Social media is a fun place to be in the 21st century. With its growth over the years from sites like Orkut and Club Penguin to Instagram and Snapchat, and with the help of a simple smart phone device, social media takes over a significant portion of our daily lives.
Liking, Subscribing, Retweeting, our existence often revolves around social media. In 2022, the social media usage of an average user is 147 minutes per day. In countries like the Philippines, the average usage even goes up to 3 hours and 53 minutes!
Today, we know a lot more about the world because of so much easy access via social media. But do all of us know everything about social media despite spending so much time on it? Technical social media jargon can seem like a whole different language! Here are 10 social media terms you absolutely can’t miss if you want to be the expert:
1. Bio
“First Cry on…” or “Proud Indian”, your bio says a lot about you. It is basically a concise description of things you want people to see about you in your profile. This is simply called a bio on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, while on LinkedIn it’s called a summary.
The bio space is also the best place to share links to your blog, website or alternate accounts. People do not need to follow you to see your bio, it is visible to anyone on the platform. This makes it a great space to subtly build a personal brand and advertise yourself a bit.
There is absolutely no permanence in bios. You can change it however often as you want to, which makes it easy for you to experiment with humorous and witty ones that stand out from other bios.
2. Dark Post
Ever saw a social media post as an ad but can’t find the post on the profile’s timeline? That’s a dark post. It doesn’t appear on the advertiser’s timeline. These are specifically targeted ads that show up in the feeds of users who like similar content.
“Dark post” makes it sound like something scary out of the dark web, but no. On Facebook, these are officially called “unpublished page posts”, on Twitter they’re called “promoted-only tweets”, on LinkedIn they’re called “direct sponsored content”, while on Instagram, all ads are dark posts by default.
3. Disappearing Content
It’s also called ephemeral content, but don’t let that scare you! These are basically social media content that disappear after a set period of time. On Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, these are called “Stories”.
This is a typical marketing strategy that works by inducing a ‘Fear of Missing Out’, popularly called FOMO. Pressured by the need to check out their friends’ content that will disappear after a while, it works pretty well.
Nobody likes coming back to an update saying they were mentioned on an Instagram Story but can’t see it anymore because they are too late!
4. Handle
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A handle is not your regular door or jug handle on social media. It is the user’s account name on the social media platform. This is a unique username that users can choose when they hop on to the platform for the first time. Most websites allow you to search for a handle by the symbol ‘@’ in front of their account name.
Handles can be fun, quirky ways of expressing your personality too. Pop star Rihanna uses the handle @badgalriri while Ritviz chose to go by @vizdumb. Singer Ed Sheeran uses his nickname Teddy in his handle @teddysphotos.
Handles can also be changed whenever you want but this makes it difficult to people to search for you, which is why celebrities and influencers don’t change their social media handles that often.
5. Hashtag
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Ever wished you had a storehouse of your favourite content on your social media? That’s what people use hashtags for! Want to know the latest updates in Football? Head over to the search button and look for #football. You’ve had a horrible day and want to look at dog photos to cheer you up. #dogslove #dogphotography #cutedogs is your safe place.
Even hashtags lose popularity over time. So if you are a social media influencer, you’ll need to stay updated on all the latest hashtags and say goodbye to the outdated ones. But wait, what’s an influencer?
6. Influencer
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A social media influencer is someone who has an enormous following on one or multiple social media platforms. They usually have a distinct niche or area based on which they always post content. But the most important part is their ability to “influence” their followers’ purchasing decisions because of their superior legitimacy and authority on the platform.
Nowadays, the variety in influencers is astounding. You have fashion experts, doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, travellers, historians – people from varying fields of life posting about their area of expertise and maintaining an audience interested in the content. Who said you need to give up your 9 to 5 job to become a proper influencer? Accounts like @yourinstalawyer @dr_cuterus @dr.remix post such a variety of interesting content in their field of work, it’s worth checking them out on Instagram.
On Twitter, the collective term for such users is ‘Twitterati’. When someone belonging to the Twitterati tweets a certain hashtag or talk about a certain issue, expect it to go trending within hours or even minutes. In short, influencers hold a lot of power because of their ability to influence the decisions of their followers. It’s not surprising when they rise in status to celebrities after a while!
7. Meme
You can barely go through your social media feed without coming across a meme. It is a concept, joke or catchphrase that is shared online for humorous purposes. Most memes usually take the format of an image, but they can also be videos, GIFS or just text.
The catch in understanding memes is that one needs to be well-informed about internet trends. Live under a rock for a month and you won’t recognise the references in memes when you get back to social media posts.
Moments from famous TV Shows, Reality shows and viral videos often end up as memes. Surprised Pikachu, Doge, Disaster Girl, Leonardo DiCaprio Cheers are examples of some of the most classic memes of all time.
The brand value of some of these is unpredictable. The little girl featured in ‘Disaster Girl’ and the YouTuber in ‘Obsessed Girlfriend’ went on to make NFTs out of their meme templates and cashed in on the huge sums they got from selling them.
8. Reach
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When you’re a regular social media user, statistics such as the number of likes, shares and comments that your post received matters for you. But when you’re a firm running an ad campaign, or an influencer whose pay check depends on these statistics, your Reach is of utmost importance to you.
One user looking at your post multiple times is still not a win, because the bigger the number of users who viewed your content, the better your reach. Unique visitors give an idea about how large the audience is, giving a number of the potential customer base. This is important for businesses and brands that have a significant portion of their marketing done on social media.
9. Shareable Content
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You wouldn’t share everything you come across social media, would you? Unless it had something to do with you, you would not be sharing a friend’s personal post. Be it, Facebook, Instagram or even WhatsApp, when you relate to a public post on a personal level, you re-share it – either as stories or as direct messages on any of those platforms.
It is this kind of content that works best with social media strategies. Strong emotions like laughter, tears, or motivation are the aim of such content. Obviously this increases reach and benefits the brand.
Think about all those relatable ads that Zomato posts often? Sharing it as a screenshot is still a win for the brand since the brand logo follows the post everywhere.
10. Viral
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A touchy word ever since the Corona Virus, but the pandemic has made it easier to understand the concept. Any content that spreads to an exponential rate such that it snowballs and acquires huge popularity is called a viral post.
Remember when something as absurd as everyone writing “Binod” in comments became in vogue? During the 2020 lockdown, when everyone hopped on to baking cake as a new fad, ‘Everything is Cake’ became a viral trend. This showed videos of everyday objects like furniture, fruits and vegetables getting cut to be revealed as cake underneath.
This shows that literally anything can go viral. The possibility that even advertisements can go viral, makes brands experiment with wild ideas. Everyone is reminded of the ‘Flex Tape’ ad by Flex Seal™ that went viral after a YouTuber uploaded a video about the ad. From 2017-18, the video garnered 1.3 million views, which was insane for a YouTube channel ad with only a few hundred thousand followers!
Social Media Terms – Don’t Let Them Scare You Anymore
This quick and easy guide to important social media terms is enough to keep you in touch with any discussion on social media. It’s easy to get lost in the large multitude of words that keep popping up with new updates.
The whole purpose of these sites is to be user-friendly, so it’s easy to know your way around social media without knowing what each feature is called. These terms may appear difficult at first, but we pick up on everything fast enough that this will be a cake-walk!
