Social Media Vocabulary: Authenticity Is Awesome

Every once in a while, someone or something will remind me to go back to speaking English. At Salty Waffle, we are immersed in the world of social media classes and we talk like it, especially with each other. Sometimes it takes some blank stares and funny looks to remind me that our vocabulary is a little out there to most people. Since we’re all about helping you navigate the world of social media and teaching you what you need to know, a good place to start is the verbiage. Last week, Nicole gave us some great terms to get us started so here are few more:

Authenticity: is the sense that something or someone is “real”. Blogs enable people to publish content, and engage in conversations, that show their interests and values, and so help them develop an authentic voice online.

Champions: in order to get conversations started in an online community, you need a group of enthusiasts willing and confident to get things moving by posting messages, responding, and helping others.

Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of the crowd outside an organization who are prepared to contribute content and solve problems, then you can choose your favorite solution.

Lurkers: are people who read but don’t contribute or add comments to social networks. The one per cent rule-of-thumb suggests about one per cent of people contribute new content to an online community, another nine percent comment occasionally, and the rest lurk.

Tweetroll: a widget for your site that allows you to choose a search term, or your own twitter stream, and then display all the tweets related to that term in a scrolling box anywhere you choose to put it. Great for SEO.

There are more to come, please feel free to ask about a word or term you aren’t sure about in the comments, by email, Twitter, or Facebook! We would love to help!