PostEaseThe short answer
This glossary defines ninety-eight social media terms in a sentence each, from ai content label to YouTube Trends tab. Every definition is the first line of the term’s full entry on this blog, where it is explained with examples, figures and the sources behind them.
The most recent sources behind these entries include LinkedIn, Pinterest, AT Protocol and YouTube, each named and dated in the entry that cites it.
Terms A to P
Each term links to its full entry from the list at the end of this page.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AI content label | An AI content label is a note on a post that tells viewers it was made or changed with artificial intelligence. |
| Algorithm | A social media algorithm gathers the posts a person could see, predicts what that person is likely to do with each one (stop, watch, reply, share, save, scroll past, hide), and shows the posts with the best predictions first. |
| Alt text | Alt text, short for alternative text, is a written description attached to an image. |
| Ask Studio on YouTube | Ask Studio is a chat assistant built into YouTube Studio. |
| Aspect ratio | An aspect ratio is the shape of an image or video: its width against its height, written as two numbers. |
| Audience retention | Audience retention is how much of a video people keep watching, shown as a curve of the share of viewers still watching at each moment. |
| Bluesky custom feed | A Bluesky custom feed is a timeline you choose instead of, or beside, the defaults. |
| Bluesky handle | A Bluesky handle is your username, and it is written like a web address: name.bsky.social by default, or a domain you own, such as yourname.com. |
| Bluesky starter pack | A Bluesky starter pack is a named collection of recommended accounts and custom feeds that anyone can share as a link. |
| Bluesky verification | Bluesky has two layers of verification. |
| Brand voice | Brand voice is the personality a brand writes and speaks with, kept the same in every post, caption, reply and video, whoever writes it. |
| Bulk scheduling | Bulk scheduling is scheduling many posts at once, usually by uploading a spreadsheet saved as a CSV file, with one row per post: the caption, the platform, the date and the time. |
| Call to action | A call to action, or CTA, is the line in a post that asks people to do one specific thing next: follow, save, comment a word, tap the link in bio, sign up. |
| Carousel post | A carousel post is a single post that holds several images or videos, which people swipe through one after another. |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who saw something and clicked it: clicks divided by impressions, written as a percentage. |
| Comment-to-DM automation | A comment-to-DM automation watches the comments on your posts and, when someone comments a word you chose, such as “guide” or “link”, sends them a private message on its own. |
| Community Note on X | A Community Note is a short piece of context attached to a post on X, written and rated by volunteer contributors. |
| Content approval workflow | A content approval workflow is the set of steps a post goes through before it publishes: someone drafts it, someone else reviews it, and it goes out only once it is approved. |
| Content calendar | A content calendar is a schedule of what you will post, on which platform, and when, planned days or weeks ahead. |
| Content pillar | A content pillar is one of a few recurring themes an account posts about, such as how-tos, behind the scenes, customer results and opinions. |
| Creator economy | The creator economy is the market of independent people who earn from content they make for an audience they built themselves, and of the businesses that pay them or sell to them. |
| Cross-posting | Cross-posting is publishing the same post to more than one platform, either by hand or with a setting or tool that copies it for you. |
| Edits app | Edits is a video creation app from Instagram, separate from the Instagram app, for recording and editing short videos on a phone. |
| Engagement bait | Engagement bait is a post that asks people to like, comment, share or tag for the sake of the numbers, rather than for a reason that helps them: “Like if you agree”, “Comment YES”, “Tag three friends”. |
| Engagement rate | Engagement rate is the share of people who did something with a post (liked, commented, shared, saved) out of the people it reached, the times it was shown, or the account’s followers, multiplied by 100. |
| Facebook Content Monetization | Facebook Content Monetization is Facebook’s main programme for paying creators. |
| Facebook pro mode | Facebook pro mode turns a personal Facebook profile into a creator profile without making a new one. |
| Fediverse sharing on Threads | Fediverse sharing is a Threads setting that publishes your profile and posts to the fediverse, the network of independent servers such as Mastodon. |
| Hashtag | A hashtag is a word or phrase written after a # sign, such as #SmallBusinessTips, that labels what a post is about so people browsing or searching that topic can find it. |
| Hook | A hook is the opening of a post, the first one to three seconds of a video or the first line of a caption, built to make someone stay for what comes next. |
| Influencer marketing | Influencer marketing is a brand working with a creator to reach that creator’s audience, in exchange for money, free products, commission or exposure. |
| Instagram broadcast channel | An Instagram broadcast channel, which Instagram now mostly calls a channel, is a one-to-many chat in the Instagram inbox. |
| Instagram Close Friends | Instagram Close Friends is a list you choose of people who can see things you share only with them. |
