The Definitive Influencer Marketing Glossary of Terms
Influencer marketing is a fairly new, vastly unregulated space with many “buzz words” flying around and new terms coming up what seems like every second day.
To help guide you on your influencer marketing journey, we’ve put together the definitive influencer marketing glossary of terms that you need to know to navigate the influencer marketing space. Bookmark this glossary so you have it on hand - we’ll be updating it regularly too!
A
Activation
An activation is an offline PR or marketing initiative to drive consumers to action through interactions and experiences, such as an event. A media or influencer event or activation is a key influencer marketing strategy that many brands use to engage, leverage and connect with influencers.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a mutually beneficial arrangement where referral partners are rewarded for their role in helping a brand drive a conversion. In influencer marketing, affiliate marketing is one strategy to use to engage influencers and provide compensation for their time, effort and support. In most cases, the original referral partner (the influencer, in this case) receives a percentage of the final sale depending on the affiliate agreement.
Agency
In the context of influencer marketing, an agency can be one of two things - it’s either a marketing, media, advertising or public relations agency acting on behalf of a brand (e.g. running influencer campaigns) or it could be a talent management agency that represents influencers. Either way, agencies work on behalf of a client to develop, execute or contribute to influencer campaigns and/or secure opportunities for the client.
Agency Service Fee
An agency service fee is an additional fee applied to influencer quotes when a third party represents or manages the influencer and their commercial opportunities. Agency service fees typically range from 5% to 20% of the influencer’s fee and are added on top of the influencer’s fee to cover the cost of the talent manager’s time in organizing the collaboration and logistics.
AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
A marketing model that explains a consumers steps before purchasing a product or service.
Ambassador
An ambassador is someone who represents a brand and is typically the face of a marketing campaign for a period of time. Engaging influencers to be a brand ambassador is a key influencer marketing strategy and can have a big impact on your brand if the influencer is an authentic fit for the campaign.
Amplify
In influencer marketing, amplify means to optimise the content and take steps to make it perform better, such as paying to boost it on Facebook or using a content distribution model to increase impressions, engagements and/or clicks or reach a new, extended audience.
Application Program Interface (API)
A set of commands, functions and objects that programmers can use to create applications or software.
Audience
Audience can mean one of two things, it’s either the group of consumers that the brand is trying to reach (their target audience) or it is the cohort of people that follow a particular influencer. Influencer marketing works best when the audience the brand wants to attract is demographically and geographically the same as the audience of the influencer.
B
Backlink
A backlink is a link pointing to your own website from another website property. It’s important to build a high-quality backlink profile to support your SEO strategy and drive leads to your own website from referral partners. High profile bloggers and websites are preferred over social media influencers when seeking backlinks to your website.
BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)
This abbreviation is used during Sales Strategies and meetings. So, when creating a sales pitch you would figure out if the potential client has a budget to spend, does the person you’re speaking to have the authority to purchase what you’re offering, is there a need for your goods or service and what is the timeline you have to work with.
Benchmark
A benchmark is a point of reference that things can be measured against to determine success or failure. For example, a previous influencer campaign may have gained 5 million impressions, so the benchmark for the next campaign is 5 million impressions.
Best Practice
Best Practice means the steps, procedures, guidelines or knowledge that is accepted as being correct or the most effective in an industry. For example, a best practice in influencer marketing is to pay influencers, or offer some sort of compensation, for their time and contribution to your digital marketing strategy.
Blog
A blog is an online property that is regularly updated with written, image and video content by the website owner or blogger (see below). Influencers often use a blog as one of their online platforms to share and distribute content.
Blogger
A blogger is someone who owns a blog and regularly updates it with new content. A blogger might just have a blog for fun and to share information with friends and family, it may be for their business, or it could be their main source of income as a digital influencer.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness means increasing exposure and recall of your brand among consumers. Brand awareness is a common goal of an influencer marketing strategy, particularly for brands that are launching or releasing a new product and want consumers to know about it.
Brief
A brief is used in influencer marketing to provide clear context, deliverables and requirements to influencers that a brand is collaborating with. Sending influencers a brief when you are working with them (and only when you are paying them) is a great way to manage expectations and ensure content is delivered on brand.
Business to Business (B2B)
Business to Business, which is often abbreviated to B2B, is used to describe a business whose customers are other businesses. Essentially it is a business that provides a product or service that helps another business - like Scrunch!
