This ultimate social media and influencer marketing glossary contains 146 terms you should know if you're working or just getting started in the industry.
Ever felt like the influencer marketing industry has its own language? If so, this is the post for you.
If you’re just starting out in social media and influencer marketing, I understand if you’re a bit lost. You might be feeling like your marketing degree should have included a module called Marketese 101. When I first started out, I kept a Word doc with definitions for the terms my more experienced colleagues used so naturally.
And let’s face it: even for influencer marketing veterans, it can be challenging to keep up with all the new terms, trends, and lingo that’s forced to evolve at the fast pace dictated by the nature of social media.
That’s why I created this ultimate social media and influencer marketing glossary. It contains 146 definitions you need to know.
So keep reading, and get ready for a lot of acronyms.
How this works
I’ve divided the post into sections so you can jump to the ones that interest you most:
Each term includes a definition and an example sentence.
General marketing terms
This section contains terms you could hear in the general marketing industry.
A/B testing
A type of experiment that compares the success of two variations: version A and version B. Also called split testing. It’s commonly used in email marketing and on website landing pages to teach marketing teams how to better communicate with their target audience.
Let’s A/B test the subject lines on this email to see which gets a better open rate.
Affiliate marketing
A marketing model where you compensate third parties—or affiliates—for each lead, sales, or other defined conversion that they acquire for you. This compensation is usually commission-based and gets paid out at the end of the month. To do affiliate marketing you need to use affiliate links.
We’ve made $5,000 in sales from affiliate marketing this quarter.
Source: What is affiliate marketing? by Shopify.
B2B (business-to-business)
A business whose main customers are other businesses. Some examples of B2B products are Google Analytics, Slack, Hubspot, and Hootsuite.
The B2B customer journey often involves more stakeholders than its B2C counterpart.
B2C (business-to-consumer)
A business whose main customers are consumers, or everyday people like you and me. Some famous B2C companies are Coca-Cola, Kleenex, Zara, and Uber.
Loyalty programs can be great additions to B2C marketing strategies.
Backlink
A link that sits on another website and points to your website, or a link from another site back to yours. Backlinks drive traffic to your website and help your SEO positioning. When building backlinks, focus on the average traffic and domain authority of the site where you’ll place your link.
We closed 25 backlinks with partner blogs this month.
Benchmark
A reference point you use to measure how successful a strategy or initiative has been. You can establish benchmarks using industry research and historical data.
The 2022 benchmark for email marketing open rates for the e-commerce industry was 15.68%.
Best practices
The methods and guidelines accepted as being the correct or most efficient way to do something. Best practices can touch on the technical, organizational, strategic, and ethical.
One of the best practices of CTAs is to keep them short and sweet.
Brand awareness
The extent to which the audience recognizes and remembers your brand, products, or service. Brand awareness is a common goal in influencer marketing campaigns, especially for younger brands just starting out, or brands trying to break into new markets.
An influencer with a high engagement rate can help you build brand awareness among their audience.
Brief
A document created by a marketing team to explain the goals, context, and requirements of a campaign. This can be a written document or a presentation and is usually shared with anyone involved in the campaign, like external agencies and influencers.
Please find our campaign brief attached to review at tomorrow’s meeting.
Conversion
The moment when a person performs the action that your brand wants them to, such as: signing up for your service, downloading your app, buying your products, or subscribing to your email list. At that moment, the person converts from being a visitor to a customer or user.
Marketing teams generally focus on converting visitors to leads, and sales teams focus on converting leads to sales.
Conversion rate
The percentage of visitors to your website that converts, or perform a specific desired action. To calculate conversion rate, divide your total conversions by the total visitors and then multiply by 100.
We’re running lots of tests to see if we can improve our conversion rate.
Churn
The part of the natural business cycle where you lose customers. Every business experiences churn at some point. For SaaS (subscription as a service) companies, churn is when customers cancel their subscriptions. Generally speaking, the less churn, the better.
This customer churned in 2021 but now they want to come back to us.
Churn rate
The metric used to determine the rate at which your customers are churning. If your churn rate is negative, that’s great! It means you’re gaining and retaining customers at a greater rate than you are losing them.
To calculate churn rate, take the difference between your customers at the beginning of the month and your customers at the end of the month. Then, divide that number by the number of customers at the beginning of the month.
Let's hear your ideas for how we can reduce churn rate.
Source: How to Calculate Customer Churn Rate and Revenue Churn Rate by Salesforce.
