Social media continues to grow and change, and businesses are leveraging it in their marketing strategies.
To keep up with today’s consumers, knowing the latest social media trends is essential. According to Statista, almost half of the world’s population uses some form of social media. Because of this, businesses are turning to social media to network with consumers and market their services to them.
Here are some social media terms and buzzwords to help businesses understand the services and tools available to meet consumer needs.
1. Algorithm
Algorithms use rules to determine how data is displayed and used. In social media, these algorithms determine the content of users’ feeds by ranking search results.
These algorithms prioritize content based on what they think users want to see, based on factors such as their views, likes, and follows. The main purpose of the algorithm is to improve the user experience by removing irrelevant content.
2. Campaign
A social media campaign is a type of marketing effort to reach potential or current customers across multiple social media platforms. Common goals for social media campaigns include:
- Gather user feedback.
- Increased web traffic.
- Building an email list.
- Increase sales.
- Improving brand engagement.
learn Social media marketing tips to promote your business.
3. Clickbait
Clickbait refers to manipulative or misleading content that encourages users to click. These items can be articles, headlines, images, or videos. Headers are often exaggerated, such as “You won’t believe it” or “This guy gets the best results by doing one simple thing.”
4. Creator economy
The creator economy is a type of job market where people use their skills and creativity to build personal brands. This type of economy relies on social media to drive customers to the creator’s personal website or app.
Because creators are the founders of brands, these entrepreneurs have full control over how they run their businesses, rather than a corporate-backed gig economy.
Examples of creator jobs include:
- artist.
- Blogger.
- Course creator.
- fitness coach.
- Life coach.
- musician.
- Video blogger or YouTuber.
Creators earn income through subscriptions, products, product listings, fan clubs, advertisements, and donations.
5. Community management
Community management is how companies build authentic communities through interactions with customers, employees, and partners. The company leverages the opportunity to interact with its audience to grow, connect and share experiences to achieve a positive image and engagement. Examples of community interaction include responding to online comments, creating polls and surveys, and participating in local events.
6. Remove influence
De-influence is a social media trend where influencers tell people not to buy their products. Influencers use this trend to build relationships with their followers by telling them to be honest and save money. Impact removal is also used to prevent overconsumption and limit waste.
7. Influencer
Influencers entice consumers to buy a product or service by endorsing or promoting it on social media. Influencers usually have specialized knowledge or expertise in a certain subject. People follow these influencers for their opinions as well as product reviews and various tips and tricks.
Influencers build personal brands to gain followers. Popular influencers can also include experts in their fields and celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Kylie Jenner, and BeyoncƩ. Other famous influencers include Khaby Lame, Huda Kattan, Lauren Conrad, Cole Sprouse, Salt Bae, and more.
Influencers are divided into different categories based on the number of followers they have. Here’s a breakdown of his four types of influencers:
- Micro-influencers: 5,000 to 100,000 followers.
- Mid-sized influencers: 100,000 to 500,000 followers.
- Macro influencers: 500,000 to 1 million followers.
- Mega influencer: 1 million or more followers.
8. Memes
Memes are popular texts, videos, or images shared on social media platforms. These are typically used for comical purposes and allow users to create and share their own variations.
Businesses are also using modern memes to attract and connect with younger audiences. An example of a popular customized meme is a woman screaming at a cat or a cross-dressing ET with the words, “When you’re trying to look good and you haven’t slept in five years.”
9. Managing content
Content moderation controls the content on platforms and networking sites. Social media moderation removes content that is not suitable for your typical audience. This includes images, photos, videos, text, and other items that are offensive, explicit, or objectionable. Once something is posted, a team of content moderators from the site and individual companies review and remove the content.
learn about Content moderation guidelines for businesses to consider.
10. Organic content
Organic content is shared on social media for free. Organic content includes images, posts, videos, stories, and more. People who follow your site or profile can see these images along with the hashtags used in your posts. Followers of the person sharing the post can also see the organic content.
11. Paid or Sponsored Content
Paid or sponsored content is the opposite of organic, where someone pays you to promote your brand or product to social media users. These posts will be marked as promoted or given a hashtag such as #ad or #sp.
12. Shadowban
Shadowbanning restricts a user’s content without their knowledge by not showing their content in other people’s feeds. Users don’t know that other users can’t see their content. Shadowbanning occurs when a user violates a social media platform’s community guidelines or posts content that is deemed offensive or inappropriate. Most social media platforms have some form of shadowbanning, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube.
13. Short video
Videos shorter than 60 seconds are considered short-form videos, and the ideal length would be between 30 and 60 seconds. TikTok is the most popular short-form video platform, but Instagram and YouTube also have short-form video options.
14. Social listening
Social listening includes monitoring digital spaces such as social media, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Marketers use social listening to understand what people are saying about their brands, products, employees, and industries. To assist with social listening, there are social media mining tools that search for specified keywords. Companies can identify conversations and determine whether they need to change their product or brand strategy or treatment.
15. Social Selling
Social selling uses a company’s social media sites to connect with potential consumers. Social selling can be thought of as a modern-day relationship-building tactic for connecting and engaging with potential customers on social media.
Nordstrom was one of the first companies to take advantage of social selling by showcasing their favorite products on Pinterest, curating outfits, and offering shoppable Pins for users to shop directly within Pinterest. That’s one. He also highlighted these products by displaying his Pinterest logo on displays inside the store.
16. Thought Leader
Thought leaders provide authentic content with insight, expertise, and advice from individuals. Thought leaders share their expertise and provide guidance and innovation to influence others based on their views and experiences. Thought leaders are considered subject matter experts and have strong opinions about a topic.
17. Trending or Viral
Trending topics are things that users are interested in during a specific time period. Topics may have hashtags that allow you to see what others are saying about the issue. engage with them. Search for that term on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
If a topic becomes popular, it can spread quickly. In other words, it attracts a lot of unexpected attention. Going viral starts with sharing a post and keeps it going viral.
18. Troll
A troll is a social media user who attempts to provoke or annoy others. They may post offensive content or write harassing remarks on social media posts, discussion forums, and comment sections on dating apps.
19. User Generated Content
User-generated content comes from social media users who are not affiliated with your brand or business and do not receive any benefit or compensation from sharing or posting this information. This content can take many forms, including comments on social media websites, photos, blog posts, survey responses, videos, and discussions in forum posts. User-generated content can be promoted through contests using branded hashtags or used as a tool to build brand loyalty.
20. Video blogger
Vlogger is a term that combines video and blogging. People who create these videos are known as video bloggers. Vloggers create and publish videos as blogs to explain their ideas or demonstrate products or activities.