Business to Consumer (B2C)
Business to Consumer, which is often abbreviated to B2C, is used to describe a business whose customers are general people (i.e. not businesses).
C
Call-To-Action (CTA)
A call-to-action is a commanding phrase, sentence or word that draws people to perform a desirable behavior. When working with an influencer, it is important that they include an effective call-to-action in their content to drive their followers to do something that benefits the brand. For example, a call-to-action might be sharing a website link to drive traffic, encouraging new sign ups to a newsletter, distributing a discount code to increase sales or any other behaviour that gets consumers closer to a conversion with the brand.
Campaign
A campaign is the execution of a strategy to achieve a goal. In influencer marketing, the term campaign is used to describe a particular strategy, period of time or the work that contributes to a particular goal. Brands create an influencer marketing campaign and invite influencers to collaborate and contribute to the campaign in a creative capacity or for content distribution.
Case Study
A case study is a report that documents the success of an influencer marketing strategy or campaign and can be used as a testimonial for the business. Case studies are a portfolio of work that demonstrate capability and celebrate success (you can read our case studies here).
Celebrity Influencer
A celebrity influencer is an influencer with a very large following on social media and is typically a media personality. The following guidelines indicate who is likely to be a celebrity influencer based on an analysis of 6.3 million social media accounts:
Instagram: 1,800,000+
Facebook: 4,900,000+
Twitter: 1,000,000+
Click-Through-Rate
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is used to calculate the proportion of web users who followed a hyperlink to a particular page from an original piece of content. In influencer marketing, understanding the CTR of an influencer collaboration is important to identify whether the influencer drove traffic to your website.
Commission
A commission is a portion of a sale that is paid to the referral partner for their contribution in converting the lead. In influencer marketing, influencers earn a commission when they are working with a brand in an affiliate capacity and successfully drive consumers to purchase a product as a result of their influence.
Content
Content is a collective term used to describe an image, video, blog post and/or written material.
Content Approval
When brands are working with influencers, they may ask that the content is approved by their team before it is published by the influencer. This is common practice to ensure that the content is on brand and does not contain anything that might be damaging to the brand (such as a legal consideration or a conflict of interest).
Content Calendar
A content calendar is an editorial schedule that an influencer or content/social media marketer uses to plan content for their platform/s. A content calendar could be a diary, spreadsheet, calendar app or wall planner.
Content Management System (CMS)
A software application or set of related programs to help you create and manage your digital content.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategy that relies on producing consistent, high-quality content to engage an audience, increase brand awareness, build authority, gain press and convert leads. Some may argue that social media and influencer marketing are forms of content marketing, however, we like to keep them separate as each will have a different goal and outcome for your business and requires a completely unique resource and strategy to execute.
Contra Strategy
Contra Strategy is an influencer marketing strategy that relies on influencers creating and sharing content about your brand in exchange for a product. There is no guarantee with a contra strategy that any exposure, coverage, content or conversion will come of it, however, it is an ideal strategy for brands who are just starting out and don’t have a large budget for paying influencers but do have a great product.
Conversion
A conversion occurs when a marketing initiative, such as an influencer collaboration, successfully achieves the goal of a campaign. For example, if the goal is to increase sales, a conversion is when a sale is made as a direct result of the strategy.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO is the process of increasing the percentage of conversations and adjusting the flow to get better results.
Copyright
Copyright refers to content ownership. The copyright owner of the content is the original creator of the content, unless the content is purchased from the copyright owner and a fair and reasonable agreement of joint-copyright is reached. When an influencer posts about your brand, you do not automatically own the copyright of the content.
Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA)
A marketing metric that measures the cost of acquiring one customer. It is used to measure the financial impact of marketing campaigns and what the ROI is on a campaign. For example, if you spend $10,000 on a marketing campaign and only convert one customer, the CPA is $10,000 (which is not great!).
Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is used to understand the cost of a consumer clicking on a marketing or advertising initiative and landing on a brand’s website or specific landing page. Understanding the CPC helps marketers assess whether the campaign was successful, and the cost of acquiring new leads. CPC is also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
Cost-Per-Lead (CPL)
A performance based advertising model in which payment or a commission is paid based on the amount of leads or conversions that are generated.
Cost-Per-Mille (CPM)
Cost-Per-Mille (CPM) or Cost-Per-Thousand (CPT) refers to the cost per one thousand views or impressions. It is the cost you will pay, or have paid, per 1,000 units (impressions or views) and is often used in marketing and advertising to understand the cost of reaching 1 x consumer.
Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE)
Like CPC or CPM, Cost-Per-engagement (CPE) is a measurement term that refers to the cost that is required or was spent per engagement on the content.
Creator Economy
The creator economy is a term that describes a new marketplace that has emerged where the supply and demand of influence, distribution and content creation is exchanged and measured. As influencer marketing evolves, influencers are not only employed by brands to influence, they are now engaged to create content, provide creative strategic concepts, execute campaigns, build community conversation, provide feedback on a product, be the voice of authority and so much more. The trade of this valuable resource is called the Creator Economy.
Copy
Copy is written content.
Collaboration
A collaboration is when two parties work together to achieve a common goal. In influencer marketing, a collaboration is often between an influencer and a brand and can take on many forms as a strategic campaign.
D
Data-Driven
Data-driven means that a strategy, task, initiative or campaign is developed and executed based on analysis of available data.
For example, Scrunch prides itself on being a data-driven influencer marketing platform, helping brands use data to shape their influencer marketing campaigns by supplying metrics like social reach, engagement and topic analysis.
Another example is using Google Analytics to identify the key websites already driving traffic to your website and contacting them to collaborate on a bigger campaign, as you know (based on that data) that their audience is already interested in your product.
Deliverables
Deliverables are the items that an influencer is expected to produce, as confirmed in the outreach and negotiation phase. The deliverables might be an Instagram post, 10 images of the product or coverage at an event, depending on the campaign.
Digital Conversation
Digital conversation is the discussion that happens online on social media, blogs, forums and news media surrounding a topic.
Analyzing the online discussion about a brand is a great way to benchmark how consumers currently perceive the brand and understand what’s important to them right now. It can also be used in post campaign analysis to see how perception has changed as a result of the influencer campaign.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is an umbrella term used to describe initiatives and strategies that are executed online. Social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing and content marketing all come under the digital marketing umbrella.
Disclosure
Disclosure is the action of making it known to consumers whether a brand has engaged an influencer to produce content as an advertisement or marketing initiative.
Disclosure is becoming increasingly popular in the influencer marketing space as more guidelines, rules and regulations come into effect around the world (you can read the current Australian disclosure guidelines here).
Distribution Channel
A distribution channel is the platform used to post/share content. It could be social media, a blog or website, email or other platform that is used to send out, amplify or publish content to an audience.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do’s and Don’ts are usually included in an influencer brief to outline the expectations for content development when working with an influencer.
The Do’s and Don’ts highlight branding cues to help ensure the content is on-brand and reflects the brand’s core values. For example, if you want your logo featured in the image, that’s a ‘Do’.
Drive Traffic
Drive Traffic means to send web users to your website. An influencer marketing campaign that aims to drive traffic to a website should include a direct link to the website and a clear call-to-action to encourage consumers to click-through to the website, so influencers with a platform that supports links (such as Facebook, Twitter or a blog) are required if this is the KPI.
E
Earned Media
Earned media is media coverage received as a result of a PR campaign, word of mouth, direct referrals, press, viral marketing, customer reviews and user-generated content. It’s coverage that you have earned because of something you have done, and not coverage that has been paid for or is on your own platforms. Earned media can be positive or negative.
eCommerce
eCommerce is a transaction that is done electronically on the internet via an online store. Influencer marketing is great for eCommerce businesses because consumers can take immediate action from an influencer post and can purchase a product in minutes with a few clicks.
EDM
EDM is an abbreviation of Electronic Direct Marketing, also known as email marketing. Email marketing is used for customer acquisition and retention and is an effective way to add value to your community, stay front-of-mind and drive new leads. To do email marketing effectively you should make sure your marketing strategy helps build your email list.
Engagement
An engagement is where a consumer takes some kind of action on content. For example: liking, commenting, sharing, reacting or re-tweeting are all forms of engagement.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the proportion of an influencer's audience that actively interacts with their content.
For example, to calculate engagement rate for an Instagram account, look at the account’s last 12 posts and work out the average engagement per post (likes + comments for all posts divided by 12) and then divide the average engagement rate by the number of followers. To get a percentage, times that total by 100. The average engagement rate for Instagram is 1-5%.