| Instagram collab post | An Instagram collab post is one post or reel that two or more accounts publish together. |
| Instagram Notes | Instagram Notes are short text updates, up to 60 characters, that sit at the top of people’s Instagram inbox and above your profile picture on your profile. |
| Instagram Story | An Instagram Story is a full-screen photo or video that disappears after 24 hours. |
| Instagram Subscriptions | Instagram Subscriptions let a creator charge followers a monthly fee for subscriber-only content and benefits: stories, reels, posts and Lives only subscribers see, subscriber channels, and a badge that marks subscribers in comments and messages. |
| Link-in-bio page | A link-in-bio page is a single web page that you link from your social media profiles, and that holds everything you want people to reach: your shop, your latest video, your booking calendar, your newsletter, your other channels. |
| LinkedIn creator analytics | LinkedIn creator analytics are the numbers LinkedIn gives every member about their own content and audience: how posts perform over time, which posts did best, and who follows you by job title, location, industry, seniority and company. |
| LinkedIn document post | A LinkedIn document post is a post with a file attached, usually a PDF, that readers page through inside the feed. |
| LinkedIn Live | LinkedIn Live is live video streamed to your LinkedIn profile or Page, usually announced in advance as a Live Event that people can sign up for. |
| LinkedIn newsletter | A LinkedIn newsletter is a series of articles you publish on LinkedIn about one topic, which other members subscribe to. |
| Media kit | A media kit is a short page or PDF a creator sends to brands and partners. |
| Meta Business Suite | Meta Business Suite is Meta’s own workspace for running a business or creator presence across its apps. |
| Meta Verified | Meta Verified is a paid subscription from Meta that gives a creator’s Instagram or Facebook profile a verified badge, along with impersonation protection, chat and email support, and extra features in higher plans. |
| Open and closed captions | Captions are the words of a video shown as text on screen. |
| Open Graph | Open Graph is a set of tags in a web page’s code that tell social platforms how to show the page when someone shares its link: the title, a description, the picture and the address. |
| Organic reach | Organic reach is the number of different people who saw a post without any money spent to promote it: the platform’s feed and recommendations alone decided to show it to them. |
| Pinterest Analytics | Pinterest Analytics is the reporting built into a Pinterest business account. |
Terms P to Y
Read each definition with its full entry: most terms mean slightly different things on different platforms.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Pinterest board | A Pinterest board is a named collection of Pins, the way a folder holds files. |
| Pinterest Rich Pin | A Rich Pin is a Pin that shows extra details taken from the page it links to, such as an article’s headline and author, a recipe’s ingredients, or a product’s current price, and keeps them up to date. |
| Pinterest Trends | Pinterest Trends is Pinterest’s tool for seeing what people search for and save on Pinterest, region by region, over up to the last two years. |
| Posting cadence | Posting cadence is the rhythm an account posts on: how many posts, on which days, kept steady for weeks and months. |
| Reach vs impressions | Reach is the number of different people (unique accounts) who saw a post. |
| Reel | A Reel is a short vertical video on Instagram or Facebook, made to be watched full screen and shown to people who do not follow you as well as to those who do. |
| Shadowban | “Shadowban” is the name people give to a sudden drop in reach without any notice from the platform. |
| Social listening | Social listening is following what people say on social media about your brand, your competitors and your subject, including posts that never tag you, and acting on it. |
| Social media accessibility | An accessible post can be understood by people who cannot see the image, cannot hear the video, use a screen reader, or read slowly. |
| Social media audit | A social media audit is a periodic review of every account you run: whether each profile is complete and consistent, what you posted, how it performed against your own median, what your audience responded to, and where the gaps are. |
| Social media inbox | A social media inbox gathers the comments, messages and mentions from every account you run into one place, so you can read and reply without opening each app. |
| Social media policy | A social media policy is a short written set of rules for how a business uses social media and how its people talk about it. |
| Social media scheduler | A social media scheduler is a tool that publishes your posts at a time you choose, so you can write them ahead and have them go out without being online. |
| Social proof | Social proof is evidence that other people already chose, used or liked something, which makes a newcomer more willing to choose it too. |
| Text-based video editing | Text-based video editing means cutting a video by editing its transcript. |
| Threads communities | Threads communities are public spaces inside Threads for one topic, like basketball, TV, books or K-pop. |
| TikTok analytics | TikTok analytics are the reports in TikTok Studio that show how your account and posts perform: views and engagement, where viewers found you, how long they watched, who your viewers and followers are, and when they are on TikTok. |
| TikTok Creator Rewards Program | The Creator Rewards Program is how TikTok pays creators for their videos. |