CPA (cost-per-acquisition)
A metric that calculates the cost of obtaining a new customer or user. Calculate it by dividing the total media investment by the number of acquisitions. To calculate, divide the total investment by the total number of acquisitions. For example: $20,000 total investment / 2,000 sales = $10 CPA.
One of our goals this quarter is to try out new strategies for lowering our CPA.
CPL (cost-per-lead)
A performance marketing model in which the advertiser pays a specific price for each lead generated. Usually in order to qualify as a lead, a person has to share some personal information, like an email.
We’re trying an ad campaign that uses the CPL model instead of CPC.
CPM (cost-per-mille)
Sometimes also called CPT, or cost-per-thousand. The cost per 1,000 impressions (mille is the Latin word for 1,000). An impression is a view of a brand’s content. So the CPM shows you how much it costs your brand for 1,000 views of its ads, influencer posts, or other content. To calculate CPM, use this formula: total spend / total impressions x 1000.
CPC (cost-per-click)
A metric that measures how much it costs for someone to click on a brand’s ad or links and land on its website. To calculate, divide the total investment by the number of clicks. For example: $30,000 total investment / 30,000 clicks = $1 CPC.
Lowering CPC is a goal of all performance marketers.
CRM (customer relationship management)
Software that helps you manage all your company’s relationships and interactions with leads and customers. CRMs help sales teams manage and close deals, and they help Success teams manage account health.
We’re deciding between two CRMs: Hubspot and Salesforce.
CRO (conversion rate optimization)
A methodology used to increase the percentage of website visitors that convert, or perform the action you want them to (like a signup or purchase). CRO involves testing things like copies, colors, designs, and the placement of elements on webpages.
We have various A/B tests scheduled in our CRO plan for next month.
This scroll map tool from Crazy Egg is one example of a CRO tool.
CTA (call to action)
A message that persuades the audience (web visitors, software users, email recipients, etc.) to do a certain action. Some common CTAs are: Swipe up, Add to cart, Try for free, Sign up now. CTAs should be short and actionable, and they often appear as buttons.
Which CTA do you think we should use: “Try today” or “Get started?”
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One of our CTAs.
CTR (click-through rate)
The ratio of people who see a certain link compared to the number of people who actually click it. It shows you how well your ads, emails, and landing pages are performing. To calculate it, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then multiply the result by 100. For example: 10 clicks / 200 views of your content = 0.05. 0.0f x 100 = 5% CTR.
Arts and entertainment had the highest average CTR in Google and Microsoft ads this year.
Source: 2022 Google Ads & Microsoft Ads Benchmarks for Every Industry by Wordstream.
Deliverables
The thing to be provided for a project. Some examples are an initial strategy report, a progress report, a beta version of an app or software, or visual assets. In influencer marketing, deliverables are the pieces of content the influencer has agreed to make for your brand.
We’re waiting for the deliverables from these three influencers so we can review and give feedback.
Domain authority
An SEO metric, a ranking from 0-100 that shows how successful a site will be when it comes to search engine results. Sites with higher DAs are considered more authoritative, and therefore have a better chance of getting their pages to the top of search engine results pages.
DAs between 30-50 are considered average, between 50-60 are good, and 60+ are excellent. Some ways you can build your DA is through high-quality content marketing and backlinks from other sites with good domain authorities.
This quarter we want to build backlinks to raise our DA from 50 to 60.
Earned media
Any media coverage of your brand that isn’t direct advertising (paid media) or branding (owned media). Earned media could be online reviews, social media shares/tags/mentions, and UGC created by social media users (if you pay an influencer, that’s paid media, see below).
A great benefit of influencer marketing is the earned media that it can produce among the influencer’s audience.
EMV (earned media value)
A metric that shows the amount of money a brand can expect to earn thanks to earned media like positive reviews or social media mentions. You can calculate earned media value by looking at impressions, CPM, and an adjustment variable.
When analyzing influencer marketing campaign results, it’s important to take EMV into account.
Funnel
In marketing, the customer journey with your brand. It’s modeled after a funnel because you usually have more customers at the top than at the bottom.
The levels of the marketing funnel are:
- Awareness - People become aware of your brand.
- Interest - They show some interest in your brand, like visiting your website.
- Consideration - They’re considering your brand as a solution, but might be comparing it with others.
- Intent - They are ready to buy and are making their final decision.
- Purchase - They convert to a customer.
TOFU
Top of the funnel. The awareness and interest stages.