F
Facebook Live
Facebook Live is a Facebook feature that allows users to live stream video content to their followers and audience. Facebook Live videos are published live, and remain on the platform for users to see after the video has ended.
Filter
Filter is a term used in social media marketing to describe the predefined editing layers that are available on particular social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. A filter can be used to change and edit the colors of an image (such as make it brighter, lighter or black and white) or it could be an overlay such as the classic flower crown or dog ears of Snapchat.
Flatlay
A flatlay is a style of photography often used by influencers when creating content about a brand they are collaborating with. Flatlays are styled images captured from above and usually portray a theme or group of items that would be used together. Read ten tips for capturing the perfect flatlay.
Follow
A way in which you subscribe to a brand’s or influencer’s social media updates.
Follower
A follower is the audience of a brand, influencer or social media user.
Follower Range
Follower range is a term of measurement used to categorize influencers based on the number of followers they have. For example, influencers with a low follower range are micro-influencers while influencers with a large follower range are called macro-influencers or celebrity influencers. The cost of an influencer is usually dictated by their follower range.
Full Commercial Content Usage
Full Commercial Content Usage means you have negotiated and secured the right to use influencer generated content across your channels in any way without crediting the influencer.
By default, if you have paid an influencer to post about your brand, or even if they have done it of their own accord, you don't own the content. While you can share it on your social channels if you follow the industry best practices for sharing influencer content, you don’t own the image, which means you don’t have the right to alter it in any way, share without crediting the influencer or use it to advertize your products.
If you have secured Full Commercial Content Usage Rights by negotiating and, in some cases, paying the influencer an additional fee, then you are able to use the content as you see fit and without credit on your online and offline channels.
G
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an online tool that helps you track, measure and report on the performance of your website and how users interact with your website. Google Analytics is helpful for understanding referrals, users, sessions, new users, pageviews, conversions (if eCommerce tracking is set up), audience behaviour and demographics.
Ground-swell Approach
A ground-swell approach to influencer marketing is a specific strategy that is used to drive brand awareness and exposure by leveraging a large cohort of micro-influencers who can start the conversation from the ground up.
This influencer marketing strategy is great for brands that are entering a new market or launching a new product because it is a mass-approach and quite often, micro-influencers have a more engaged audience and a personal connection with their network.
Guest Post
A guest post is when a website owner invites another writer to publish an article on their website. Brands often engage influencers to guest post on their website or onsite blog as part of their influencer marketing strategy to create high-quality, engaging content on their platforms and drive new consumers to their website.
H
Hashtag
A hashtag is a label used on social media platforms to group content together. Any word can be a hashtag if you put a # in front of it on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram. Check out #scrunchtip for an example.
I
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times a given piece of content has been viewed.
It’s important to understand the value of impressions, and how to get this data from an influencer both before and after a collaboration. One impression means the content has been shown to one user, but doesn’t necessarily mean they have read the post, stopped to look at the image or engaged with the content.
Impressions are a good metric to understand how many people an influencer post actually reached. Most of the time, it is less than all of their followers due to changing social media algorithms and posting time, however, it is a good indicator of the performance of the post nonetheless.
Influencer
An influencer is an individual who can drive another person, or a community of people, to take some kind of action. An influencer can be someone with one follower or one million followers, as long as their audience trusts their opinion and is encouraged to respond and take action.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing at scale and consists of influential people sharing content, thoughts and opinions online about products, services and experiences. Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing strategies as consumers start trusting branded advertising less.
Influencer Marketing Platform
An influencer marketing platform is an application or tool that helps brands, agencies, talent managers and influencers manage the influencer marketing process, such as finding and reaching out to influencers and managing campaigns.
Scrunch is an influencer marketing platform that helps brands and agencies find the right influencers for their campaigns, plus provides CRM and outreach style functions to make managing the process easy.
Instameet
An Instameet is an event where Instagram influencers can meet and connect over common experiences. An Instameet might be organized by a brand to connect with influencers in their industry, or it could be a gathering organized by an influencer to connect with other influencers in the community.
Instagram Live
Instagram Live is an Instagram feature that allows users to broadcast live and their followers can tune in to see exactly what they’re doing in the moment. The video is not saved to the social networking site, so it is only available for users that see it as it is happening.
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is an Instagram feature that allows users to upload daily videos to the social networking site. The videos expire within 24 hours and are not featured in the main feed.
