News Archives - Breakaway Graphics

The Urban Dictionary of Social Media Marketing

Sheana — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 20:54:51 +0000

by Victoria Greene: Brand Marketing Consultant & Freelance Writer.

I work with online businesses and ecommerce merchants to create high-performing content and marketing strategies that yield successful results. I am always happy to share my expertise and love discovering new potential collaborators.

For new business owners and executives who are new to the world of social media marketing, one of the more common challenges you’re likely to come across at the start is attempting to digest all the jargon. Social media is a minefield of odd words, phrases and acronyms that make perfect sense to those who are fluent – but are inclined to baffle the new and uninitiated. Nonetheless, as you explore, you will become more confident. Don’t give up on social media just yet, because it could be just what you need to build an online community around your business. And it’s not going anywhere soon. Here is a guide to some of the more common slang words surrounding social media (don’t forget to read up on social media etiquette as well).

At mentions

At mentions (also know as @ mentions) are used on Twitter. They essentially do the same thing as Facebook’s tagging system, enabling you to mention someone in your tweet, which will automatically send them a notification.

Avatar

Your avatar is much like a profile picture. It’s an image – or sometimes just a username – that represents you online. This could be on social networks, as well as places like online forums. If you set up a Gravatar account, you can set an image to follow you from site to site, so there’s no need to upload one every time.

Bookmarking

You’ve heard of a physical bookmark – bookmarking is not much different, except that it’s digital. If you find something online that you enjoyed or would like to save for reading later, you can bookmark it either directly through social media websites (see bookmarking on Facebook) or through an external bookmarking manager like Pocket.

Brand ambassador

Brand ambassadors are very valuable. They are your best customers: the ones who love your brand so much that they will voluntarily share the positive experiences they’ve had with you on social media. Brand ambassadors are essential to building a good online reputation – even in this digital age, we must never underestimate word-of-mouth marketing.

Clickbait

You’ve probably seen clickbait around, you perhaps just didn’t realize it had a name. Any marketing material that relies on an overly hyped or sensational headline to try and entice you to click falls under the category of ‘clickbait’. Clickbait articles are designed to generate revenue and nothing more. They might sound like ‘People are doing something seriously weird with their McFlurrys’ or ‘How old was Rooney Mara when she first ate pie?’.

Facebook advertising

Facebook has its own advertising system that allows businesses to reach a precise audience with relevant, targeted adverts. There are various pricing options available for most marketing budgets, as well as the ability to select your audience by demographics such as age, location, and interests. Arguably, Facebook advertising is one of the more efficient ways to advertise online. Here’s a beginner’s guide.

GIF

GIF is shorthand for Graphics Interchange Format, and on social media they act as small animations or video clips – characterized by being rather jerky. They are usually just a few seconds long and played on a loop, often with subtitles (but not always). GIFs can a fun way to illustrate a point and are perfect for young, playful businesses to share.

via GIPHY

Hashtag

A hashtag can be a word (or group of words) that starts with this sign (#). The words are grouped together and are usually to categorize information and ideas, making your posts more relevant and visible for other users. Examples of popular hashtags (right now) include #wimbledon, #dontsteponabeeday, #thingsbleachcantclean and #mondaymotivation.

Influencers

Influencers are social media power users. They have large online followings and with them, the ability to sway the thoughts and opinions of others. Influencers tend to be well-connected, activists, early adopters of new products or technology, and social media savvy. Popular influencers in 2017 include Zoe Sugg (beauty), Lilly Singh (entertainment), and Mark Fischbach (gaming).

Meme

An internet meme is a catchphrase, image, concept or other piece of media that spreads. Mostly memes come in the form of an image, but they can also appear as videos, websites or hashtags. Memes commonly take their roots from popular culture, although not exclusively – they can come from almost anywhere. They provide a fun and playful way to express a point on social media. Here are some of the internet’s favorite memes.

New media

‘New media’ is really just another way of describing social media, though in the past it’s been used to describe all kinds of digital media. A more accurate description would be any digital communication channels that promote collaboration between users, rather than that which is static, such as a print magazine.

News feed

On Facebook, your news feed is very simply the central column of your homepage – the one that you will inevitably start to find yourself scrolling through. The news feed is constantly updating with new stories, pictures, events and other media from your friends and the people/businesses you follow.

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is when a person, brand or business capitalizes on a popular news story in order to amplify their sales and marketing efforts. Newsjacking can be effective, but it must be done with care and consideration, and only when truly relevant. Here’s a guide to successful newsjacking on social media.

Retargeting

This online advertising technique is used by social media marketers and ecommerce merchants to display ads on social media to users who have previously visited their website. Retargeting campaigns can be highly effective, reminding users of the products they were interested in but perhaps didn’t get round to purchasing the first time round. Retargeting functionality can be added as part of your online store setup using apps and/or plugins.

