SOCIAL MEDIA FOR EXTREME BEGINNERS SHORT DICTIONARY OF SOCIAL MEDIA TERMS Michael Derrick www.thepartnergroup.com Copyright © 2013 by Michael Derrick Smashwords Edition This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. A Brief Social Media Dictionary for the Extreme Beginner This just includes a few key words and is not meant to be exhaustive by any means. A Avatar - an avatar is usually an image that represents a person – yes, just like the movie but it represents a person online. B Bitly – when you tweet you can only use 140 characters so this free service will shorten your website addresses. www.bitly.com Blog is a word created from the two words: “web log.” It’s like an online diary and the entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. C Circles are a word you’ll hear from Google+. It just means a group of people you can choose to connect with or just show certain stuff to. Computer – it is likely the machine you are reading this on. Content – this is what you post publicly online – pictures, videos, text, contests, polls, etc. Content is king. Actually, content is the whole kingdom. If you write content, it needs to be so good it makes people click - for example, click like or share or comment. Because then they are engaging with you and that's what you want. D Digg is a social news website where members send in and vote for articles. The ones with the most votes get to be on the homepage so they are seen by more people. E E-book. You are reading an e-book. It’s just a book that is the online rather than printed on paper. Edgerank - this is a secret formula that Facebook uses to decide whether what you post shows up in someone's newfeed. Basically, if someone doesn't continue to be engaged with your company by posting, clicking, liking, yada, yada, then Edgerank will push your stuff out of their stream. That way when they log in Facebook is just showing them stuff they think is cool. F Facebook is a social website where people connect with each other. People can share information about themselves and read about what others post. Facebook is the biggest with more than a gajjilion bazzilion users worldwide. Be warned that Facebook changes all the time and doesn't tell you. Findability - This is what SEO really means. SEO is search engine optimization but it just means how findable you are. This is about showing up on the front page of search engines so people can find you when they are looking for whatever it is that your organization does. Foursquare is a website where people check-in to share their locations and get deals. You can earn badges and even be the mayor of places. G Google - a search engine. Also check out google analytics and google docs. You have to be a good googler today to find stuff. And, you want your organization to show up on the first page of the search engine results page. Other search engines are Chrome (from google), bing from microsoft, yahoo, firefox, and on and on Google+ is the new kid on the block. It is Google's version of Facebook. I created an account like millions of others and have never been back. Google Reader (and yes we could do a whole section on Google) is a place where you can basically create your own magazine. You tell it what you are interested in and it will compile that information from the web and sent it to you. Google just announced that Google reader is going away mid 2013. H Hangout – this is a Google+ word. It’s pretty cool – it means you can video chat with up to 10 Google+ users are a time. It’s kind of like Skype on drugs. Very cool. Hashtag – this is a Twitter word - A hashtag is a word or phrase with a “#” in front of it like this: #yellowdogs. It’s a way of following conversations about the same topic. For instance #crayon would be tweets that someone put that hashtag in to make sure it showed up in the #crayon hashtag feed. So, if you want your tweet to appear in a newsfeed about a topic, just add that hashtag. Try it - it isn't that difficult once you get used to it. HTML code – this is a basic universal code used to write web pages. Facebook used their own language for awhile called FBML (Facebook Markup Language) but now even Facebook lets developers use HTML. I Inbound Marketing – this is the opposite of the old way of marketing which was outbound. Think of outbound marketing as unwelcome contacts from a company like direct mail, sales calls, etc. whereas inbound marketing is content like blogs and social media that gets found by people and then they visit you because they are interested in you. K Klout is pretty cool – it is a website that gives you a score from 1 to 100 about how influential you are. Try it out. www.klout.com L Like – Facebook changed the meaning of this word and now “Like” is an action you take when you click a button about something online. When you click “Like” it shows that you agree, approve, want to encourage them…. LinkedIn – this is a business-oriented site mostly used for professional networking. If you want to know someone, with linked in you can find out who you know that might know someone who knows someone who knows that person. You know? M MySpace – this is a site you’ll hear about now and again. It was big in its heyday but Facebook has all but buried it. N Newsfeed – This is a page on Facebook where you can see the latest stuff your friends have posted. Twitter also has a newsfeed where you read tweets of people you are following. A hashtag is basically a twitter newsfeed with tweets just about that particular topic. O Optimize – this is what you do to your website to help you get on the first page of the search engine results. It includes doing things like making your page titles a certain way, using certain key words, and so forth. It also means NOT doing things that would get your website's