J
Joint Copyright
Often when Full Commercial Content Usage is secured and agreed on, the brand and the influencer co-own the content under a joint copyright agreement. Joint copyright means two people or organizations own the content together and both can use, share and publish as they please, commercially or otherwise.
K
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key Performance Indicator means the primary goal or target that is to be achieved and an indicator of success that aligns with the business or campaign's objective. Every influencer marketing campaign should have a clear KPI to work towards so the strategy can be shaped to achieve it.
L
Like
A like is a feature in online software, such as social networks, forums, websites and blogs, where a user can express that they enjoy or support certain content, typically by pressing a button.
M
Macro Influencer
A macro influencer is a mid-tier influencer with a strong on one or two key digital platforms. The following guidelines indicate who a macro-influencer is based on an analysis of 6.3 million social media accounts:
Instagram: 133,000 to 1,800,000 followers
Facebook: 500,000 to 5,000,000 followers
Twitter:82,000 to 1,000,000 followers
Media Famil
A media famil, short for “media familiar,” is a trip or experience that is provided to the media, journalists and/or an influencer in the hope that they will share the brand and experience with their community.
Media famil trips are very common in the travel industry, where brands, tourism boards, airlines and accommodation partners often invite carefully selected influencers to travel on an all-expenses-paid-for trip to get to know a location, travel service, product or experience in the hope that it will result in promotional coverage.
Media Kit
A media kit is a digital document used by influencers when reaching out to brands for collaboration opportunities. A media kit is the CV or resume of influencers and contains information about their skills, experience, distribution channels, followers, contact details and other relevant statistics.
Media Spend
Media spend is the budget invested into a media initiative, campaign or strategy
In the case of influencer marketing, the media spend is the total budget intended to be used on securing influencer collaborations, content creation and amplification.
Micro-Influencer
A micro-influencer is someone who has a small but growing community on one or two key platforms. The following guidelines indicate who a micro-influencer is based on an analysis of 6.3 million social media accounts:
Instagram: 3,500 to 133,000 followers
Facebook: 13,000 to 500,000 followers
Twitter: 3,000 to 82,000 followers
Micro-influencers are generally highly engaged with their followers and have built personal relationships with their community as they grow with it. There are a number of benefits for working with micro-influencers in comparison to top-tier influencers.
Millennials
Millennials are a demographic cohort of people born in the 1980’s or 1990’s who reached young adulthood in the 21st century.
For many brands, millennials are their key target market, especially when it comes to influencer marketing, however, as Millennials are tech savvy, ‘in-touch’ and have grown up in the world of social media and the internet, engaging them should be a unique strategy.
Mommy Blogger
A Mommy Blogger (or Mummy Blogger depending on where you’re from) is a woman who shares her parenting, family and motherhood journey with her community via a blog or social platform.
A Mommy Blogger is anyone who blogs about topics that are relevant to other Moms and has children of their own. Mommy bloggers are an important part of the influencer marketing space and are a core target market for many campaigns.
N
Niche
A niche is a small segment of the population that has unique and very specific characteristics. Businesses often appeal to a niche audience via their products or service offering.
O
Optimize
In influencer marketing, optimize or optimization refers to making a piece of influencer content perform better or to its full potential.
Optimization is also explored in social media, content marketing and other digital marketing initiatives to ensure that content and strategies are performing well.
Organic
Organic, in the influencer marketing space, means something happened naturally, without intervention via a paid model.
For example, an influencer might report that a Facebook post reached 354 people organically before it was boosted for $30 and reached a combined (organic and paid) total of 6,846 people.
Outreach
Outreach is the term used to describe the process of contacting influencers and engaging them to participate in an influencer marketing campaign. There are best practices involved in influencer outreach that should be followed for the best results.
Owned Media
Owned media is branded content that you have produced and published on your own platforms and is controlled by you to promote your own business. Owned media can be anything from a social media or blog post to an image, infographic, white paper, eBook or webinar.
P
Pageviews
Pageviews are a metric used in analytics platforms to show how many pages of a website were consumed during a specific time period or date range.
This metric is interesting for website owners to see how many pages on their site are being viewed, and if individual users are consuming multiple pages in a session. If you want to increase pageviews and get more traffic to your website, these tips might be helpful.
Paid Media
Paid Media is any media coverage or advertising that you have paid for as part of your marketing strategy.
Paid media includes amplification strategies via tools like Outbrain, sponsored editorial, Print advertising, television commercials, influencer marketing, celebrity ambassadorships, Facebook ads and Adwords campaigns.
