Doing some sort of Web 2.0, social media glossary for marketers is an idea we’ve been kicking around for sometime. With so many terms getting tossed around and created almost daily, tracking social media can be dizzying. While there are tons of glossaries out there for social media (Google it, or better yet, Bing it), we thought one dedicated to marketers would be a welcome addition.
Obviously, it would be easy to go overboard with something like this, so before we began we created some ground rules:
- Avoid defining ridiculously well known terms like “Blogs” or “Social Networks.” Forgive us if some of our choices are still a little obvious.
- Don’t define companies directly. Defining a service within a company, like “Facebook Fan Pages” for example is OK. Specific software is OK too.
- Add a “Benefit to Marketers” statement with each listing, where applicable. It’s all about you guys right?
Over the next week or two, we’ll publish the full glossary, culminating in offering it as a PDF for download, or maybe a Wiki. So with that…
A
AIR: stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime, a technology that allows people to take web code (think Flash, Flex, HTML/Javascript/CSS) and deploy it as a desktop application. Tweetdeck, a popular desktop Twitter client was built using Adobe AIR.
Benefit to Marketers: an effective way to get your content portable and out of the competition of a web browser into a dedicated application that can stay top of mind with its users.
Advergame: see “Branded Games/Entertainment” below.
Avatar: the picture or icon one uses to represent themselves online, predominantly on social networking sites.
Benefit to Marketers: think avatars, think branding. As you represent your brand(s) through social networks, your avatar is an important brand element. Think about how it appears to others. Is it legible? Is it recognizable?
Authenticity: being true to yourself (i.e. your brand) and your customers when using social media. Some of the biggest social media marketing train wrecks have occurred when marketers weren’t completely transparent and authentic.
Benefit to Marketers: isn’t it obvious?
B
Blidget: “WTF is a Blidget?” That’s exactly what we said too when we first heard the term. Quite simply a Blidget is a widget that displays your blog. Blidgets use your blog’s RSS feed to populate into a portable widget that can placed anywhere widgets live. As far as we know, the term was created and popularized by Widgetbox.
Benefit to Marketers: you’ve got a blog, why not a Blidget? Get your content portable and sharable. Services abound to create a Blidget in minutes.
Blogroll: a list of sites displayed in the sidebar of blog, generally for the purposes of advertising who the blogger reads regularly.
Benefit to Marketers: give a shout out, get a shout back.
Branded Games/Entertainment: an online game or entertaining content that is based on, or features your products or brands. With social media the potential to share games, play on social networks in multi-player environments, share images created from entertainment apps, and create status updates based on game activity abound.
Benefit to Marketers: where do we begin? There’s a massive shift in online marketing to create content to keep brands top of mind. What better way than by entertaining your audience? Some of the most fun casual games and apps have been created by brands, and with the introduction of social media, have much more potential to go viral.
C
Community Building: the process of forming an online community around a common goal, passion or interest utilizing social media’s capacity for sharing text, images, audio and video.
Benefits to Marketers: marketers who create forums for people to connect around their brand while helping facilitate—not control—the conversation will only continue to build brand followers.
Conversation: the threads of exchanges through social network posts, tweets, and blog comments are often referred to as conversations in the context of social media.
Benefits to Marketers: start one, be part of one, have them often.
Crowdsourcing: essentially tapping into a collective of like-minded people to solve a problem or generate content. Popular example: Wikipedia.
Benefit to Marketers: what a great way to inspire conversation around your brand or sponsor a promotion where people are invited to solve a problem.
D
DM: short for “Direct Message” a term used to send a private Tweet from Twitter.
Benefits to Marketers: what, you’re not using the Twitter?
Dave Albert: the president of Emerge Digital, a social media agency that writes this blog. Dave loves feeling smart by helping write glossaries.
Benefits to Marketers: have you seen some of the campaigns Dave’s devised?
Stay tuned for Part II, E-J coming soon…did we miss a term? Leave us a comment below.
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