MOFU
Middle of the funnel. The consideration stage.
BOFU
Bottom of the funnel. The intent and purchase stages.
Source: What is a marketing funnel? by Intercom.
Guest post
When an author from one website writes a post to publish on another website’s blog. Guest posting is a common link-building strategy in which authors write posts with backlinks to their website, which then get published on their partner’s domain.
For our influencer campaign with this blogger, we included a guest post as part of the deal.
Impression
A metric used in marketing to understand how many people are seeing your content. Impressions are all the times that your content is displayed on screen (or played during a podcast/on the radio).
Our main KPIs for this campaign are impressions and clicks.
Inbound marketing
Marketing strategies that seek to bring customers to your brand organically. Inbound marketing creates experiences that educate the user or help them solve a problem and uses methods that attract them without being invasive. Inbound marketing is usually content marketing, like blog posts, educational resources, videos, and social media posts.
With respect to influencer marketing, inbound strategies would be posting your campaign and receiving proposals from influencers who have seen it.
Inbound marketing can lead to great results, but the downside is that it requires a lot of time to maintain.
LTV (lifetime value)
A business metric that estimates how much revenue a customer brings to a brand during the entire length of their relationship.
Referral programs can increase LTV when done well.
KPI (key performance indicator)
A metric that marketing teams track to get a sense of how well they’re accomplishing their goals. KPIs are defined by your team based on your goals, and they indicate your performance working towards that goal.
Common KPIs in influencer marketing are impressions, clicks on influencer links, and uses of influencer discount codes.
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
For companies with subscriptions, MRR is the total revenue generated by all your active subscriptions for a particular month. MRR incorporates things like upgrades, downgrades, or recurring discounts. But it doesn’t take into account one-time purchases.
OKRs (objectives and key results)
OKRs stand for objectives and key results. They’re a performance management framework that helps you align your team, communicate your goals, and track your progress. Objectives are what you want to achieve, and key results are how you will achieve that goal.
OKRs are usually set for a month or a quarter. They should be aggressive and ambitious, but also flexible in the event that you need to readjust your goals.
One of our marketing objectives this quarter is to optimize our influencer marketing campaigns and one of the key results is to double the average number of impressions.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing—the opposite of inbound marketing—involves strategies where the brand proactively reaches out to leads. Outbound marketing is more invasive and direct than inbound marketing. Some examples are cold calling or cold emailing, events, and PCP ads.
In influencer marketing, outbound refers to when you reach out to an influencer to invite them to collaborate.
One challenge of outbound marketing is getting people to pay attention to you.
Owned media
Any media or content that a brand creates and controls. Owned media examples are your website, blog, and social media channels. It could also be an infographic, eBook, or webinar your brand produces.
Earned media from social media is a great way to supplement your brand’s owned media.
Paid media
Any media you pay for. This can include sponsored influencer content, pay-per-click advertising, or TV commercials.
Successful marketing teams know how to handle paid media, earned media, and owned media at the same time.
Performance marketing
A type of digital marketing in which brands only pay for certain actions that have been performed, like clicks, sales, or leads.
Our performance marketing portfolio includes paid ads and affiliate marketing.
Social media marketing
Marketing on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or any other social media channel. Social media marketing is a broad term that encapsulates social media content strategy, paid social media ads, and influencer marketing.
For our social media marketing, we’ve invested the most resources in TikTok given that our target audience is Gen Z.
Stakeholder
In business, anyone with a vested interest or concern in a specific strategy, project, or task. They are usually affected by the outcome of such.
We need to prep all stakeholders before we launch the new feature this week.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
A metric used in advertising to measure the amount of revenue earned for each dollar spent on a campaign. It’s expressed as #:#. For example, 4:1 means $4 earned for every $1 spent.
The average ROAS across all industries is 2.87:1.
ROI (return on investment)
A way to evaluate all the benefits you’ve received compared to what you invested in a marketing campaign. It’s similar to ROAS but used for a variety of strategies and not just ads. When calculating ROI, take into account things that might not have a clear-cut value, like earned media or public relations.
When analyzing ROI for influencer campaigns, always consider the content created by the influencer and how you can get value from reusing it.
SEO (search engine optimization)
A marketing channel where you try to get your brand to appear at the top of the front page of a search engine’s results. To do this, you have to create and optimize content oriented to certain keywords.
Influencer marketing can help you build links to boost your brand’s SEO.
