Glossary of Unnecessary 2020 Social Media Terms
Bearing in mind that half (lol as if, it’s more like 95%) our jobs at Bloomr.SG are directly associated with social media, this post is a dedicated glossary of social media terms for 2020… with some (read… a lot of) snark added onto them (especially for those that are already so old that they’re in their social media marketing teens):
Analytics - The 1984 of social media data sources (as in… the book everyone says they read but no one has really done it, and those that have, can’t really prove they have)
Authenticity - If you’d asked me a year ago how to be authentic on Social, would have told you “think of how you speak as a person” and then react accordingly. But seeing how every brand in SG (and a lot of them around the world) are starting to hire News Editors to edit their social media brand posts, think “being authentic” has a new ring to what social is nowadays.
Augmented Reality - an excuse to rotate your normally portrait mode into horizontal
Avatar - if it’s not The Last Airbender, you’re doing social wrong
Branded Content or Advertainment - because there aren’t enough “pure ads” in the world.
Brand Voice - If you’re Wendy’s and have a sense of humor, then you know what this is. For everyone else that is copying. Stop. Please.
Brandjacking - what can now be called “trend-hopping”
Clickbait - also know as: Any YouTube Video Title
Chatbots - the last step on our dark social before SKYNET takes over
Creeping - post-Tinder research
Cross Posting - unlike with the Ghostbusters, crossing the streams will guarantee not just a wider reach to your posts but, if the case, your audience will see your regular collaborators as valuable streams of engagement as well (that you can report as “gained media”)
CTR - everything the social media platform “walled gardens” are trying to avoid
Dark Social - when you tweet in the bathroom at 2am between sleeps (if you’re tweeting as a brand at 2am in Singapore then your social is VantaBlack)
Doxing - I used to play Mafia a lot a few years ago. This was also a tool the mobsters use on the daily, mostly to get “their point across”. But nowadays it’s done by users online that feel that their lives could have a little more stupidity in them…
Ephemeral Posts - what once was designated for unwanted “inappropriate selfies” is now the coup du jour of any decent brand or influencer on social.
Fake News - read, anything on a scale from Donald Trump tweet to dead celebrity announcements (of ppl that are alive and well).
FOMO - Boomer talk for when you’re not invited to a zennial event
GIF - when you’re so tired you cannot write a sentence, but not tired enough to write that sentence to look for a funny image to send a colleague.
Highlights - the thing every brand wants for free from an influencer’s IG account.
Hyperlocalized Marketing - easiest way to find a decent coffee on Google Maps
Influencer - anyone with a public account (and 2 pics posted)
KPI - a list of results you and your social media team didn’t achieve for a client, even though said client never sent you or talked to you about said list (or even put it in your contract) beforehand.
Live - can be through Twitch, FB Live, IGLive, YT Live, whathaveyou - when post authenticity doesn’t work, you always have the quickest tool to have people really see how authentic you are (also the perfect way for an audience to understand if they should follow a brand or not).
Like Baiting - 90% of my content…
LinkedIn Endorsements -a “dude, I bought you a beer last week, can you write on my Friendster recommendation?”
Lurker - bored enough to follow all the important Reddit subthreads but smart enough not to post on any of them.
Meme - a bleating goat.
Nano/Mini/Micro - probably the only sliding scale where the smaller you are, the more engaging you tend to be. And no. that’s not a sex joke.
Notifications - the first thing you switch off on a new phone.
Organic Reach - the branded loch ness monster. As in. It pops out once in a report or two.
Paid Reach - what was once for a couple of campaigns a year, is now as important as Cerelac for a growing child.
Reddit - the source of any post on FB/LinkedIn/IG Meme Accounts with more than 1k shares/likes.
Selfie - a wefie of one.
Share of Voice - you can sell its weight with as high a price as Jade Stones.
Sentiment Analysis - the only way I know my dates are going well
Snapchat - the company that lost $1.3B in valuation due to a tweet.
SPAM account - where all the fun social content is at.
Sponsored Posts - the content break between influencer posts.
Transparency - if your content isn’t as transparent as Flathead Lake, you’re gonna have a problem.
Trending Content - as hot for a brand as athleasure was in 2017.
Troll - according to the new “rules of engagement” of most social media platforms = 80% of users.
UGC/Crowdsourcing - if there’s no reason for it (as in, totally doesn't connect to a brand’s voice or MO) tool for when marketers have run out of ideas on how to advance narrative social postings
Wefie - a selfie of many.
View - if it isn’t from your eyes, can mean anything from 3secs to 15h on social media.
Viral Rate - Insert Inappropriate CoronaVirus joke here (probably stolen by a meme site, that stole it from a meme IG account, that stole it from another country’s reddit/4chan thread).
Do you have any social media terms you’d like me or our Bloomr.SG team to clarify for 2020? If so, comment below!
