Social media glossary: the terms you meet, explained in plain English
Know what reach, ROAS and retargeting mean before you pay for them.
In this topic: Marketing 12
Reach, ROAS, retargeting: the words that decide where your budget goes
About seventy social media terms for business owners, grouped by theme and explained in plain English, with the rules that come with them.
Social media glossary: why the words matter
Agencies, dashboards and platform help pages speak a language of their own. Confuse reach with impressions, or a boosted post with a campaign, and you misread a report or pay for something you did not need. This social media glossary explains the terms you meet most, grouped by theme. Platform features change quickly, so the definitions describe principles; each platform's help centre has the current details.
Platforms and accounts
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Personal profile | An account for a person. On Facebook you need one to create and manage a business page. |
| Business page | An organisation's public presence on Facebook or LinkedIn, with followers, statistics and advertising. |
| Professional or business account | An account type on Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest that adds statistics, contact buttons and ads. |
| Creator account | A professional account for individuals who publish content and may earn from it. |
| Brand account | A YouTube channel that can have several owners and managers, under a name other than your own (YouTube Help). |
| Business portfolio | Meta's place for managing pages, Instagram accounts, ad accounts and people together. |
| Task access | Permission for specific tasks on a page, such as posting, messaging, advertising or viewing statistics, instead of full control (Meta for Developers). |
| Verification badge | A mark showing that the platform has confirmed an account's identity; on some platforms it comes with a paid subscription. |
| Messaging business account | A business profile in an app such as WhatsApp, for answering customers rather than reaching new ones. |
Content and formats
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Post | A single item in the feed: text, image, video or link. |
| Story | A short vertical photo or video that disappears after a set time, usually a day. |
| Reel or short | Short vertical video, often shown to people who do not follow you yet. |
| Carousel | A post with several images or slides that people swipe through. |
| Livestream | Live video with comments in real time. |
| Caption | The text that goes with a post. |
| Hook | The first line or seconds, which decide whether people stop scrolling. |
| Hashtag | A word with # that groups posts on a topic; a few specific ones work better than a long list. |
| Mention or tag | Linking another account in a post, which notifies it. |
| Alt text | A written description of an image for people who use screen readers. |
| User-generated content (UGC) | Photos, videos or reviews made by customers; ask permission before you repost them. |
| Creator and influencer | People who build an audience with their content; influencers work with brands to reach it. |
| Evergreen content | Content that stays useful for a long time, such as a how-to video. |
| Algorithm | The system that decides which posts each user sees, based on predicted interest. |
| Organic reach | People who see your content without you paying. |
Reach and measurement
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Reach | The number of different people who saw your content at least once. |
| Impressions or views | How often content was shown, repeats included. Platforms define views differently, so compare like with like. |
| Frequency | Impressions divided by reach: how often the average person saw it. |
| Engagement | Interactions: reactions, comments, shares, saves and clicks. |
| Engagement rate | Engagement divided by reach or by impressions; check which base your tool uses. |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | Clicks divided by impressions. |
| Conversion | The action you want: an enquiry, booking, sign-up or purchase. |
| Conversion rate | Conversions divided by clicks or visitors. |
| Watch time and retention | How long people watch a video and where they drop off. |
| UTM parameters | Labels added to a link (source, medium, campaign) so your analytics shows where visitors came from. |
| Attribution | Deciding which channel gets credit for a sale when the buyer saw several. |
| Vanity metric | A number that looks good but does not track business results, such as follower count alone. |
| Social listening | Monitoring what people say about you, your competitors or your topic, including posts that do not tag you. |
| Insights | The platform's own statistics for your page or account. |
Advertising
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Boosting | Paying to show an existing post to more people, with fewer settings than a full campaign. |
| Ads manager | The platform's tool for building, targeting and measuring campaigns. |
| Campaign, ad set and ad | The usual structure: the campaign holds the objective, the ad set budget and targeting, the ad the creative. |
| Objective | What the platform optimises for, such as reach, traffic, messages, leads or sales. |
| Targeting | Choosing who sees an ad by location, age, interests, job or behaviour. |
| Custom audience | An audience built from your own data, such as site visitors or a customer list; you need a legal basis to use it. |
| Lookalike audience | People the platform finds who resemble a source audience. |
| Retargeting | Showing ads to people who visited your site or interacted with your content. |
| CPM | Cost per thousand impressions. |
| CPC | Cost per click. |
| Cost per result | Ad spend divided by results such as leads or purchases, also called CPA. |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend: revenue from ads divided by ad spend. Revenue, not profit. |
| Pixel | Code on your website that tracks visitor activity, used to measure ads and build audiences (Meta Pixel documentation). |
| Conversions API | A server connection that sends events from your own systems to the platform, handled like pixel events. |
| A/B test | Running two versions that differ in one element to see which works better. |
| Ad library | A public archive of ads. In the EU, very large online platforms must keep an ad repository with the ad's content, advertiser and targeting information (source: EUR-Lex, October 2022). |
Example: one boosted post, worked out
Lanternwick Candles pays €80 to boost an autumn candle post for a week. The platform reports the first figures; the rest you calculate.
