Social Media Guide
Canadian Parents for French-BC & Yukon Branch is a parent-led, non-profit organization that has worked for more than 30 years to promote, support, and advocate for accessible and quality FSL programming.
Social Media Glossary
A
Adsense: Google's pay-per-click, context-relevant program available to blog and web publishers as a way to create revenue.
Aggregation: the process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide RSS feeds. The results may be displayed in an aggregator website or directly on your desktop using software such as a newsreader.
Aggregator: a web-based tool or desktop application that collects and presents content from a variety of news sources (i.e. The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report)
Alerts: search engines allow you to specify words, phrases or tags that you wish to check periodically and will automatically return these search results to you by email. This form of search allows you to check whether you, your organization, or your interests have been mentioned elsewhere.
Authenticity: the sense that something or someone is “real”. Blogs enable people to publish content, engage in conversations, etc., that show their interests and values and therefore assist in the development of an authentic voice online.
Avatar: a graphical image or representation of a user’s self or alter ego, which may or may not be an authentic representation of the individual. These representations, or characters, can be built using the body, clothes, behaviours, gender and name of the individual’s choosing. These images are the individual in virtual worlds.
B
Badge: a small image that’s displayed on a blog and signifies the blogger’s participation in an event, contest, organization, or social movement.
Backlinks (BLs):backlinks, or inbound links (IBLs), are links to you – whether it’s your blog, website or online profile. They drive traffic to your site and build credibility with search engines.
Blogs: from a contraction of the words “web log”, a blog isa website – sometimes in the form of a personal journal - with different types of content including links, embedded videos, podcasts, traditional text and photos. Items, called posts, are dated and appear in reverse chronological order and often include a comments section as well as tags to be easily searchable.
Blogosphere: the virtual sphere where all blogs and bloggers are found.
Blogroll:a list of sites or blogs displayed in the sidebar of a blog, showing whom the blogger follows, reads, likes and recommends.
Bookmarks: the saved address of a website or item, either in a browser or through a social bookmarking site. This allows for quick and simple re-access of a webpage or specific content for personal or sharing purposes.
Browser: the tool used to view websites and access all the content available onscreen or by downloading. Browsers may also have special features, such as the ability to read feeds, write blog items, view and upload photos or use buttons to instantly log into social media sites.
C
Champions: in order to get conversations started in an online community, you need a group of enthusiasts willing and confident to get things moving by posting messages, responding and helping others.
Chat: interaction on a website, with a number of people adding text items one after the other into a common space.
Chat room: the common space where chats occur. These virtual “rooms” differ from a forum because conversations happen in “real time”.
Collective intelligence: the capacity of a human community to evolve toward higher order complexity thought, problem solving and integration through collaboration and innovation. For a network to develop this “mind of its own” there needs to be willingness among members to share and collaborate.
Comments: blogs or social media sites may allow readers to add comments under items and may also provide a feed for comments. This allows their audience to interact and engage with others and with the content presented.
Communities: groups of people communicating mainly or solely through the Internet. They may simply have a shared interest over which to engage. These communities may use email lists or forums, where content is centralized, or even online profiles through which to interact and connect with other users.
Crowdsourcing: the harnessing of skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared to volunteer their time and knowledge in contributing content and solving problems.
Cyberspace: widely used as a general term for the Internet or World Wide Web. With the development and evolution of blogs, social media and online communities this term has become dated, though is still understood.
D
Default: in computing this refers to the settings on any device as they are “out of the box”.
Dashboard: the administrative section of blog software from which individuals may post, check traffic, upload files, manage comments, etc.
Direct Message (DM): a private message sent directly to someone on Twitter. You can only send a DM to someone who is following you.
Download: to retrieve a file or other content from an Internet site to your computer or other device; the opposite of upload.
E
Email: Electronic mail messages sent over the Internet. These may be simple text or accompanied by attachments such as documents, images, etc.
Email lists: also referred to as email groups. These are lists useful to networking, allowing a single email message to be relayed to the appropriate email addresses based on lists adapted to various categories.
Entry: an individual blog post or article. Each entry is also an individual web page.
F
Facebook: the most popular Social Media site. It allows users to connect with friends, send messages, post videos and pictures, create events and groups and much more. It also allows businesses to create Fan Pages and communicate with their fans.
Facilitator: someone who helps people in an online group or forum manage their conversations. They may help outline a set of rules, draw out topics for discussion, keep people on topic or respectful of rules, and summarize.
Fan: a person who has joined or “liked” a page because they like it or want to receive updates from this page, product, interest, organization or company.
Feed: the RSS or Atom feeds used by news aggregators (aka feed readers).
Flickr: a Social Media site that specializes in photo and video sharing. It’s often used as an outlet for bloggers to post their images and videos and publicists also use it to publish event pix or pix relating to their business.
Forums: discussion areas on websites where people can post messages or comments on existing messages, independently of time or space.
Friends: becoming someone’s “friend” on a social media site allows you to view their content, profiles and activities. Each social media site differs slightly: on Facebook you are someone’s friend; on Twitter you are their follower;on LinkedIn you are a connection; etc.
H
Hashtags: hashtags unite global tweets around a particular topic or community. They are literally the pound symbol (#) followed by a name, word or term. You can follow trending topics on Twitter by searching a hashtag, or by clicking one to find other tweets that include the same hashtag.
HootSuite: a Canadian Twitter client that allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.
Hyper-local community: a site rooted in a specific location which often makes use of online communities and uses social media tools
I
Influencer: someone who’s highly recognized in an online community and has the ability to sway others’ thoughts. It’s important to find and recognize the influencers in your community.