wrist slapped by the search engines. They are really smart these days and want to promote sites that are high quality and don't try to manipulate them. P Pinterest is an online pinboard. It’s a few year old site that is taking the world by storm. What you do is create a page called a board (like a pin-board, get it?) and then gather pictures from the web and pin them to the board. You can follow others and see what they are pinning, they can follow you, and you can search stuff, too. Platform – this is just a word used to represent whatever social media websites you might be talking about. Sometimes it is used interchangeable with the word, tools. Examples of platforms might be Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, etc. Plug-in or social plug in – This is code you get from Facebook and plug in to your website. The plug-ins you select each have their own code. When plugged-in (which just means it is added to the hmtl code) to your website the code might create a button where people can like or recommend the page, or it might place your newsfeed right on your website or put a comment box there so people can comment right to facebook right from your webpage – stuff like that. R Retweet – when you see a tweet that is cool, you can retweet it. That means you re- share it with the people who are following you. There is a retweet button that lets you do this and the name of the original tweeter stays with it. So, tweet good stuff and get retweeted and more people will find out about you. S Search engine optimization (SEO) is where you get your website on the first page of the search engine results. It just means being more findable when people search for you. Skype – if you have a webcam, this free website will let you video chat with anyone else on Skype all around the world. You can also now Skype through Facebook. Social media – this definition is still evolving but it commonly means all the stuff we share and actions we take that are online and interactive. Social plug-in – see plug-in. T Thread – this word is used to mean a conversation among different people about the same theme or topic. It's like when you see comments and scroll down to see what other people have said and read the conversation. That's a thread. Timeline – this is the new look from Facebook. It is basically the page that used to be the wall. It is like a diary or scrapbook of your life and when you scroll down the page it represents the passing of time – so the further down you go the more in the past of your life life you visit. Basically, Facebook has a page where you write and a page where you read. The page where you read is the Newsfeed and the page where you write is the Timeline. Facebook also writes a lot of stories on your behalf like, "Susie visited a page" or "Ralph read an article." Aren't they nice? Twitter – this is a website where you can send out short (140 characters) messages to people who are following you. You can follow people and even direct message them. There is now Twitter Vine, which is a 6 second video you share on Twitter. Vine is new in 2013 and it's an app for your phone. U URL – this just means the web address like www.yourwebsite.com V Vine - In June of 2012 some folks got the idea for a phone app where you can make a 6 second video and share it on Twitter. In October of 2012 before they launched, Twitter offered them $30 million dollars. They turned it down. Twitter eventually bought them but for much more. So, Twitter Vine is an app where you can make 6 second video's. Believe it or not, companies and brands are using these a lot now. Viral – when something goes viral it just means that it is totally super popular and the whole world now knows about it. It is usually something like a youtube video that has been watched millions of times and everyone is talking about. People ask how many views something has to have to go viral and there are different answers - 500,000 or a million usually. Most people feel that "viral is dead" meaning that it just happens when it happens and you can't plan to make a video go viral it's in the hands of the masses who make it popular if they want to. Although, a funny musical parody of something from pop culture using attractive people and fuzzy cats is not a bad way to try to go viral. W Wikipedia is the social media version of an encyclopedia because articles can be edited by anyone! What’s amazing is that sometimes after a ball game, the results are updated on Wikipedia with stunning speed. WordPress is a site where you can blog. Remember that blog is short for web log and just means an online diary of your interests and the posts are in reverse order so people always see the latest first. Y YouTube was started by three guys who used to work at Paypal. It’s a website where anyone can post their own video’s and share them with the world. When Youtube was just 20 months old those three guys sold it for 1.65 billion dollars. Yes, that was billion with a b. There are about four billion video’s watched each day. Yes, you read it right – about four billion with a b – every day. Go there and watch the first youtube video ever - just google it - it's called, "Me at the Zoo." This short dictionary is courtesy of your friend, Michael Derrick The Partner Group www.thepartnergroup.com mike@thepartnergroup.com (I prefer to be called by my name, "Michael", but my email is "Mike" because people were misspelling Michael and I wasn't getting their emails.) Feel free to email or call me with any questions. Thanks! . SOCIAL MEDIA FOR EXTREME BEGINNERS SHORT DICTIONARY OF SOCIAL MEDIA TERMS Michael Derrick www.thepartnergroup.com Copyright. means without written permission from the author. A Brief Social Media Dictionary for the Extreme Beginner This just includes a few key words and is not