SERP (search engine result page)
A page returned by a search engine for any given search. Moving up the rankings in the SERPs is the goal of SEO marketing.
Getting to position 1 on page 1 is every SEO marketer’s dream come true.
Techy terms
These are words related to technology or programs we use. All marketers will probably hear them at some point.
Algorithm
The set of rules followed by a program to run operations or calculations.
The TikTok algorithm determines which videos to show you on your For You page.
API (application programming interface)
Code that lets two pieces of software talk to each other. APIs let two programs send information back and forth.
My e-commerce store lets customers pay via PayPal thanks to an integration with its API.
Cookies
Small files that websites store on visitors’ browsers so that the website remembers you, your preferences, and your online behavior.
You can clear your cookies in your browser’s history settings.
Hosting
A service that provides storage and computing resources to an individual or organization that wants to create a website.
GoDaddy and Namecheap are two big hosting providers.
Server
A piece of hardware or software that provides service to another client. For example, a web server serves content to someone’s browser when they click on your link.
Our website seems laggy, let’s check if our server is having issues.
Snippet
A small chunk of reusable code. You paste snippets into your website in order to track visitors, show interactive elements like chatbots, and more.
We already pasted the Google Tag Manager snippet into our website so we can track user behavior via Google Analytics.
UI (user interface)
The visual part of an application that the user interacts with.
Airbnb has a great UI.
UTM (urchin tracking module)
Named for Urchin, the predecessor of Google Analytics. UTMs are parameters you attach to the end of a URL to track the traffic that flows into it and where it comes from. The 3 UTM parameters are source, medium, and campaign.
We add UTMs to our links quickly and easily using the Google Campaign URL Builder.
An example of UTMs parameters from The Complete Guide to UTM Codes by Buffer.
URL (uniform resource locator)
A link, with typical elements like www., .com, .io, etc.
My site’s URL is www.mysite.com.
UX (user experience)
How someone interacts with a product, program, or website. It revolves around the perceived usefulness, ease of use, and efficiency in the eyes of the user.
UX Design is a career that’s really taken off in the last decade.
Social media terms
Now, some terms that you need to know to use social media effectively.
Account
A social media profile belonging to an individual or business. Account is usually used when talking about the more personal, technical angle of someone’s social media presence, while profile represents the content they display.
Help, my account got hacked!
Bio
The personal information someone includes as text on their social media profile.
Her IG bio says the account is non-profit and aiming to rescue stray
Petspulse’s bio on TikTok.
Comment
A message left by one user on another user’s social media content. Or, the act of leaving that message. Due to the unpredictability of the Internet, most networks offer options for managing comments, so users can protect themselves from trolls, spam, and fraud.
We closely monitor our Instagram comments to respond to any questions that customers may leave there.
Community Guidelines
The Terms of Use of social networks. Community guidelines outline how users must behave to fit into that network’s social community.
She got banned because she violated IG’s community guidelines.
DM (direct message)
A private message from one user to another. DMs arrive to your inbox and don’t appear on any public content. You’ll sometimes see influencers with something like “DM for collabs” in their bio, meaning they’re open to receiving collaboration proposals via direct message.
Let’s keep this private, DM me the details.
Filter
A preset of editing layers that you can apply to photos and videos when posting them to social media. Filters change colors, add or reduce noise, or to add an overlay like sunglasses or a flower crown.
Check out this sunrise, no filter.
An example of a filter on TikTok.
Flatlay
A still life style of photography where the photographer lays everything out flat and shoots from above. Items are usually grouped together thematically.
Packing flatlays are common among travel influencers.
Follower
Someone who follows someone else on social media. Followers will generally see the content of the accounts they follow on their feed.
I got my 10,000th follower today!
Giveaway
A contest run by an influencer, a brand, or an influencer-brand partnership that raffles off a prize to the audience. To participate, users generally have to follow the account(s), like the content, and comment on the post or share it in their Stories.
To enter this giveaway, 1) follow me, 2) like this post, and 3) comment tagging a friend you’d love to share this prize with.
Handle
A username. The name that someone uses on social media to distinguish themself from other users. It’s also usually part of the URL to the individual’s profile. Often you’ll see it written with the @ symbol.
Rihanna’s handle on Instagram is @badgalriri.
Hashtag
A tag used to show that social media content relates to a certain topic or theme. Always accompanied by the # symbol.
I hashtagged the post with #vegan, #vegandesserts, #vegangrub, and #veganbaking.
