A couple weeks ago, in an office meeting, someone commented how there are all these industry acronyms associated with digital media and they couldn’t keep up with all of them.
So I decided o put together a list of all the digital media and marketing acronyms I could think of.
My blog is NOT a dictionary, and I have intentions of making it that which is why, this list will not include acronyms like OMG, LOL, ROFL or WTF as those are for the Oxford English Dictionary to figure out how to include. For now, consider this a working list of the important ones I could think of. It includes: General Digital Media Industry acronyms, Metric Acronyms, and some Twitter short hand as well.
And yes, there is always a chance I left some out. I will be making updates and if you notice any, send me an email with the additions and I will add them, and credit you (hows about that for a deal!). Enjoy!
General Industry Acronyms
FB
Facebook. Often, this abreviation will happen on twitter when referencing Facebook to save space.
Meme
Mimeme. Viral content you see on the web.
PPC
Pay Per Click Advertising. A method of advertising on a search engine where you pay an agreed amount everytime someone clicks on your ad.
R6
Radian6. Often short hand to save space. (at least I do that 
)
SEM
Search Engine Marketing. Often associated only with Pay per Click advertising, is in reality the general term for SEO and PPC practices
SEO
Search Engine Optimization. This is an action taken on a web site to improve your contents visibility within the results.
SERP
Search Engine Result page. When you do a searh in an engine, the results that show up on the page are called the SERP
SM
Social Media
SMM
Social Media Marketing. A way of using social media platforms to market your concept/ Brand/ Product etc.
SMO
Social Media Optimization. Similar to SEO in the sense that it is an act of ensuring visibility of all social media assets within each social platforms. This is becoming more integrated with SEO and Search Engines.
SoLoMo
Social, Local, Mobile. This is a new industry term refering to the growth and connectino between social media, local media and mobile media. This term was made popular by JOhn Doerr in a
New York Times Article.
UGC
User Generated Content. Same thing as CGM (Consumer Generated Media) or UCC (User Created Content), just a different way of saying it.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator (although, I dont know ANYONE who actually knows this or why it would even matter in the first place)
Industry Metrics Acronyms
CPC
Cost Per Click
CTR
Click Through Rate is The percentage of clicks out of the total number views of a particular link
CVR (or CR)
Conversion Rate. This is the percentage of site visitors that take a specific, predetermined, action on your site.
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend (PPC term)
ROI
Return on Investment. This is the percentage profit earned from a specific activity.
Twitter Acronyms and Lingo
DM
Direct Message. This often appears when you indicate to someone that you want this conversation to go private.
RT
Re- tweet. A method of acknowledging someone else’s post and giving them credit for what they have said, or sharing information and giving credit.
Tagged as:
acronyms,
Advertising terms,
marketing lesson
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post Aaron, and a super resource for those who are new’ish to the industry. One to add though, for Twitter acronyms: HT – or “hat tip” – people use this when giving a ‘shout out’ to someone else in a tweet – maybe that person gave you an idea, or maybe they shared something with you that you expanded on, etc.. And yes, I had to look it up when I first started seeing it! lol
This is going to be one of those go-to posts, I can tell! Here’s a few more that might be helpful:
B2B: Business to business
B2C: Business to consumer
CGM: Consumer generated media
CMS: Content management system
CRM: Customer relationship management
ERP: Enterprise resource planning
KPI: Key performance indicators
QR Code: Quick response code
SCRM: Social customer relationship management
Thanks for writing this up for everyone to reference. Danny Brown and I were just chatting about this last night.
All the best,
Trish (@Dayngr)
Community Manager | Radian6
Thank you Both
I will make these additions over the weekend.
Lindsay, HT is a good one (which I totally needed you to explain to me)
And Trish, I cant believe I forgot KPI for industry metric! What was I thinking!
Thanks again!
Great posst.
What about….
CPM – Cost Per Mille / Cost Per Thousand as used in display advertising.
CPA – Cost per Aquisition as used in affiliate advertising
Kind regards
Yep – Good additions Craig. I really need to revise/ update this post. Hope you enjoyed!