This is a 3-part ongoing series of articles explaining some of the buzzwords and influencer marketing terms. This is the second post. If you’re exploring for the first time, we advise you to start from the first article here.
“Let’s break for elevenses” were the words that got the whole DYT cabal stuck. The word ‘break’ was much understood and much appreciated. It was ‘elevenses’ that had many of us scratching our heads. FYI, it is the time between breakfast and lunch when you have a light snack. Since food is an altar, all of us pray at, that’s all the explanation we needed.
It was during the break that our collective minds halted on the same point. Words, terms, jargon, etc., etc. are essential; especially in the brave new world of influencer marketing. So, shouldn’t every content creator have a dictionary of sorts? A place where they can get the 101 on influencer speak and definitions of influencer marketing terms?
Thus, ‘The Dictionary’ was born.
Some More Influencer Marketing Terms And Their Meanings
The first part of our Dictionary spoke about the most basic and generic technical terms utilized on influencer marketing platforms. This post dives into the pool of words that connect with actual ‘influence.’ It explores how the power of social media turns the prosaic into the extraordinary. One post on one page becomes a viral sensation in the entire digital ether.
Key Performance Indicator
Meaning: “The primary goal or target that is to be achieved by an influencer’s content or a brand’s marketing campaign.”
KPIs are specific, quantifiable measures that a social media influencer or company uses to measure performance over time. It is vital to have crystal clear KPIs before a campaign. Reach, impressions, page views, engagement, and engagement rate are all KPIs for awareness driven influencer marketing. They tell you how big ‘your influence’ is (or how small).
Target Audience
Meaning: “The intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or another message. In marketing, it is a particular group of consumers within a predetermined target market.”
Let’s say you are a travel influencer. Your target audience would be one who loves to travel. To narrow it further, if your travels are limited to Europe, then your target audience would be those who are either going to Europe or hope to visit it. In simpler words, they are the ‘ideal customer’ for a product or service that a brand (or influencer) wants to attract through their content.
Reach
Meaning: “The total number of people who see the content posted by an influencer.”
Reach is equal to your audience size, where the audience is the total number of followers you have on all your social media handles. The followers are not segregated. If you have 100 followers on Instagram, 200 on Twitter, and 300 on Facebook, then your total reach is 600.
Paid Reach
Meaning: “The total number of people who had a paid post from your page enter their screen.”
You see those sponsored ads on Instagram? In-between the other posts on your feed? That’s paid reach. When money is used to amplify the visibility of any content on social media platforms, it is called paid reach. Plainly put, it is the number of unique social media handles that view an image, video, or any other content as a result of a compensated promotion. In contrast, organic reach happens naturally without the use of promotional tools.
Impressions
Meaning: “It is the total number of times your content was displayed to or viewed by people.”
There is a slight difference between reach and impression, and it is a dynamic one for influencers. Let’s assume you, the content creator, post an image on Instagram today. All your 100 followers see it. That makes your reach 100. Tomorrow you post two pictures on Instagram. Again, all your 100 followers see it. Your reach is still 100, but the impressions are 200.
Why? Because 100 people saw your content two times. Another way to count impressions is the number of times the same content appears on a feed. Let’s say DYT tweets, and you scroll past it on your feed. A few minutes later someone RTs DYT tweet and it pops-up on your feed again. Because you see the tweet two time, the impressions it has made is 2.
Impressions are used by brands to judge the worth of an influencer because they give a rough estimate of the amount of people the content creator can reach. It is considered a reliable indicator of a post’s performance.
Engagement
Meaning: “It is the public shares, likes or/and comments on a post.”
While impression and reach don’t prove if a follower has read or viewed the post, engagement does. When a consumer takes an actual action on the published content, it is called engagement. For each social media network, engagement is different.
- Instagram: Likes, comments and followers
- Twitter: Re-tweets, replies, shares, and followers
- Facebook: Shares, reaction, likes, comments, and followers
Engagement is yet another imperative metric brands use to judge the worth of an influencer.
Engagement Rate
Meaning: “It is the proportion of an influencer’s audience that actively interacts with their content.”
Engagement rate is a central metric that companies employ to check how well a post or influencer performs. They utilise a simple formula for it.
If you want to check the engagement rate of a Twitter handle, take a look at its last 10 posts. Add all the likes, retweets and replies they have got and then divide it by ten. You would get an average engagement rate. Divide this number by the total number of followers of the handle and then multiply by 100 for percentage to get engagement rate.
- For Instagram, the average engagement rate is 1-3%.
- For Twitter, a reasonable engagement rate is between 0.09% and 0.33%.
- For Facebook, the average engagement rate over all the content types is 2% to 3%.
Search Engine Optimization
Meaning: “The process of growing the quality and quantity of traffic by increasing the visibility of a page to users of a web search engine.”
SEO is a buzzword for influencers with blogs or websites. By adding keywords and using meta tags, you raise the chances of your site or blog appearing on the first page of Google search. These and any other step that you take to intensify the visibility of your blog is called Search Engine Optimisation.
Companies and brands appropriate bloggers with influence to create content on their product or service. Those posts act like backlinks for the brand’s website, which increases their search engine ranking.
Pageviews
Meaning: “It is an instance of an Internet user visiting a particular page on a website or social media handle.”
When you log on to the Twitter analytics page, you see something like this:
The profile visits are the number of page views. They show how many times the page (or handle) was visited in a given time.
On Instagram, you need to have a business account for more than seven days to see the corresponding number. It appears on the top of the profile. On Facebook, you can check the same by clicking Insights at the top of your Page and then Page Views on the left.
Like a full war paint that requires constant touch-ups, the vocabulary connected with monetising social profiles is ever-evolving. Stay tuned for more!