| Metric | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Reach and impressions | Reported by the platform | 4,000 people, 5,000 impressions |
| Frequency | 5,000 / 4,000 | 1.25 |
| Engagement rate | 200 interactions / 4,000 reach | 5.0% |
| CTR | 100 clicks / 5,000 impressions | 2.0% |
| CPC | €80 / 100 clicks | €0.80 |
| CPM | €80 / 5,000 impressions, per thousand | €16 |
| Conversion rate | 10 orders / 100 clicks | 10% |
| ROAS | €600 revenue / €80 ad spend | 7.5 |
Fictitious Firmfocus example. At a 50% gross margin the €600 revenue leaves €300, so the boost earned €220 after its cost. The logic works in any currency.
Rules and compliance
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ad disclosure | Labelling paid or rewarded content as advertising, clearly and in the post itself. The FTC accepts "ad", "advertisement" and "sponsored" and warns that a platform's tool may not be enough (source: US Federal Trade Commission, December 2024); the UK CMA advises against "#spon" and "#sponsored" (source: Competition and Markets Authority, September 2025). |
| Material connection | Any tie that could affect how people judge an endorsement: payment, free products, a job or family. |
| Fake followers and reviews | The US bans buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence, such as bot followers or views, and fake reviews (source: US Federal Trade Commission, August 2024). |
| Cookie consent | In the EU, storing or reading information on a visitor's device, such as an ad pixel's cookie, needs consent unless strictly necessary (source: EUR-Lex, December 2009). |
| Joint controller | The EU Court of Justice held that the administrator of a fan page on a social network is a controller of visitors' data, jointly with the platform (source: Court of Justice of the EU, June 2018). |
| Digital Services Act (DSA) | EU law that requires platforms to mark ads and show on whose behalf they appear and why, and bars ads based on profiling of minors (source: EUR-Lex, October 2022). |
| AI label | Under the EU AI Act, deployers who publish AI-generated or manipulated images, audio or video amounting to a deepfake must disclose it (source: European Commission, October 2026). |
| GDPR | EU data protection law; it covers customer lists, messages and audiences you upload. |
| Advertising code | Self-regulatory rules from advertising standards bodies that apply alongside the law. |
Ways of working
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Content calendar | A schedule of what goes out, where and when. |
| Content pillars | Three to five recurring themes that structure your posts. |
| Tone of voice | How your brand sounds: formal or casual, technical or plain. |
| Community management | Replying to comments and messages and keeping conversations going. |
| Webcare | Handling questions and complaints in public, quickly and politely, then moving details to a private channel. |
| Social selling | Building relationships with prospects through social media, mostly from personal profiles. |
| Employee advocacy | Staff sharing company content in their own networks. |
| Social media policy | Internal rules on who posts, what staff may say and how incidents are handled. |
Which channels suit your business?
Selling to businesses
Start on LinkedIn, from the owner's own profile, and add YouTube if you explain or demonstrate. Measure conversations and meetings.
Selling to consumers
Start where your customers are: Facebook for local communities and events, Instagram or TikTok for visual products. Measure visits, bookings and sales.
The full channel choice and a ten-step approach are in social media for business; setting up a page is covered in Facebook business page, and the link with search and email in digital marketing. Commission-based partnerships have their own page: affiliate marketing. All are part of marketing.
What is the difference between reach and impressions?
Reach counts the different people who saw your content; impressions count every time it was shown, repeats included. Impressions are therefore never lower than reach, and impressions divided by reach gives the frequency.
Do influencers I work with have to use #ad?
They must label the post as advertising, clearly and in the post itself. The US FTC accepts words such as ad, advertisement or sponsored; the UK CMA prefers ad or advert and advises against sponsored. A platform's paid partnership tool alone may not be enough.
Do I need consent for a tracking pixel on my website?
In the EU, in most cases yes: storing or reading information on a visitor's device needs consent unless it is strictly necessary for a service the visitor asked for. The UK also requires consent for advertising cookies. Elsewhere, check national privacy law.
Do I have to label images I made with AI?
Under the EU AI Act, AI-generated or manipulated images, audio or video that amount to a deepfake must be disclosed, with a lighter duty for evidently artistic or satirical work. Platforms may have their own labelling rules too, so check their help pages.
Sources
- US Federal Trade Commission: Disclosure guide for social media influencers (December 2024)
- US Federal Trade Commission: Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (August 2024)
- Competition and Markets Authority: Social media endorsements, being transparent with your followers (September 2025)
- EUR-Lex: Directive on privacy and electronic communications, consolidated text (December 2009)
- Court of Justice of the EU: Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein, fan page judgment (June 2018)
- EUR-Lex: Digital Services Act (October 2022)
- European Commission, AI Act Service Desk: Article on transparency obligations (October 2026)
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