Influencer marketing - it's taking over the world! Ok, ok - the marketing world at least. And as a marketer, understanding the basics of influencer marketing is a MUST. If your boss comes to you asking questions, you want to look good, right? And even more importantly, you need to arm yourself with knowledge so you can make educated decisions regarding your marketing strategy.

But with all the different terminology out there, and new concepts and metrics rolling out on almost a daily basis, it's easy to get confused. Allow our influencer marketing agency to help you out by breaking down 20 different influencer marketing buzzwords that you're constantly hearing. Enjoy!

20 Influencer Marketing Buzzwords

1. Influencer: Starting simple. An influencer is any person who has the ability to influence or inspire others to take some sort of action, typically via their social platforms (blog, Instagram, etc.). However, many people throw this term around very generally, so we've segmented influencers into five different categories: Celebrities, Social Stars, Macro-Influencers, Micro-Influencers, and Nano-Influencers. It's worth noting that some marketers also refer to influencers as bloggers, creators, or content creators.

2. Influencer Marketing: Again, we're starting simple here. But to break it down, influencer marketing is a form of word of mouth whereby brands partner with personalities trusted by its target audience to spread their key messages. In doing so, the third party credibility of the influencer helps the brand. 

3. Virtual Influencers: Also known as CGI Influencers, virtual influencers are exactly what you'd think. They're "influencers" created from computer graphics - aka fake. Yes, they do have social media accounts with a large number of followers, but can you actually influence people to buy something when you physically can't use it?

4. The Power Middle: This term combines two types of influencers: the Macros and Micros. They represent those influencers who have a perfect mix of relevance and reach among their followers. While many brands think they need to go after large celebrity-like influencers, we find that the power middle truly holds the most power and influence.

5. Opt-In Influencer Programs: Quick tip - if your boss ever asks you about running an opt-in program with an influencer marketplace... SAY NO! In an opt-in program, you post a brief asking influencers to sign up to create content about your brand. While this may sound simple and easy, you'll likely have very little control as to which influencer ends up working on your brand and they may not be good content creators. Remember, people are inspired by ideas. 

6. Ambassador Programs: As opposed to a one-time influencer campaign, ambassador programs are more of an "always-on" approach to influencer marketing. It starts with identifying influencers who have the most impact on your target audience, and continually working with them on a long-term basis (say 6, 12, or 18 months for example). The key to success here is to not actually be "always-on" but to structure your campaign into flights throughout the year where influencers push key messaging. 

7. SponCon or Sponsored Content: Any content that an influencer produces for which they are being compensated. Blog posts, Facebook Live videos, Instagram stories, etc., if they've been offered any type of compensation (including free product) to produce these assets, it's sponsored content (and should be disclosed as such... which brings us to #8).

8. FTC Guidelines or FTC Compliance: FTC stands for the Federal Trade Commission here in the United States, and their influencer marketing guidelines are not to be taken lightly. Consider these guidelines a crucial part of your campaign and that all of your influencer content must comply with these guidelines as the FTC continues to crack down.

9. Compliance Check: Not only are there FTC Guidelines in place, but each social network functions a bit differently. Because of this, it's important to have a real human monitoring influencer content to ensure it adheres to all regulations. Additionally, content needs to comply with the agreed upon brand messaging and not make any false claims about the product/service.

10. Impressions: Diving into some metrics, impressions in general refers to the number of times your brand message gets in front of your target audience. However, there are multiple ways to measure impressions, so make sure you know which one you're using! Please don't be fooled by a proposal that centers around "max potential impressions." 

11. Total Potential Reach: Not to be confused with impressions, total potential reach refers to the cumulative number of followers from all influencers utilized in a campaign. So in this instance, we're looking at the specific amount of people that can see the content, while impressions refers to how many times people were exposed to the content (which can be multiple times).

12. True Views: The True Views metric was created to help clarify some of the misconceptions about impressions and reach and to show brands a more accurate representation of these results. True Views are in contrast to Max Potential Impressions, where the former is a measure of actual views while the latter is a (fictitious) measure of the total number of people who could see it (but never do). At Carusele, we have a predictive algorithm to show brands the estimated true views a campaign will garner, many times promising guaranteed results, giving brands a way to have more confidence in their investments. 

13. Engagement Rate: While engagements are the number of first generation social interactions you receive from influencer-produced content (likes, comments, shares, etc.), the engagement rate is more specifically a metric that compares the amount of engagements received relative to the number of people who see the content.

14. Engaged Audience Profiles: When it comes to influencer marketing, some marketers find it difficult to ensure they've properly targeted and reached their desired audience. However, with our Engaged Audience Profiles, clients are able to see demographic and psychographic data about the engaged audience of the influencer campaigns, and not only confirm they've reached the right people, but learn new insights about their audience that can be applied to other marketing initiatives.

15. Equivalent Media Value: Heavily used across the industry to do more than just measure the performance of an influencer campaign, this metric is a calculation of the estimated costs to deliver the same number of impressions via other methods (such as an ad buy).

16. Audience Attention: The aggregate amount of time the audience spent seeing and interacting with the content in a given campaign. This algorithm was built based on research from Ignite Social Media, the original social media agency, where they determined consumption time for impressions, likes, comments and shares on various social media platforms. By aggregating the results, campaigns can be compared against one another.

17. Syndication: While there are many forms of syndication, when it comes to the influencer marketing world syndication refers to a process of other people or resources sharing an influencer's content across the web, For example, secondary influencers being hired to share the primary influencers content across the web. Another method of syndication is through paid native advertising channels.

18. Targeted Amplification: While an influencer's organic influence on an audience is a great resource for insights, we've found that campaigns are more successful when we chose to identify the top-performing content and then amplify that content to engage targeted audiences. This can be done through paid media, native ads, additional influencer syndication and other methods. At Carusele, we call this our Organish Distribution Model.

19. Ad Recall Rate: If you're implementing any paid media on Facebook, the network provides this metric which can be rather insightful. It estimates the percent of ad viewers who would likely remember the ad if asked 48-hours later.

20. Ad Relevance Score: Another metric provided by Facebook on boosted content which is calculated based on the feedback provided by ad viewers (both positive and negative). For example, the more time people engage with the ad, the more the relevance score will increase. Meanwhile, the more people choose to “hide” or “report” an ad, the relevance score will decrease.

Well there you have it, 20 influencer marketing buzzwords. Hopefully you find these useful as you venture forward with your next campaign. And should you need help with that campaign, feel free to download our 9-Step Checklist to help guide you through the process, or you can contact us and we'll get a strategy started. Good luck!