Social Media Shorthand - Part 1

Confused between a follower and a pin? Still, think that a connection is something about keeping your computer plugged in? You are not alone. Social media is evolving and changing, and it’s happening fast. So we’ve put together a list of the most commonly used social words and what they mean for Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook

There are a few Facebook phrases that you are likely to come across and it’s good to know which is which, especially if you’re posting on behalf of your business.

Your Facebook profile. This is your account where you can talk to your friends and navigate around Facebook. When posting anywhere on Facebook, other than on your pages, you will be posting under that profile.

A group is where you can collectively talk to people about a certain subject or interest, for example, a study group, or ‘Gayle’s Thursday Yoga class’. People post as individuals within a group.

A page where you can ‘like’ a subject/company/product that you’re interested in and receive regular updates. Page managers can post as the page, and individuals can comment as their profiles.

Likes indicate a fondness for a post, person or topic.

A timeline is where all of your (or your pages) posts, pictures and content are shown, usually in chronological order.

Cover Photo is the big photo at the top of the page 851 x 315

Display Picture is the photo which is at the top left of your profile or page, and shows across facebook alongside your name.

Tag by writing @ and then the person, page or location immediately after e.g. @Silverdisc. This will then hyperlink and turn blue. You can tag people, places, companies and places that are listed on Facebook.

Twitter

Twitter tends to be short and sweet. The idea is to send out short snippets of information to people (a tweet), this can be read and sent it out again by others. Twitter is generally a lot more public than other social sites. Unless you set your account to private, anyone can follow you and listen to your one-liners about your breakfast.

Tweets are short messages or pictures.

Feed shows tweets that are of interest to you, usually posted by people you are following.

Follow someone to be able to see their tweets in your feed.

A follower is someone who has chosen to keep track of your posts.

A retweet is a tweet shared by someone other than the original poster.

DM is a Direct message, like an inbox, for private messages.

Bio is a short sentence about you so that people can identify who you are, or what interests you have.

This is not an exclusive list of all the terms used across Facebook and Twitter, it's just a start. If you're unsure of any of the terminology, please get in touch with us at SilverDisc and we'll happily go over it with you.

My next blog will go over some of the terms used on other social networking sites including, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.