AT our workshops for small businesses, charities and public bodies looking to find out more about social media - and starting from a position of quiet terror, we include a jargon buster to take away, along with other information, including further resources.
We're putting together an exclusive package for Business over Breakfast members from across the UK and thought it would be helpful to show potential attendees some of the terms this jargon buster contains.
At one such workshop last week, one lady said quite clearly that it was the way this 'gobbledegook' prevailed that helped power her nerves about diving in and getting started with social media tools such as Twitter, facebook and blogs.
We hope this list may help. We know it's only a beginning. But you may find the rest of the answers you are looking for in the recommended reading detailed below, or by coming along to one of our Social Media for Beginners sessions.
Blog: short for web log. Some may say an online diary. But a blog can be any website published through blogging software. It can be hugely professional and may well have left any 'folksy' image behind.
Feed: same as RSS (see below)
Feedburner: site/service allowing you to add a feed to your blog to deliver your content to readers without them having to physically visit your site to read it, preferring instead to subscribe to various feeds.
Follow Friday: Twitter initiative where tweeters recommend others to follow – and should explain why – some calls for it to be done away with…
Google reader: service to bring feeds from your favourite blogs together to help you read them in one place
Hashtags: created by adding # to a 'tweet' on Twitter – terms invented to add to tweets on a given subject and build a community of tweets/build towards a ‘trending topic’
Meme: seen by some as similar in nature to a ‘chain letter’ circulated online. Bloggers invent them and ask others to take part – then tag others to do the same, creating links to their blogs in the process
Ping: (short for packet internet gopher.) This allows a site you want to know your content on a blog has been updated that it has been updated. Letting them know is a ping.
Permalink: You may see this term under a blog post. It means permanent link to a specific post so if people want to link to you, they can link to that 'permalink' using its address.
Podcast:audio file made available online
RSS: Really Simple Syndication. Delivers internet content to subscribers
Social bookmarking: Marking up, storing and sharing internet content.
Tag: A means of marking it up - descriptive label used to order content
Technorati: blog search engine, currently undergoing major changes
TinyURL: website service providing less cumbersome links for when you want to link to something online, for example in a forum or on Twitter.
Trending topics: most popular subjects on twitter in a given period of time Tweet: to publish something on Twitter or noun describing a message published on Twitter
Vlog: a blog where the content is provided in the form of video
Wiki: website allowing users to edit content, most famously (and controversially) in Wikipedia.
Web 2.0Overall term used to describe how online content has been opened up to be created and shared by users.
Recommended further reading:
This is Social Media: Tweet, Blog, Link and Post Your Way to Business Success- (Paperback) By Guy Clapperton
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101 - Twitter’s own guide on how to use Twitter for business •
Nice article and thanks for sharing.
Posted by: AhsanShankar | November 16, 2009 at 02:35 PM