. It is used not for profit, but to bring the customer closer to the purchase of the main product. It is often the second step in the sales funnel. For example, for a clothing store, a tripwire can be accessories: gloves or hat.

Trolling — aggressive behaviour, provocation and insults on the Internet.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP) — a unique trade offer that distinguishes the company from competitors. For example: “production of furniture of any complexity in 3 weeks”.

Feedback — the response of the audience.

Flood — messages in the comments, the chats, which are irrelevant to the topic of conversation and are of no benefit.

Hater

Hater — a person who dislikes someone or something.

Hashtag — a clickable keyword that helps you to find posts on a topic within a single social network. Starts with a hash sign (#). For example, on Instagram you can find posts related to SMM by hashtag #SMM.

The target audience (TA) — a group of people who may be interested in buying a product or service.

Chat-bot — a virtual interlocutor, a program that is designed to simulate human behavior when communicating with people. Chatbots are usually used in technical support to process similar orders and customers advising. They respond to the same type of messages in chats (on the website, WhatsApp, Direct, etc.).