The ultimate social media and influencer marketing glossary: 146 terms you need to know
Ever felt like the influencer marketing industry has its own language? If so, this is the post for you.
If you’re just starting out in social media and influencer marketing, I understand if you’re a bit lost. You might be feeling like your marketing degree should have included a module called Marketese 101. When I first started out, I kept a Word doc with definitions for the terms my more experienced colleagues used so naturally.
And let’s face it: even for influencer marketing veterans, it can be challenging to keep up with all the new terms, trends, and lingo that’s forced to evolve at the fast pace dictated by the nature of social media.
That’s why I created this ultimate social media and influencer marketing glossary. It contains 146 definitions you need to know.
So keep reading, and get ready for a lot of acronyms.
How this works
I’ve divided the post into sections so you can jump to the ones that interest you most:
Each term includes a definition and an example sentence.
General marketing terms
This section contains terms you could hear in the general marketing industry.
A/B testing
A type of experiment that compares the success of two variations: version A and version B. Also called split testing. It’s commonly used in email marketing and on website landing pages to teach marketing teams how to better communicate with their target audience.
Let’s A/B test the subject lines on this email to see which gets a better open rate.
Affiliate marketing
A marketing model where you compensate third parties—or affiliates—for each lead, sales, or other defined conversion that they acquire for you. This compensation is usually commission-based and gets paid out at the end of the month. To do affiliate marketing you need to use affiliate links.
We’ve made $5,000 in sales from affiliate marketing this quarter.
Source: What is affiliate marketing? by Shopify.
B2B (business-to-business)
A business whose main customers are other businesses. Some examples of B2B products are Google Analytics, Slack, Hubspot, and Hootsuite.
The B2B customer journey often involves more stakeholders than its B2C counterpart.