Tagging

Similar to ‘at mentions’ but for Facebook, tagging is where you can attach a person’s name to a picture, video, or status update. Tagging has a lot of meanings online, so it can be easy to get confused. So for example, if you were to upload a photo to your page that featured three of your staff members, you could individually tag each staff member and they would receive a notification and be able to see (and display) that photo as desired. Facebook tagging is becoming more sophisticated thanks for facial recognition software.

Troll

No, they don’t live under bridges – although who knows, maybe some of them do. An internet troll is an altogether different (though equally unpleasant) type of beast. They go around posting on social media and in the ‘comments’ sections of articles and forums, deliberately inciting arguments with irrelevant, hostile or inflammatory comments. Their primary goal is to make people angry and provoke some kind of response. If you ever encounter an internet troll, here is what you should do.

Viral

When something ‘goes viral’ on social media, essentially all that means it that it became very popular and got widely shared – usually in the tens of thousands or millions. So you might say “this Breakaway Graphics blog post has gone viral!” if it were shared and then reshared thousands of times on Facebook or Twitter. But it’s not always an article – equally (perhaps more often) it is a video, meme, infographic, or even a GIF. Virality is highly sought after in the marketing world, but can be difficult to achieve, as there are multiple factors (timing, relevance, shareability) at play.

Although some social media terms can be tricky to understand at first, most of the time they actually relate to something very simple. All it takes is a little getting used to – and just like learning a language, the more you immerse yourself in it, the quicker you will pick it up.

What other social media slang words do you find confusing? Let us know in the comments below (no trolls please) and we’ll see if we can help.

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Photoshop User Magazine Feature

Sheana — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:00:15 +0000

We are super excited to announce our feature in Photoshop User Magazine! After contacting Photoshop User Magazine to put our hats in the ring as a featured designer for their column called “Design Makeover”, we received a phone call from Jake Widman requesting our help for an upcoming issue. That issue is out now and we are happy to share it with you!

The Magazine Intro. by Jake Widman

Zoccoli’s, “The Italian Delicatessen,” has been owned by the same family since 1948. From the website, “In March of 1948, Robert Zoccoli Sr. and his wife, Augusta, both Italian immigrants, along with their daughter Nelli and her husband Lloyd Sherman, formed a partnership and bought a small grocery store. The Plaza Grocery, a Red & White Food Store, was located in downtown Santa Cruz where Zoccoli’s Deli resides now. It was a very diversified operation that sold everything from household supplies to deli meats and cheeses, many of which we still carry today.” Today the store isstill run by the third generation of the Zoccoli family. It’s been operating out of the same location since 1948 except for 18 months after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused extensive damage to downtown Santa Cruz, when the store had to operate out of a trailer while the structure underwent seismic retrofitting.

In the 1970s, the store started making sandwiches, which continues today. At lunchtime on the main street of downtown Santa Cruz, workers and tourists line up for house specialties like the Italian Club and the Santa Cruzer. While the sandwiches are fresh, the logo also dates from the 1970s–drawn by a family friend–and is looking a little stale.

Zoccoli’s is an integral part of Santa Cruz, and Marie Mediterranean is an part of Zoccoli’s. “We could never change our logo,” says Zoccoli. Nevertheless, she gave us permission to ask three designers to redo the deli’s logo for a new generation–the people who would order a hummus or chicken pesto sandwich as soon as they’d order classics like the meatball or antipasto creation. Zoccoli said any logo should convey the business’s virtues like “very involved in the community, love downtown Santa Cruz, customer service, quality at a good price.”

Each designer created a color one for use on the website and a black-and-white one for use on their catering and sandwich menus, which are simply photocopied onto 11-x-14-inch paper.

My Design Explanation

“My goal for the Zoccoli’s logo and menu cover was to stay true to the long-established identity of the restaurant. Although the ‘before’logo seemed amateurish to me, I didn’t want to change the shape of the mark since it has been used for decades. I wanted only to freshen it up while maintaining its grass-roots, small-town appeal.

Scalloping the edges of the original shape instantly gave it a vintage yet familiar tone and I sought a typeface that would embody the heritage of the restaurant and evoke an immediate sense of longevity. Phaeton, licensed through Veer, with it’s classic, solid presence proved to have just the right amount of hand-lettered flair and was easily tweaked to perfection. I felt the secondary font, from the IM FELL collection, complemented the mood of the main font nicely and was obtained through the author’s website (www.iginomarini.com).

I decided to keep the general appearance of the Character the same but repositioned her to add a little interest. I eliminated the ‘extras’from the ‘before’ design which resulted in Miss. Mediterranean’s transformation from schoolmarm to killer-cook-suited-for-this-millennium.

With the logo finished, and armed with the knowledge that the menus are printed with margins, in black and white and are likely photocopied,I aimed to design a cover that could be reproduced in the same manner without losing depth in the design. Resisting the urge to go full-color, full bleed and require professional offset printing, I instead created a simple, classic, easily reproducible cover using art from Fotolia by Albachiaraa. An awning to match the building’s facade, repeating the scalloped corners on the border, a custom illustration of the kettle, and a commitment to the fonts, tied the logo and menu together.

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