L
LinkedIn: is a professional Social Networking site that acts as an online resume and allows you to post past and current work experience, education credentials, make connections with those you know and work with, and even give or receive personal recommendations with other LinkedIn users.
Links: the highlighted, clickable text or images that when clocked jump the user from one webpage or item to another. Bloggers often use links when writing to reference their own or other content; journalists may use it to source or cite original or complimentary content. Links also acknowledge the value of other users’ contributions.
Logging in: the process of gaining access to a website that restricts access to content and requires registration. This usually involves entering a username, either a user’s real name or avatar or a combination of characters, and password.
M
Microblogging:essentially these are super short blog posts. Twitter is often described as a micro-blogging platform, as content must be posted in less than 140 characters.
N
Networks: structures defined by nodes and the connections between them. In Social Networking the nodes are people and the connections are the relationships they create and/or maintain. Networking is the process by which you develop and strengthen those relationships.
Newsreader: a website or desktop tool that acts as an aggregator, gathering content from blogs and similar sites using RSS feeds so you can read the content in one place instead of having to visit individual sites separately.
O
Offline: means not connected to the Internet; opposite of online.
Online: means being connected to the Internet; opposite of offline.
P
Page Rank (PR): the method developed by Google to help identify the importance of a web page. Ranging from 0 to 10, the higher the PR number the better a page generally ranks in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). A major contributing factor is number and quality of inbound links. PR is only one of the many factors in the algorithm used to determine the ranking of a web page.
Peer-to-peer (P2P): the direct interaction between two people in a network.
Platform: a framework or system within which tools work. It may be as broad as mobile telephony, or as narrow as a piece of software that has different modules like blogs, forums, and wikis in a suite of tools. More and more tools are operating “out there” on the web, rather than on your desktop. That has advantages, but presents challenges in learning lots of different tools, and getting them to join up.
Podcast:audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so that users may view or listen offline and/or on other devices.
Post: an item on a blog or forum, or content a user posts on social media sites.
Profiles: on most Social Media sites you start by creating your personal profile. These profiles often provide personal information such as name, age, occupation, education, interests, etc. Profiles often feature a profile picture (or avatar) that can be posted by the user.
R
Registration: the process of providing a username, password and other details when wanting to access a website that has restricted access.
Retweets (RT): the copying of a tweet (a post on Twitter) in order to share it with your network. Retweeting is how important and valuable information is spread into other various networks; it’s also the most viral aspect of Twitter.
RSS Feeds: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. These feeds allows users to subscribe to content on blogs and other Social Media sites and have it delivered to you through a feed without actually visiting the site.
S
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the process of improving the organic ranking position of a website in Search Engine Results Pages. It’s an art all of its own.
Sidebar: a column (or multiple columns) along either or both sides of a blog’s main content area. The sidebar can include contact information, the blog's “about us” and categories, links to archives, honors and other widgets the author includes on the site.
Social Media: the term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. The tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc., and sites to share photos and bookmarks.
Subscribing: the process of adding an RSS feed to your aggregator or newsreader. It’s the online equivalent of signing up for a magazine, though online it is typically free.
T
Tags: Tags can be keywords attached to an item such as a blog post to help readers search and sort through the content. On Facebook however, tags are used to indicate individuals in pictures, videos and notes. Twitter uses hashtags (#) to identify keywords.
Teleconferencing: holding a meeting without all participants being in the same place, using a network connection and tools such as Voiceover IP, Instant messaging, Video, and Whiteboards.
Threads: strands of a conversation in an email list, web forum, or in other social media platforms.
Troll: typically a hurtful individual who for whatever reason is both obsessed by and constantly annoyed or offended by things posted online. These individuals may continuously post disrespectful or malicious comments about a certain topic, website or blog. Generally it is best to try to block and ignore these users.
Tweets: tweets are short, 140-character posts about anything – your latest blog post, Retweets of things that strike your fancy, answers to other people’s questions, whatever is on your mind. You can tweet via the web, instant messaging or text messaging or platforms like TweetDeck () and HootSuite(hootsuite.com).
Twitter: a free online Social Networking site that allows users to connect with one another and communicate using real-time short messages, known as Tweets. Twitter is for people you’d like to know, Facebook is for people you used to know.
U
Upload: to transfer a file or other content from your computer to an internet site; opposite of download.
URL: stands for Unique Resource Locator and is the technical term for a web address.
User-generated content: online content or media that is produced by users rather than administrators or moderators.
V
Vimeo: a video-driven Social Media site that allows embedding, sharing, video storage, and user-commenting on each video page. Unlike YouTube, Vimeo is aimed at a higher-end, more artistic crowd with a higher bitrate, resolution and HD support and does not allow any obscene videos or commercials
Viral Video: an online video clip that gains widespread popularity through a variety of Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube and blogs. When something “goes viral” its popularity is spread by word of mouth.
Vlogs: a video blog.
W
Web Analytics: the ability to capture and collect web traffic data to analyze the behavior of website visitors and improve your website and content. Google Analytics is an excellent, free tool (
Webinar: a web based seminar, lecture or workshop delivered online. Participants can ask questions, swap stories and share advice.
Widget: awindow gadget that can be embedded on to a webpage, blog or social media page. Widgets include weather forecasts, Facebook updates, Twitter feeds, stock market reports and news headlines.
Wiki: allows a group of people to collaboratively develop a Website. Anyone can add to or edit wiki pages. Wikipedia( probably the most well-known and referenced wiki.
Y
YouTube: a free online Social Media where users to upload and share videos.
Complied July 23, 2012
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