Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

When Social Media comes up around the water cooler or in client meetings, do you cringe and try to fluff your way through the terminology? Here are some of today’s common terms when it comes to the Social Web so you don’t have to feel so lost:

Avatars – Graphic images representing people. An animated version of your online persona, it may or may not be an authentic representation of yourself.

Blogs – Websites designed in journal format, with most recent items at the top of a page, and written in a conversational, personal style, giving the author an authentic voice online.

Blogroll – A list of sites displayed in the sidebar of blog, showing what other blog sites the author reads regularly.

Bookmarking – Saving the address of a website article, either in your brower, or on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us.

Community Building – Attracting and helping an audience to find shared interests and goals, use the technology, and develop useful conversations.

Content – Text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.

Crowdsourcing – Harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are willing to volunteer their time contributing content and solving problems.

Email Lists – Names and emails collected through sign up forms that are kept in one place so you can send mass emails to them in the form of a newsletter. It is best to use an email service provider for this rather than manage it on your own so you comply with spam laws.

Feeds – A way to read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing.

Links – Highlighted text that, when clicked, take you from one web page to another. Bloggers use links a lot when writing, to reference their own or other content. Linking is another aspect of sharing, by which you offer content that may be linked, and acknowledge the value of other’s people’s contributions by linking to them.

Podcast – audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically to a website so you can view or listen offline.

Post – a blog article or entry in a forum.

Profile – The information you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. Usually contains a picture and basic information, your personal and business interests, a “blurb” about yourself, and tags to help people search for like-minded people.

RSS – Short for Really Simple Syndication. It allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed.

Social Media – A term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online.

Social Networking Sites – Online places where users can create a profile for themselves and engage with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums and messaging.

Subscribing – Signing up to receive information regularly from a particular website by feed or newsletter.

Tags – Keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches. Remember tags are common terms that people would normally use in their searches.

Web 2.0 – A term coined in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0).

Wiki – A web page – or set of pages – that can be edited collaboratively. The best known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thousands of contributors across the world.

Are there any terms we forgot, or that you’re still confused about? Let us know by commenting below and we’ll help!