The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Marketing Terminology

Do you know what TLA stands for? Three letter acronym.

As marketers, we are often challenged with understanding a myriad of terms to describe the what, how, and how much of various channels. Lucky for ya'll, we spend a bit of time on Instagram and so have prepared a glossary of Instagram marketing terms you just gotta know. Dash Hudson helps brands to measure and monitor these metrics to drive business results.

Consider these your Insta ABCs, your indispensible lexicon of IG lingo, basically the only vocabulary you need to sound smarter than everyone else when discussing your feed's performance. Tee hee.

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Instagram 101: Social Media Marketing Vocabulary

Audience Influence Rating: A custom metric defined by Dash Hudson that provides a rating of the relative influence of a particular audience (ie. how influential Reformation’s following is).

Conversion Rate: This can mean a few things, but in our case it means the number of fans who click on the activated link in a brand or publisher’s profile, and then click through to visit a specified page from our shoppable Instagram solution.

Earned Reach: Or Instagram Reach is the size of the audience that has been reached via posts featuring a brand or publisher, but created by and posted on someone else’s feed. This type of content is often referred to as user-generated content or UGC.

Engagement Ratio: Engagement ratio is defined by calculating the total number of likes and comments received on a post, and dividing it by the number of followers of the account that posted. For example, 1,000 combined likes and comments on a post by someone with 100,000 followers means an engagement ratio of 1%.

Followers Earned: The number of followers a brand or publisher receives as a result of a sponsored post. For example, an influencer features Levi’s in a post. This measures how many followers Levi’s received from the influencer as a result of that post.

Key Fan: A custom metric defined by Dash Hudson that surfaces the most influential and engaged fans of your brand or publication.

Followers Provided: The number of followers an influencer or publisher provides to a sponsor’s account. For example, Glamour Magazine features Clinique in a post. This measures how many followers Clinique received from Glamour as a result of that post.

Hashtag: You know what a hashtag is.

Instagram CPM or Influencer CPM: CPM stands for cost per mille, aka cost per thousand. This is a metric for measuring the cost / value of an influencer. For example, a $20 CPM would mean that an influencer with 100,000 followers would cost a sponsor $2,000.

Influencer: An influencer is defined as someone who produces highly engaging, organic content for a large audience, and often has an expertise in a particular domain (food, fashion, etc). We define an influencer as having more than 10k followers, and with an engagement ratio higher than 1.5%. Can also be referred to as content creator or tastemaker.

Organic Reach: Same as earned reach. The size of the audience that has been reached via posts featuring a brand or publisher, but created by and posted on someone else’s feed. This type of content is often referred to as user-generated content or UGC.

Paid Reach: The size of the audience that has been reached by a sponsored (aka paid) post on Instagram.

Photo Comment Mention: A comment mention is when a user @ mentions your account in a comment that accompanies a photo on their feed.

Photo Tag: A photo tag is when a user tags your account in a photo.

Owned Reach: The size of the audience that has been reached by a post through a brand or publisher’s own Instagram feed.

Scheduling and Publishing: A set of tools that enable you to schedule your Instagram content in advance and automatically publish it to your feed at a set time. We have a rad one for scheduling your social media posts.

Shoppable Instagram: Any number of technologies that make a post on Instagram clickable. This can refer to technologies like Liketoknow.it for influencer posts, or LikeShop for making your own brand or publisher feed shoppable.

User-Generated Content: Photos and videos created by fans of a brand, publisher or celebrity.

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