Paid Post
A paid post is a post on a blog or social media channel that has been paid for, or where some form of compensation (monetary or otherwise) has been provided. Paid post is often used to describe influencer content that has been published in collaboration with a brand.
Paid Reach
Like a paid post, paid reach is impressions that have been earned via a paid model where money is put into the amplification of the content. The organic reach and paid reach of a social media post if often compared to measure ROI.
Pitch
A pitch consists of either an influencer bidding their services, skills and influence to a brand in an attempt to get work, or a brand bidding to an influencer. Either way, a pitch needs to be carefully constructed and both parties must clearly align for it to be positively received.
Podcast
A podcast is audio content that is delivered in a regular series, usually around a particular topic or theme, or featuring the same talent.
Podcasters are certainly influencers and brands can tap into them to reach a targeted audience and collaborate to have their product or service feature in a podcast for exposure to the audience.
Public Relations
Public Relations is an industry within the marketing and advertising space that specialises in securing media coverage for brands, businesses and personalities (their clients). It is a strategic communications role that sources opportunities to drive new leads and increase brand awareness and also maintain the public image and reputation of the client.
Q
Qualify
In the influencer marketing space, qualify is used in the context of evaluating influencers for your campaign. Some brands and campaigns have prerequisites (such as a high domain authority) that an influencer must have to be involved in a campaign, so a process of qualifying influencers will take place.
R
Reach
Reach is the total number of followers an influencer or brand has on a specific social media platform or as a combined total of all of their platforms. It’s essentially the size of the audience, so if an influencer has 45,000 followers on Instagram and 23,600 on Facebook, their combined reach is 68,600. Teach = audience size.
Regram
A regram is a repost on Instagram, where an Instagram user reposts another Instagram users image to their own feed.
We don’t recommend doing this without prior approval from the original content creator. When regramming content on Instagram it is important to follow best practices for regram etiquette and remember that you don’t own the content.
Return On Investment (ROI)
Return On Investment (ROI) is the value received for the investment made.
In influencer marketing, the ROI indicates the success of the campaign and the measure of success will depend on the campaign goal. The ROI might be achieved when the influencer collaboration drives sales in excess of the cost of the influencer post, or when the brand receives content from an influencer that they can use on their platforms.
Repost
In the digital space, repost or reposting is often used to describe the action of sharing another person's content on your own digital platforms, or sharing content for a second time. A repost could be a regram on Instagram or sharing a blog article on your platforms a second time.
Retweet
A Retweet is a Twitter-specific phrase used to describe the action of sharing and reposting another person's Tweet onto your own Twitter channel. Retweet is a form of engagement on Twitter, similar to sharing on Facebook.
S
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of helping your website have visibility in search results on search engines.
It’s critical that your website is SEO friendly to ensure you are ranking for your keywords and topics in search results so that potential customers can find you when looking for information about your business or industry. Many brands use Influencers to create blog content to drive backlinks to their website, an important SEO strategy.
Sentiment
Sentiment is an opinion, either positive, negative or neutral, that is openly expressed. In influencer marketing, sentiment is used to analyze the audience's response to a brand or influencer content, so we can understand whether the audience had a positive response to the campaign, or a negative one.
Share
A share is a form of engagement used on Facebook to repost a user’s post onto your own wall. A share on Facebook is similar to a Retweet on Twitter.
Snapchat Stories
Snapchat Stories is a Snapchat feature where content is displayed to your followers for a 24-hour period, and then deleted completely from the platform. You can always add content to your Snapchat stories and any of your followers can view it as many times as they want before it disappears after 24 hours.
Snapchat Memories
Snapchat Memories is a Snapchat feature where you can save your images permanently inside the app rather than downloading them to your camera roll. It’s a searchable and shareable archive (only if you save content to your Snapchat Memories) of your Snapchat videos and images.
Social Media
Social Media is a collective term used to describe websites and apps that allow users to create content and share it with their audience. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter are all social media platforms.
Social Media Platform (SMP)
Any online platform that users can socialise and connect with others through. For example, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter are all social media platforms.
T
Tag
A tag is typically a @tag on a social media post, such as a tag on an image on Instagram or a tag in the caption of a Facebook post. A tag links through to the another user’s page on that platform.