Insights
On social media, the analytics that an individual gets related to the performance of their content. Some social networks require you to have a business account to access insights.
Hey, would you mind sending over your insights so we can measure impressions on the campaign content?
Like
A social media interaction that shows you approve of another user’s content. Usually represented by a heart or a thumbs up. Likes are also almost always a requirement to participate in giveaways.
Live
Short for live stream. This is social content where someone shares a live feed of video. Lives are often used to interact with the audience in an authentic and spontaneous way.
She did a live the other day where she took questions from fans.
Mention
A shoutout or tag of one person by another on social media. It can be between two individuals, two brands, or an individual and a brand. Mentioning brands is a way for hopeful influencers and UGC creators to get their attention.
In this post about our products, would you mind mentioning our brand?
Post
A social media publication. This term can be used generally to talk about all the content published to social media—whether image, text, or video. On Instagram, a post is specifically image-based content posted to a user’s static feed, which distinguishes it from Stories or Reels.
Did you see her last post?
Profile
A social media page belonging to an individual or a business. Profile and account are synonyms with very subtle differences. Account relates more to the “backend” of that presence: personal details, management of settings, etc. Profile relates more to the “frontend”: a user’s handle, bio, and content.
I want to change up the aesthetic of my Instagram profile.
Reel
Instagram’s answer to TikTok. Reels are short videos designed to be engaging and entertaining. They usually last only seconds and are almost always shot in the vertical orientation using smartphones.
This influencer is an expert at shooting and producing Reels.
An Instagram Reel.
Shadowban
Blocking a user from a social media network without their knowledge by making their posts invisible to others. Shadowbanning is different from regular banning because you don’t get notice of when and why you’re being banned.
Violating TikTok’s community guidelines can lead to a shadowban.
Social commerce
The use of social networks to market and sell products. With social commerce, the entire customer journey—from discovery through purchase—takes place on social media.
Global social commerce sales in 2022 were valued at $992 billion and are projected to keep rising.
Source: Statista.
Story
Instagram’s answer to Snapchat. Stories are ephemeral content, meaning they disappear after 24 hours unless you create a Highlights section to add them to. Stories can be video, photo, text, polls, quizzes, and so on.
He ended up creating an extra Story about our brand beyond what we agreed to in the campaign negotiations.
Stream
Another shortened word for live stream. While Instagram users prefer to call these “lives,” Twitch users prefer to call them “streams.” Streams are generally viewed as very authentic and can drive high engagement rates.
Approximately halfway through the stream they’re going to promote our products.
Streamer
Someone who streams, especially on Twitch. Streamers can be influencers who promote products during live streams instead of in static content.
My favorite streamer is running a contest today.
TikTok
The social network, but also an individual video on that network.
I sometimes lose track of time watching TikToks.
Tag
Like a mention, a way for one user to highlight and/or get the attention of another user. Often a @tag on a post to link another user’s page to that content.
Please tag me when you upload the photos from this weekend.
Influencer marketing terms
This section is for terms you need to understand if you’re working in influencer marketing. Some of these are general marketing terms defined withing the context of the influencer industry.
Audience demographics
The age, gender, location, language, interests, and other identifying factors of an influencer’s audience. When choosing influencers for your campaigns, you should prioritize ones whose audience looks like your target audience.
Our target audience demographics are females, millennials, living in the US, and interested in running.
Source: Heepsy’s free influencer discovery tool.
Audience authenticity
How real an influencer’s audience is. Influencers can buy fake followers and fake engagements, which means part of their audience is bot accounts. An analysis tool can help you see which percentage of an influencer’s audience is authentic and which isn’t. It’s usually expressed as a percentage that shows which portion is authentic.
We only work with influencers who have an audience authenticity of 80% or higher.
Source: Heepsy influencer discovery tool.
Brand ambassador
An influencer that works with your brand on a long-term basis. They post content about your brand on a recurring basis, which helps create familiarity and trust among their followers.
Our brand is starting a brand ambassador program.
Campaign
In influencer marketing, a particular project that you’re working with influencers on. Brands create a campaign (often summarized in a brief) and then invite relevant influencers to participate in that campaign.
Influencer campaigns usually follow these stages:
- Definition and planning - Decide on your goals, timeline, and budget.
- Discovery and setup - Find influencers and negotiate deals.
- Launch - Activate the campaign.
- Monitoring of results - Track influencer publications.
- Analysis - Review all your results and draw conclusions.
We’re currently working on setting up our summer influencer campaign.
