You finally decided to take the plunge into social media marketing. You set up a few social media accounts for your business and began surfing the web for what to do next. But all of the articles you find have foreign terms and phrases that you just don’t understand. What do they mean by engaged users and conversion rates? And what the heck is an ICYMI?
Even if you’re already well-versed on terms like comments, messages, and retweets, there’s a lot more jargon in the social media marketing world. We’re here to show you they are nothing to be afraid of, especially once you know what they mean.
Below are six social media marketing terms you should be familiar with.
Page Likes/Followers
Page likes and followers are the people who like, follow, or subscribe to your page. This means that the content posted on your page (updates, pictures, and videos) has the opportunity to show up in their news feed.
It is important to note that even if a person likes or follows your page, it doesn’t guarantee they will see all of your content. In fact, recent studies indicate that only about 6% of a business’s Facebook audience will see any given piece of content. While that statistic is a little depressing on its own, it’s nothing a little ad spend can’t help! Click to learn how the Ke social team can amplify your content using social ads.
Unique Users
This particular term is incredibly helpful to know when defining other social media terms. Unique users simply means that each individual that saw or interacted with your content is only counted once, regardless of how many times they took action.
Engaged Users
Engaged users refer to the number of unique users engaging with your content. In this instance, engagement means the user reacted to, commented on, shared, clicked on, or watched your content.
Engagement is one of the most important factors when determining how well your social media strategy is performing. If the number of engaged users is significantly lower than the number of people who like or follow your page, it could be a sign that the content you’re posting isn’t resonating with your audience or your audience hasn’t been thoughtfully curated.
If you’re looking for new ways to boost engagement, we recommend investing time in creating Instagram or Facebook Stories. Learn more on our blog Using Instagram and Facebook Stories to Maximize User Engagement.
Reach
Reach is the number of unique users that have seen your content. These users may or may not have engaged with the content, but they definitely saw it. There are two different types of reach, organic and paid. Organic reach refers to the people who saw your content without paid promotion. And, as you’ve probably gathered, paid reach refers to the users reached through paid promotion.
Impressions
Similar to reach, impressions refer to the number of people who have seen your content. The one distinct difference between reach and impressions is that reach shows the number of unique users who saw your content, while impressions count every single view. This means the number of impressions is almost always higher than the reach, as it counts the same unique users for every piece of content they saw.
Conversion Rates
Conversions happen when a social media user completes the desired action on a post. These desired actions can range from page likes, click-throughs, comments, and everything in between. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of users that completed the desired action by the post impressions. So, if 50 people saw your content and 10 completed the desired action, your conversion rate would be 20%.
We hope that defining the five social media marketing terms above has helped clear up some confusion. While it isn’t a comprehensive list, it’s a great start.
If this social media marketing thing still seems a bit daunting to you, that’s okay. In case you missed it (ICYMI – so that’s what that means!), small business social media marketing is tough for most people when they first start out. Plus, a successful social media strategy often requires more time than many business owners can give.
But don’t worry, there’s always a backup plan – us! We have a whole team dedicated to providing comprehensive social media management to a variety of different businesses. Learn more about our social media services or schedule a call with us to talk through your unique social media needs.