New terms are added to the social media world on a daily basis as technology evolves and we as users become more involved in the different platforms. Out of respect for time, here are the most common terms in social media.

Click through rate (CTR)– ratio that is calculated by dividing the number of people who clicked on an ad or message, compared to the number of people who saw the ad or message. Typically, this is less than 1%, however, anything above .1% is considered successful.

Engagement– interactions with others on social media. Related to this, an engagement rate, is how many people interacted with your ad or post related to how many people viewed it; similar to click through rate.

Targeting– options chosen to reach the desired audience; for example, if you want to reach moms with older children, you would not want to target females under the age of 18.

Reach– how many people actually are available when the targeting is selected. Based on the targeting chosen, there might not be enough reach or people available to run a successful campaign, and some layers of targeting might have to be made bigger or removed to generate a bigger group of people.

Like– the way that people on Facebook interact with pages and ideas on Facebook. If you have a business page, a person would “like” your page in order to receive updates and information in their feed about your business. “Like” also is a function on a photo, video, or post that shows support without writing a comment.  Like is also a function on Twitter which shows support on a photo, video, or post which can also be called a ‘favorite’.

Followers– similar to “like” on Facebook, follower is a person on Twitter that has interacted with your page, and elected to receive updates in their feed.

Feed or Newsfeed– the stream of information, personal to each user, on social media.

Shares or Retweet– similar actions; share is taking a post, photo, or video that someone else has already posted, and then re-posting it on Facebook. Similar to copy and paste. Retweet is the same action, but on the Twitter platform.

Conversions– when a user on social media completes the requested action; this can be a number of things, such as filling out an online form, purchasing a product, registering for a giveaway, etc.

Messenger or Direct Message– a private message (like an email) between two people. This is not posted to the public.

Geotarget– targeting someone based on their location.

Handle– used in Twitter as a user name. For example, the RCG account on Twitter can be found by searching for @RCGAdvertising.

Hashtag– began as a feature on Twitter, these are essentially keywords that someone can search on to see the conversation surrounding that topic. For example, a popular hashtag used was #BestMemoriesof2015; a search of this on Twitter has Tweets containing this hashtag, and individuals sharing memories. When many people use the same hashtag, it becomes a ‘trending topic’.

Organic Reach– users that are reached and view your content without being targeted; organic reach typically happens when others in their network share, comment, or otherwise interact with content, and then that interaction appears in the feed of people who would not ordinarily see it.

User Interface (UI)– the ‘bones’ of social media. This is section of the platform that you log into and set up campaigns, look at analytics, and set up billing information.

Retargeting– when a user visits your website, a small tracking pixel will ‘tag’ them with a cookie, and that allows the website to follow that user across the internet. The user will then see ads for the website they visited, often times showcasing the page or product they were browsing, in order to prompt a visit back to the site to complete an action, make a purchase, etc.

Find more essential social media terms here. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-glossary-definitions/.