Collaboration
The act of working together with an influencer. Your brand and influencers can collaborate in various ways: one-off campaigns, ambassador programs, giveaways, and so on.
For our upcoming campaign, we’ve already closed 10 collaborations with different influencers.
Content creator
A phrase often used as a synonym of influencer. Some people use content creator and influencer interchangeably. Others believe there’s a difference, with a content creator being someone who’s more focused on creating engaging content than just taking selfies and promoting products. Sometimes said as just creator.
Instagram prefers the term creators over influencers.
Creator economy
Used to describe the market or sphere in which brands and creators come together to collaborate on content creation, content distribution, the use of influence, and more. It’s a bit different from the traditional influencer marketing market, which focused on connecting brands to influencers’ audiences. In the creator economy, creators also get paid to create content, give feedback on products, act as consultants on brand strategies, and much more.
Source: Creator Economy Market Map by SignalFire.
Disclosure
The process of stating when influencer content has been sponsored or paid for. Disclosure is mandated by government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, and is the responsibility of both influencers and brands. Some ways to disclose paid influencer content is adding the #ad hashtag, using the Instagram sponsored tag, or mentioning it at the beginning of a video.
The FTC requires disclosure of paid influencer media even if the influencer doesn’t live in the US, but it’s possible the ad could impact an American audience.
Engagement rate
A metric used in influencer marketing to measure how much an influencer’s audience trusts their opinions and enjoys their content. For many brands, it’s one of the most important metrics when choosing influencers to collaborate with. Engagement rates vary across social networks, content categories, and influencer tiers, and are expressed as percentages.
To calculate engagement rate, divide the total number of interactions by the total number of followers. Then multiply the result to get a percentage.
For this campaign, we’re accepting influencers with an engagement rate of 2% or higher.
Fake follower check
A fake follower check, sometimes known as an audience audit, is when a brand checks that an influencer’s following is made up of real people and not bots. There are different ways to do this: manually and automatically. A manual check involves reviewing the influencer’s profile and those of their followers to check for behavior typical of bots. An automatic check is done by software that scans the audience for you.
We run AI-assisted fake follower checks on all influencers before agreeing to collaborate with them.
Follow/unfollow
A strategy used by some wannabe influencers to get new followers. The “influencer” follows a bunch of accounts, waits for them to follow back out of politeness, and then unfollows them.
We’re not working with this influencer because we noticed she uses follow/unfollow instead of growing her audience organically.
Follower range
Ranges or bands of the total number of followers an influencer has. For example: 1K-10K followers. These ranges are used to organize influencers into tiers, such as nano-influencers and micro-influencers.
Nano influencers have the lowest follower range but oftentimes very high engagement rates.
FTC (Federal Trade Commission)
The agency of the United States government that establishes and enforces rules for protecting American consumers. The FTC requires influencers to disclose any financial, employment, personal, or family relationships they have with the brands they promote.
For this global campaign, we’ve checked that we comply with the disclosure guidelines from the FTC in America, the CMA in Britain, and a few other agencies.
Influencer
Someone who has built up an audience on social media and who holds influence over them. Influencers can drive their followers to take various actions, including sales.
My cousin is an influencer with 100K followers and has worked with big brands.
Influencer demographics
Characteristics of influencers like age, gender, location, language, and interests. These demographics are important when choosing influencers, but not quite as important as audience demographics. An influencer’s demographics and those of the audience aren’t always the same.
Consider influencer demographics when defining your target influencers.
Influencer discovery
The act of finding influencers to collaborate with for your campaign. This is also sometimes called the influencer search. Some brands do it manually, but most use an influencer discovery tool to make the process more efficient.
My team runs influencer discovery with an influencer search tool.
Influencer incentive
Also known as influencer compensation. What you pay an influencer in exchange for the content they create for your brand. Influencer incentive can be monetary, like fees and commissions. It can also be non-monetary, like free products and services.
As influencer incentive they’re offering a fee, free products, and commissions on each sale brought in.
Influencer tiers
An organizational system that divides influencers into different groups based on their follower count. The influencer tiers each have their own pros and cons for brands:
Nano-influencer
An influencer who has 1-10K followers. They have highly-engaged audiences thanks to their relatable content.
Micro-influencer
An influencer who has 10-50K followers. They’re still authentic but are more experienced at working with brands.
Mid-tier influencer
An influencer who has 50-500K followers. This tier is where influencers start to become more professional.
