Social media marketing glossary: including ROAS, CPE and impressions

Our no nonsense social media marketing glossary to help you brush up on your definitions.
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What does ROAS mean? And how do you calculate engagement? Our no nonsense social media marketing glossary explains them all.

 

When running influencer, content or paid media campaigns, you’ll see these popular terms come up a lot. Whether you’re a beginner or just in need of a reminder, use our social media marketing glossary to brush up on the definitions.

 

Aggregate Social Audience

The combined social following across all content being shared with audiences. If two talent each have 50,000 & 10,000 followers respectively and creates two pieces of content each, the collective aggregate social audience is 120,000.

 

Branded Content Ad

Brands can turn influencer posts, which have used the Paid Partnership tag (see below), into ads known as ‘Branded Content ads’. These ads are no longer organic. Instead, they can be targeted at specific social users to maximise results. These posts appear in feed with the influencer’s handle and profile picture, but are labeled as ‘Sponsored’. Find out more.

 

Completion Rate

The percentage of viewers that watched the entire story sequence posted.

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Conversion rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action. For example, the percentage of social followers who follow a call to action. If a post is seen by 100,000 and 2,000 users click on the call to action, the post’s conversion rate is 2,000/100,000 = 2%.

 

Cost Per Engagement (CPE)

How much it cost to achieve one engagement (or interaction) with a boosted piece of content (post or story). Paid Media Budget ÷ Engagements. Example: 2,000 ÷ 29,294 = 0.068 ($0.07)

 

Engagement rate

This value takes into account the number of likes and comments a post gets, balanced against the number of followers an account has. A high number of followers, but a low number of likes and comments indicates a low level of engagement. Lots of likes and comments in relation to the following indicates strong engagement and is what we’re looking for in a content creator and influencer campaign.

How to calculate engagement rate – (The number of likes + comments + saves / no. of followers) x 100. So if there was 500 likes, 50 comments on a post – and 5000 followers: (550 / 5000) x 100 = 11% engagement rate.

How to improve your engagement rate.

 

Impressions

The number of times your content is displayed. An impression means that content was  delivered to someone’s feed, not necessarily engaged with.

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Paid Partnership

This is an Instagram tag that appears at the top of an organic influencer’s post, if it has been sponsored by a brand. This tag was designed to increased transparency around paid collaborations and give brands extra insights on that post, so they can see how it’s performing. To tag a brand partner, influencers must request permission to use their tag and brands have to grant permission.

 

Reach

This refers to how many people see a piece of content, how far its impact reaches.

 

Return on investment (ROI)

What the marketers get in return for spending money on influencer marketing. This could be anything from increased awareness, app downloads or sales.

 

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

The total revenue generated for a specific marketing channel divided by the total spend on that channel. Here, you’re looking for the highest possible number. For example our campaign with West Elm had a 43X return on ad spend which means the campaign generated $43 for every $1 spent.

How to calculate ROAS – (Revenue/Spend) = Return on Ad Spend

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Sessions

A unique visit to a website. If a user clicks a link and lands on a site and allows that site to load, it will count as a session.

 

Story View Rate

The number of accounts reached in the first story frame posted as a percentage of social audience. So if an influencer’s story reached 6,500 on the first frame, and they have 200,000 followers, their story view rate is 3.25%

How to improve your Instagram Story view rate.

 

Unique Engagement Rate

An accurate engagement rate determined by Instagram’s API to measure engagement on an in-feed piece of content. Opposed to traditional engagement rate (above), this is measuring the percentage of actions taken on the content based on the number of times content has been seen (impressions).

How to calculate unique engagement rate – (The number of likes + comments + saves) ÷ impressions x 100.

 

Unique Reach

The total number of unique accounts that have seen the content.

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Download the free Vamp guide and learn how your brand can succeed on the original influencer marketing platform, Instagram.

Download this free Vamp guide and learn how to succeed on the world’s most viral platform.