The Social Media Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms creators, marketers and devs run into every day when scheduling posts, running campaigns and reading analytics.
AI captions
AI captions are post text drafted by a language model from a brief, image, or topic, then refined by a human and tuned to each network's length and brand voice.
Algorithm (social media)
A social media algorithm is the set of rules a network uses to rank each feed, rewarding watch time, saves, and shares while demoting bait and outbound links.
Alt text
Alt text is a short description of an image read aloud by screen readers and used by networks to classify and surface posts, written to say what is shown.
Approval workflow
An approval workflow gates a post behind one or more reviewers before it ships, using inline comments and versioning so typos never reach the live feed.
Auto-publishing
Auto-publishing is a scheduler connecting to social network APIs to publish queued posts at the time you set, so your feed stays consistent while you are away.
Benchmark
A benchmark is a reference point, your past performance or an industry average, used to judge whether a social metric is actually good, not just a number.
Best time to post
The best time to post is the window when your audience is awake and scrolling, shaped by their timezone, the network, and your niche, found in your analytics.
Brand kit
A central collection of a brand's visual and verbal assets (logos, colors, fonts, tone-of-voice rules, banned words) that keeps every post consistent.
Call to action
A call to action (CTA) is the explicit prompt telling a viewer what to do next: save, follow, comment, or click. No CTA leaves engagement on the table.
Caption
A caption is the text portion of a social media post, the words under an image, video, or link, where the hook leads and a call-to-action moves the reader.
Carousel post
A carousel is a single post of multiple slides the viewer swipes through, common on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, where extra dwell time often beats a photo.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is link clicks divided by impressions or reach, the share of viewers who clicked, tying social activity to outcomes far better than likes do.
Comment moderation
Comment moderation is reviewing, filtering, hiding, and replying to comments at scale to keep conversations safe, on-brand, and free of spam across networks.
Community management
Community management is actively engaging and nurturing an audience through replies, DMs, and comments, turning passive followers into a loyal, vocal community.
Content calendar
A content calendar is a visual planner laying out which posts hit which networks on which days, with status and owner, so a team sees the month at a glance.
Content pillar
A content pillar is one of the 3 to 5 core topics a brand publishes about, the structural columns that keep a feed consistent and make planning faster.
Content repurposing
Content repurposing is turning one piece of content into many: a blog into a carousel, a video into clips, so one idea fills a week of posts.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who took the action you wanted (click, signup, purchase) out of everyone who had the chance, your truest ROI metric.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
CPC is Cost Per Click, the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks a paid social ad, calculated as total ad spend divided by total clicks.
CPM (Cost Per Mille)
CPM is Cost Per Mille, the price an advertiser pays per 1,000 impressions of a paid social ad, the standard cost metric for awareness and reach campaigns.
Creator
A creator makes content for an audience on social platforms, often as their living, the central figure of the creator economy and its many income streams.
Creator economy
The creator economy is the ecosystem of tools, platforms, and income streams that let creators earn directly from an audience instead of one employer.
Cross-posting
Cross-posting is publishing one post to several networks at once. Good cross-posting adapts each version per network instead of blind copy-paste.
Direct Message (DM)
A direct message (DM) is a private one-to-one or group message sent inside a social network, separate from the public feed, where many brand deals happen.
Duet
A duet is a TikTok format that plays your video side by side with someone else's, the native way to react, collaborate, or build on another creator's clip.
Engagement
Engagement is the total interactions a post earns (likes, comments, shares, saves), the raw count of how many people acted instead of just scrolling past.
Engagement rate
Engagement rate is interactions divided by reach or followers, the share of an audience that liked, commented, shared, or saved, a quick proxy for quality.
Evergreen content
Evergreen content is posts that stay relevant indefinitely, so you re-queue them every 60 to 90 days and each re-share earns reach from followers who missed it.
Explore Page
The Explore Page is Instagram's discovery surface, the grid under the search tab where the algorithm shows your posts and Reels to people who don't follow you.
Feed
A feed is the main scrolling stream of posts on a social network, ordered either chronologically (newest first) or by an algorithm that ranks what you see.
Follower growth
Follower growth is the net change in your follower count over a period, gains minus losses, the velocity metric that says more about momentum than your total.
For You Page (FYP)
The For You Page (FYP) is TikTok's main algorithmic feed, the personalized stream that surfaces videos to people who don't follow you, where most reach happens.
Geotag
A geotag attaches a location to a post (a city, venue, or pinned coordinate) so it surfaces in local search, place pages, and nearby-content feeds.