Macro-influencer
An influencer who has 500K-1M followers. They can bring in good ROI thanks to increased reach, but have less engaged audiences.
Mega-influencer
An influencer who has 1M+ followers. These have great reach but are out of reach for many brands due to their high fees.
Apex influencer
An influencer with 100M+ followers. These are the most famous influencers out there, like Khaby Lame on TikTok.
We’re sticking to the nano- and micro-influencer tiers for this campaign.
Source: How to Find and Work with Instagram Influencers by Shopify.
Influencer outreach
Contacting influencers. Most brands do this via email or DM. When you do influencer outreach, it’s a good idea to contact double or triple the number of influencers you really need, since not all will get back to you. Make your emails as personalized as possible for best results.
Lots of brands do influencer outreach with personalizable templates and a bulk email tool.
Influencer vetting
The act of checking that an influencer meets your desired criteria. Influencer vetting includes analyzing performance metrics, checking for fake followers, and making sure that content is relevant and brand-safe.
We’ve vetted all these influencers as potential collaborators, so now let’s reach out.
IRM (influencer relationship management)
Similar to CRMs used in sales, an IRM helps you do influencer relationship management. IRMs typically include outreach tools for getting in touch with influencers, and pipelines for managing the status of different collaborations.
I set up our IRM so we’re ready to track relationship statuses as our campaign progresses.
Media kit
A document that sums up an influencer’s profile, skills, experience, and past performance. Basically a resumé or CV for influencers.
Let’s get this influencer’s media kit to check their audience demographics.
Paid post
Any type of social media content an influencer publishes because your brand has paid them.
This collaboration includes 2 paid posts.
Pitch
An initial message that tries to convince the other party of something. Pitches can come from brands trying to attract influencers to their campaign. Or they can come from influencers trying to sell their services to brands. Pitches should be created carefully so that you come across as an attractive option to the other party.
We get lots of pitches from influencers, and the ones that stand out are the ones who show they really understand our brand.
Pods
Also known as autolike communities. These are groups created so that members like, share, and comment on each others’ content, therefore getting a boost in engagement. Pods are often used by wannabe influencers and aren’t indicative of an engaged audience.
When we vet influencers, we check to make sure they don’t belong to a lot of pods.
Product seeding
Also called influencer gifting. This is a strategy where brands gift products to influencers without negotiating any type of exchange or contract beforehand. The end goal of the brand is to get organic social media content created by influencers who love their products.
For brands just starting out, product seeding is a low-cost, low-risk way to dip your toes into the influencer marketing water.
Proposal
An offer from one party to another party for collaboration. Influencers can make proposals to brands, and brands can make proposals to influencers.
Our proposal is $300 plus free products in exchange for 1 Instagram post and 2 stories.
An example of an influencer proposal to a brand on Heepsy.
Reach
The total number of followers an influencer has. Reach gives you an idea of how many people your content could reach if you collaborate with that influencer.
We’re more interested in engagement than reach when it comes to choosing influencers to work with.
Relevance
How aligned an influencer is with your brand and what it does. Relevant influencers are one of the keys to success in influencer marketing.
As a slow fashion brand, eco-conscious fashion bloggers are highly relevant to what we do.
UGC (user-generated content)
Branded content created by users organically, without any type of agreement with the brand. Many brands get the user’s permission to repost this to its own social accounts. UGC is highly authentic and lends great social proof to a brand and its products.
We repurpose all of our UGC as paid ads and testimonials.
UGC creators
Content creators who get paid by brands to create content that isn’t, but that looks like UGC. UGC creators aren’t always influencers and usually don’t post the content to their own social profiles.
We’re working with UGC creators to create all the content for our social ads.
Talent manager
A person who represents an influencer. Also called an influencer manager, or influencer representative. Managers will usually be the one who negotiates with your brand and follows up on any issues during or after publication.
Talent managers drive up influencer fees, so make sure to factor them into the budget.
Target audience
The group of people you want your marketing initiatives to reach. Target audiences include demographic (age, gender) and psychographic (goals, pains) characteristics. Brands define target audience through a mix of user data, feedback, and market research. When working with influencers, their audience should sync up with your target audience.
Source: How to define your target audience by LinkedIn.
Social media slang
Finally, if you want to work with influencers, you need to understand how they speak. These social media slang definitions will help you do that. These slang terms are common across social media, but especially on TikTok.
Bop
A song or album that’s really good.
Have you heard the last Harry Styles single? It’s a bop.