| TikTok Creator Search Insights | Creator Search Insights is TikTok’s tool for searching on TikTok from a creator’s side. |
| TikTok Duet and Stitch | Duet and Stitch are TikTok’s two ways to make a video out of someone else’s. |
| TikTok Promote | TikTok Promote is TikTok’s in-app way to pay to show a post to more people. |
| TikTok Studio | TikTok Studio is TikTok’s workspace for creators: one place to upload, edit, schedule and manage posts, read analytics, and handle comments. |
| Trial reel | A trial reel is an Instagram Reel shown first to people who don’t follow you, not to your followers. |
| UGC (user-generated content) | UGC, user-generated content, is anything your customers or fans make about your brand on their own: a review, a photo of the product in use, an unboxing video, a post tagging you. |
| UTM parameter | A UTM parameter is a tag added to the end of a link, such as ?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring_sale, that tells your website analytics where a visitor came from. |
| Video cover | A video cover, also called a thumbnail, is the still image people see before a video plays: in the feed, on a profile grid, in search results and in a list of suggestions. |
| Webhook | A webhook is a message one app sends to another the moment something happens. |
| White-label report | A white-label report is a performance report that carries your agency’s or your own brand, logo and colours instead of the software’s, so a client sees your work presented as yours. |
| WordPress application password | A WordPress application password is a separate password you create for one tool, such as a scheduler, a mobile app or a script, so it can work with your site without knowing your real login password. |
| X Creator Subscriptions | X Creator Subscriptions let anyone pay a creator a monthly fee for subscriber-only content and closer access, such as bonus posts and conversation. |
| X Original Content Rewards | Original Content Rewards is X’s programme for paying creators, introduced in 2026 in place of Creator Revenue Sharing. |
| X Premium | X Premium is X’s paid subscription. |
| YouTube Analytics | YouTube Analytics is the set of reports in YouTube Studio that shows how a channel and each video perform: how people found them, how long they watched, who they are, and, for Partner Program channels, what they earned. |
| YouTube auto dubbing | YouTube auto dubbing, or automatic dubbing, generates translated audio tracks for your videos, so a viewer who speaks another language can listen in theirs. |
| YouTube channel memberships | YouTube channel memberships let viewers join a channel with a monthly payment and get members-only perks in return: badges and emoji in comments and chat, members-only videos and posts, and whatever else the creator offers within YouTube’s rules. |
| YouTube channel trailer | A YouTube channel trailer is a video you choose to show at the top of your channel’s Home tab to people who have not subscribed. |
| YouTube chapters | YouTube chapters split a video into titled sections, each with its own preview on the progress bar, so a viewer can see what is coming and jump to the part they want. |
| YouTube collaboration | A YouTube collaboration is a video that names other creators as collaborators. |
| YouTube end screen | A YouTube end screen is a set of clickable elements laid over the last 5 to 20 seconds of a video. |
| YouTube handle | A YouTube handle is your channel’s unique name starting with @, such as @youtubecreators. |
| YouTube Hype | YouTube Hype lets viewers give a new video from a smaller creator a boost. |
| YouTube Partner Program | The YouTube Partner Program, or YPP, is how creators earn from YouTube. |
| YouTube podcast | A YouTube podcast is a playlist that YouTube treats as a show. |
| YouTube post | A YouTube post is something you publish on your channel that is not a video upload: a line of text, up to 10 images or GIFs, a poll, a quiz, or a share of a video or playlist. |
| YouTube Premiere | A YouTube Premiere debuts a new video at a time you set, as an event. |
| YouTube Short | A YouTube Short is a vertical video of up to 3 minutes, watched full screen in the Shorts feed, where viewers swipe from one to the next. |
| YouTube Super Chat and Super Thanks | Super Chat, Super Stickers and Super Thanks are YouTube’s one-off ways for viewers to pay a creator. |
| YouTube thumbnail A/B testing | YouTube’s A/B test, run in YouTube Studio, shows different viewers up to three versions of a video’s title, thumbnail or both at the same time, then keeps the version that earned the most watch time. |
| YouTube Trends tab | The Trends tab is a part of YouTube Analytics that shows what your audience and viewers across YouTube are searching for and watching, so you can pick topics people already want. |
Questions
What is an AI content label?
An AI content label is a note on a post that tells viewers it was made or changed with artificial intelligence.
How does a social media algorithm actually decide what to show?
A social media algorithm gathers the posts a person could see, predicts what that person is likely to do with each one (stop, watch, reply, share, save, scroll past, hide), and shows the posts with the best predictions first.
What is alt text?
Alt text, short for alternative text, is a written description attached to an image.
Sources
- LinkedIn, Add alternative text to images for accessibility, checked October 2026.
- Pinterest, Add alternative text to your Pins, checked October 2026.
- AT Protocol, app.bsky.embed.images lexicon, checked October 2026.
- YouTube, Learn about Ask Studio in YouTube Studio, checked October 2026.