Social Media Marketing: 10 Terms to Know

Social media marketing is a fast growing marketing technique where businesses promote their product or brand through websites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. It’s one of the best ways to get news on our company to the people that want to hear it most. Before you dive into social media marketing, here are 10 terms you have to know.

1. ROI: One of the biggest talked about subjects when it comes to social media marketing is the return on investment. This term is used to represent the return you’ll see on an investment of time or cost. This formula is expressed as a percentage and is used to make financial decisions or the compare a company’s profitability. 
2. Hashtag: A hashtag (#) is used on websites like Twitter and Instagram to categorize posts. These hashtags are used to promote a particular conversation or direct your post toward a specific audience. Most companies have a hashtag dedicated to their content, such as its name. When someone searches the hashtag, they’re able to find every post regarding the business.
3. Infographic: An infographic is a visual image that represents data. The graphic can either be one statistic or various data about a subject. It is used to simplify a complicated issue, or even to draw attention to something that may be difficult to understand.
4. Follower: Followers are on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. They are people who have subscribed to your account so they will see your posts when you make them. In most circumstances, if you want to send them a message, you’ll need to follow them in return.
5. Handle: A handle is another term for your account name. For example, Starbuck’s handle on Twitter is “@Starbucks.” Maintaining consistent handles on each of your social media websites is the best way to represent your business on various sites. You’ll want to use a similar handle on Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
6. Like-baiting: Like-baiting is the practice of specifically requesting likes or shares to increase engagement on Facebook. To decrease the amount of like-bait posts, Facebook has adjusted its algorithm to reduce the appearance of these posts in news feeds. It’s best to avoid like-baiting.
7. Organic Reach: This is the number of unique people who view your content without paid promotion. Organic reach is entirely free. People come across this content through feeds, streams, posts, or shares from their contacts. 
8. Bitly: Bitly is a website that allows you to shorten a link, so it takes up fewer characters. Bitly is the main link shortening site used on Twitter, which lets users get the most of their 140 characters. Other link shortening websites include ow.ly and tinyURL.
9. Permalink: A permalink is the URL address of a piece of content that is permanent. These links allow you to view specific Tweets, updates, or blog posts without searching through your feed or timeline to find it. You can find permalinks by clicking post timestamps. 
10. Retweet: Retweet, or RT, is a Tweet that has been re-shared to followers from another user account. There are two kinds of Retweets: Classic and now-standard. The classic Retweet is when you type “RT” before the user’s handle. The now-standard happens when you click the “Retweet” button, which allows the full post to appear in your timeline.