Cap / No cap
Cap is a lie, and capping is lying. If you say “no cap” it means “no lies.”
I’m gonna get my entire to-do list done today, no cap.
Cheugy
Pronounced “chew-gee.” Describes someone who’s out of date, off trend or trying too hard. According to the NYTimes, Gen Z most often uses cheugy to refer to millennial women.
That trend is so cheugy.
🤡 (Clown emoji)
Denotes stupidity or foolishness. Usually found in the comments when someone has done or said something silly or stupid. Also used when someone feels like a clown or a fraud.
I told my crush that I can drive it’ll be fine 🤡
Drip
Cool or trendy, means someone has a great sense of style. The opposite of cheugy. Drip is akin to what older generations would refer to as swag.
She has some serious drip.
👁️👄👁️ (Eyes and lips emojis)
Expresses shock, surprise, or speechlessness but with a tinge of irony. Ex-TechCrunch writer Josh Constine said this emoji “means you feel helpless amidst the chaotic realities unfolding around us, but there is no escape.”
She what??? 👁️👄👁️
Fam
Family, or the group of people you think of as family. For many influencers and content creators, this could include their audience.
Alright fam, let’s do this.
Flex
Refers to bragging. This comes from bodybuilders who flex their muscles to show off. It now means the same thing but in a metaphorical sense.
That’s a bold flex.
🔥(fire emoji)
Or just fire. Means something is exceptionally good.
This look is fire.🔥
Goals
Used to express when someone sees something that’s what they aspire to. Can be about appearance, jobs, relationships, or whatever else is desirable to the speaker. Used as an adjective instead of a noun.
Her life right now is so goals.
Glow up
A positive personal transformation, usually related to appearance, style, talent or power.
Wow, she’s really had a glow up since I saw her a few years ago!
Hits different
When something is singularly good/better.
This new recipe for hummus hits different.
Hot girl summer
Used around summertime to talk about having fun and not caring about what others think. It’s an inclusive phrase about confidence and feeling good originally coined by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, who has a song with the same name.
Who else is ready for #hotgirlsummer
IYKYK
If you know you know. This phrase describes an inside joke or something that only a specific community of people would understand.
Russ & Daughters cream cheese….IYKYK.
Main character energy
When someone gives off confidence or presence and makes themself the center of attention, like the main character of a movie. This term is all about self-love and romanticizing your life.
She’s serving real main character energy right now.
Mukbang
Video content that shows someone eating. Mukbangs are sometimes ASMR, meaning they don’t feature any dialogue and focus on the sounds of the person eating the meal. Comes from the Korean word 먹방, (meokbang), which itself combines the Korean words for “eating” and “broadcast.”
My dog tried steak for the first time in this steak mukbang.
Shade
Shade is trash talk, contempt, or sassiness, often subtly directed at its target. Throwing shade is directing that contempt at someone, like making a sassy comment to them or ignoring them completely. No shade means no disrespect.
She was throwing some serious shade the other day.
Slay
Means you’re killing it. It’s a term of encouragement and is particularly popular among the drag community. Also used as a noun as slayage.
Slaps
When something is excellent or enjoyable.
These carnitas tacos really slap.
💀 (skull emoji)
Also dead or ded. For Generation Z, this expresses that the user thinks something is funny. Comes from the phrase “dying of laughter.” The skull emoji replaced the cry-laughing emoji (😂) favored by Millennials.
Hahahahahaha ded 💀
✨ (Sparkle emoji)
Gen Z’s way of emphasizing words or phrases, but in a funny or tongue-in-cheek way.
That’s ✨ great ✨ and I am ✨so✨ excited.
Sus
Short for suspicious. Used to show when someone or something seems suspicious or dishonest.
He seems a bit sus to me, bro.
Tea
Gossip. Spill the tea means to spill the gossip.
What’s the tea lately?
TFW (that feeling when)
Refers to an emotion or situation that other people would find relatable.
TFW there’s a thunderstorm and you’re about to take a nap.
Vibe check
A “check” on someone’s energy or personality to see if they pass or fail your standards. Vibe checks can be permanent, more based on someone’s personality, or temporary, based on something they do or say.
On our date he yelled at the server, definitely doesn’t pass the vibe check.
Yeet
Means “yay!” and is used to show excitement. Yeet originally came into use as an exclamation shouted while throwing something at high speed, and it can still hold this meaning today.
-Wanna see that new movie tonight? -Yeet! or Someone just yeeted a bottle into the crowd.