Influencers are often asked to tag brands in their posts when they are collaborating on a campaign so consumers know what the brand is and where to find more information.
Talent Manager
A talent manager is someone who manages commercial partnerships on behalf of talent, such as a celebrity, influencer or media personality.
Macro influencer and celebrity influencers, and increasingly micro-influencers now too, typically have talent managers who represent them when negotiating commercial partnerships with brands, so if you want to work with these high-profile influencers, you need to connect with the talent managers who represent them.
Target Audience
The target audience is the ideal consumer that the brand wants to attract with their marketing efforts and is the people that align most with the brand and product/service offering.
Terms of Service (TOS)
Are the ‘rules’ that users must agree to before using a particular product or service.
Tracking Links
A tracking link is a link that is included in digital marketing campaigns, and particularly in influencer marketing, to help brands track, measure and report on the success of an influencer collaboration.
A UTM tracking link is a unique link that will show up as a referral in web analytics software and helps you understand who the referral partner is, and the traffic or sales they drove on your website.
Transparency
Transparency is the act of being open and honest and is critical in influencer marketing for both brands, marketers and influencers. This includes being open and honest about your intentions, data and any other factor involved in a collaboration.
Try-On Haul
A try-on haul is a type of content, typically video, in the fashion industry where influencers are sent a number of different clothing pieces and share the fitting room experience with their followers as they try on the new range.
Try-on hauls can be prearranged by the brand, or it could be something that happens organically in conjunction with a number of other brands who have sent the influencer products to try.
U
User Experience (UX)
UX stands for User Experience and refers to the consumers feelings and attitudes after using a service, product or software. Understanding the user experience helps brands to optimise their channels and fix pain points to ultimately drive a desired result.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-Generated Content, or UGC for short, is content that is created and shared organically by users and customers.
In influencer marketing, your campaign goal might be to encourage user-generated content so customers and fans of the brand share a picture of your brand on their own social media platforms and join the community. These people are not necessarily influencers, however, they do have influence in their personal networks of friends and family.
User-Interface (UI)
UI is a technical term used to describes the relationship and interactions between the user and the technology behind a website, app or digital product.
Unique Visitor (UV)
The term “unique visitor” Is used in web analytics to measure the performance of a website or web page. For example, if you’re measuring a 30 day time period and the same IP address visits your site multiple times they’re only counted once as that is one unique user.
V
Views
Views is a measurement term used to describe the number of people who consumed or watched a piece of content, and is specifically used on video content. Views are similar to impressions or pageviews.
Viral
Viral is a term used to describe content that is circulated or shared rapidly by a large cohort of users in a short period of time. In the digital space, new content goes viral every day, mainly when humour or emotion is involved.
Viral Marketing (VM)
A marketing strategy that encourages consumers to spread the brands message far and wide, usually with a short time period. It refers to how users spread information about a product quickly and at mass.
W
Webinar
A webinar is a seminar conducted over the internet where participants tune in via a unique link or login to access the content.
Work in Progress (WIP)
Abbreviation used to describe projects or tasks that are still being worked on.
Word-Of-Mouth
Word-of-mouth, or WOM, is a marketing strategy that relies on people sharing their feedback, opinion, review and experiences about a product or service with their personal community of friends and family.
Influencer marketing is word-of-mouth at scale, where personal reviews and experiences can reach a mass-audience of people who trust an influencers opinion.
X
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Y
YouTube Video Exclusive
An exclusive YouTube video is a YouTube video that is about a particular brand and does not feature any other brands or competitor products. In influencer media kits, especially YouTubers, there is often a special rate for exclusive YouTube content that only features your brand. Typically exclusive videos cost more than non-exclusive videos.
YouTube Video Non-Exclusive
A non-exclusive YouTube video is a YouTube video that includes multiple brands and products, including direct competitors. In influencer media kits, especially YouTubers, there is often a special rate for non-exclusive YouTube content that features your brand in conjunction with other brands and products. Typically non-exclusive videos are cheaper than exclusive videos, however, your brand and product is mentioned alongside many others.
YouTuber
A YouTuber is a digital influencer with a large and active presence on Youtube and an engaged community of subscribers. They are typically most known for their work on YouTube and brands engage them to create and share video content.
Z
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Is there an influencer marketing term we have missed in this glossary? Let us know if there is something you’d love us to include, whether it is a term you want to know more about, or something that you know others might be interested in learning more about. You can get in touch any time!
