[ GLOSSARY ]
The vocabulary,
without the fog.
Definitions written to be exact rather than reassuring: what each metric actually counts, where platforms disagree, and the confusion each term usually travels with.
CPM is the cost of one thousand ad impressions: what you pay for the ad to be shown, regardless of clicks.
Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions: of all the times something was shown, the share of times someone clicked.
Dark social is sharing that analytics cannot attribute: links and content passed through private channels like messaging apps, DMs, email or closed groups.
Earned media is attention you neither bought nor published yourself: press coverage, reshares, mentions, reviews, word of mouth.
Engagement rate is the share of an audience that interacted with a post: reactions, comments, shares and saves, divided by a base such as reach, impressions or follower count.
Evergreen content stays relevant long after publication: how-tos, answers to permanent questions, reference material.
Impressions are the total number of times a piece of content was displayed, whether or not it was clicked, and counting repeat views by the same person.
Reach is the number of distinct people (or accounts) who saw a piece of content at least once.
Sentiment analysis is the automatic classification of text as positive, negative or neutral, applied to comments, messages and mentions.
A shadowban is an unannounced reduction of a account's distribution: posts stop appearing in feeds, search or hashtags without any notification to the author.
Share of voice is a brand's portion of the total conversation in its category: your mentions divided by the mentions of everyone competing for the same attention, over a period.
A social inbox gathers comments, replies and private messages from several platforms into a single queue, so a team answers from one place instead of switching apps.
Social listening is monitoring public conversations for mentions of a brand, its competitors or its topics, beyond the notifications platforms send.
Social media ROI is the return generated by social activity divided by what that activity cost, including the hours.
User-generated content is content about a brand created by customers or fans rather than by the brand itself: photos, reviews, unboxings, mentions.