Handle
A handle is the @username that uniquely identifies an account on a social network, the name people tag, search, and type into a URL to find your profile.
Hashtag
A hashtag is a keyword prefixed with # that categorizes a post and makes it discoverable in search and topic feeds, with each network favoring its own count.
Hook
A hook is the opening line or frame that stops the scroll in the first 1 to 2 seconds. Weak hook, dead post, because nobody reads what they scrolled past.
Impressions
Impressions count the total times a post was displayed, including repeat views, so a high impressions-to-reach ratio shows the algorithm reshowing it.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is when brands pay creators to promote a product to their audience, trading on the trust an influencer built instead of buying cold ads.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, the few metrics that map to a goal, the numbers a social team commits to and reports on instead of vanity metrics.
Link in bio
Link in bio is the single clickable URL in a profile's bio, the workaround for networks that block links in posts, often a page listing several destinations.
Live stream
A live stream is a real-time video broadcast on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok where viewers watch and comment live, building trust through unedited presence.
MCP server
An MCP server exposes a product's API as standardized tools, so AI clients like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor can draft, schedule, and read analytics for you.
Mention
A mention references another account with @ in a post or comment, linking to their profile and notifying them, which is how conversations and reposts spread.
Micro-influencer
A micro-influencer is a niche creator with roughly 10,000 to 100,000 followers, smaller than a celebrity but with higher engagement and more trust.
Nano-influencer
A nano-influencer is a very small creator with roughly 1,000 to 10,000 followers and a tight, trusting community, the smallest tier of influencer marketing.
OAuth
OAuth is the standard protocol behind every Connect button, letting an app post on your behalf via a revocable token instead of you ever sharing your password.
Organic reach
Organic reach is the number of unique users who saw a post without any paid promotion behind it, the truest read on whether your content earns distribution.
Paid reach
Paid reach is the number of unique users who saw a post because you put ad budget behind it, the reach you bought rather than earned for free organically.
Pin
A pin is a saved image or idea on Pinterest that links back to a source, the core unit of the platform and a long-lived driver of search traffic and clicks.
Posting queue
A posting queue is the ordered list of scheduled posts waiting to publish, sorted by time and network, so you load a week and the system handles delivery.
Reach
Reach is the number of unique users who saw a post at least once, the cleanest top-of-funnel metric for brand awareness since it counts heads, not repeat views.
Reel
A reel is a short, vertical, sound-on video on Instagram and Facebook, the format Meta pushes hardest in the feed and the fastest way to reach non-followers.
Save rate
Save rate is saves divided by reach or impressions, the share of viewers who bookmarked a post, a high-intent signal that ranks above likes for content quality.
Self-hosting
Self-hosting means running an open source app on servers you control instead of paying the maker, so every social token and analytics number stays on your box.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is reading whether mentions and comments about a brand are positive, negative, or neutral, turning raw social chatter into a mood signal.
Shadowban
A reduction in a post or account's reach that the network applies silently, without notification, often after policy violations or aggressive automation.
Social media manager
A social media manager runs a brand's social accounts: planning, writing, scheduling, publishing, and reporting, often across several brands at once.
Social media strategy
A social media strategy is the documented plan behind your posting: goals, audience, content pillars, and cadence, so every post serves a purpose.
Social set
A social set is the group of social accounts connected inside one workspace, one per network, so you write a post once and publish it everywhere at once.
Stitch
A stitch is a TikTok format that clips a few seconds of another video and cuts to your response, the native way to react, answer, or build on a clip.
Story
A story is a full-screen vertical post on Instagram and Facebook that disappears after 24 hours, built for casual, frequent updates and low-pressure engagement.
Tag
To tag is to label a post or link another account, person, or location to it, creating a connection that notifies the tagged party and aids discovery.
Target audience
A target audience is the specific group a brand wants to reach, defined by demographics, interests, and behavior, so every post is made for someone real.
Trend
A trend is a surge in a sound, format, topic, or hashtag that spreads fast across a network, giving creators a wave of distribution if they ride it in time.
User-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is posts, photos, videos, and reviews made by customers rather than the brand, the authentic, low-cost proof that sways most purchases.
Vanity metrics
Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive but drive no decision, like follower count or total likes, instead of engagement rate, clicks, or conversions.
Viral content
Viral content is a post that spreads far beyond its original audience very fast, as shares and the algorithm push it to people who don't follow the account.
Watch time
Watch time is the total time viewers spend watching your video, the metric video algorithms reward most because it proves a video actually held attention.
Workspace
An isolated space inside TryPost that holds its own social accounts, calendar, members, and brand assets, used to keep clients or product lines separated.
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