Think you have what it takes to be a social media player? If not, here are a few terms (alphabetically arranged) that will get you going. (Thanks to folks on Twitter who threw in a few suggestions.)
Centric: anything can be '-centric.' Go ahead, try it. You're in sales? That's great, you're now customer-centric. Call Liveline much? That'll make you media-centric. Use Facebook a few times each week? Wow, you're a web-centric kind of guy (or gal).
Cloud: nothing is outside the cloud. If you're a taximan with an email address, don't worry: your business is 'in the cloud'. And there's no way it's all going to end with SkyNet.
Conversation: Twitter isn't a micro-blogging service or a chat forum. It's a 'Conversation' (the capital 'C' is important). If you have a point to make, you don't sign in and start spouting way. You 'join the Conversation'. With a latte.
Curation: if you don't have much to say yourself, don't worry: copy and paste what others are saying. This is a new, valuable service all on its own called 'curation'. It's easy to do (but is highly skillful also, got that?).
Engagement: instead of answering, replying, emailing or talking to someone, 'engage' with them. If you think that's splitting hairs, you're just not a true social media pro.
Facebooking: Americans have taught us that there is no noun on earth that cannot be verbisised.
Friending: like Facebooking, friending is now widespread. Definitely not to be confused with mating, though.
FTW: the term 'for the win' or 'FTW' may sound like someone made it up as a meme (cf below) to see how far it would travel. But it is a sign of true Twitter authenticity. To be used at least once every 15 tweets.
Killer: remember when 'cool' was the corporate adverb of choice? Well that's no longer cool. Last year, an official handover ceremony took place. Killer is now the killer term.
Like: "I liked that store." No, that doesn't mean that I appreciated it, it means that I clicked the thumbs-up symbol on that store's Facebook page.
Meme: US political pundits used to create (and slavishly follow) conversation 'memes', or talking points. For us in social media world, it's the amusing joke (or trend) du jour. Often accompanied with a picture. Or a hashtag (on Twitter).
Organic: you may have thought organic was a little mass-produced at this point. Although not as killer (cf above) a term as before, organic still has solid roots in our social media lingo.
Pivot: what used to be a technical financial term is now coming at us, full-on. The pivot of this sentence just occurred eight words ago.
Simple: "Okay guys, we're not looking for layered here, we're looking for Simple." (I have cyanide pills, if anyone wants any.)
Smart: according to surveys, the word 'smart' was used 19,780 times by government ministers in 2010. And that was just in the week before Christmas. Smart can now unashamedly be used to describe anything (at all) that has even the whiff of an internet link to it.
Solutions: an oldie but a goodie. Die-hard users (men in their late 40s and 50s) are keeping this one alive as their 'cyberspace offerings' migrate onto 'their Facebook'.
Social: whatever it is you produce or offer, it is nothing -- NOTHING -- if it does not have a 'social' element to it. Forget about old-fashioned concepts such as profitability, company yields and such nonsense. If you can get an unemployed web designer to 'like' (cf above) your page (or better still, become a 'fan'), that's the only thing that matters.
The Gen: farewell, 'what's the story?' and 'what's the scoop?'. Hello, 'what's the gen?'.
By the way, you score extra points if you can string a few terms together. Go ahead, try it: cloud-centric curation. Organic friending solutions. Smart social engagement. Just remember to keep a straight face: you could secure €1.2 million in seed funding from some mug.
Got any more suggestions?
Gets It - as in "JetSky Airlines really gets it when it comes to customer delightment"
Most commonly used by people who work in social media to prove how right they are about social media.
Posted by: Irishstu | January 12, 2011 at 10:36 AM
I still have a soft spot for the old ones that crop back up occasionally, such as "viral" (usually no more than 5 words away from "explode" and "2.0 (or further)." Oh, and "micro"-everything.
Posted by: Ken_dm | January 12, 2011 at 11:01 AM
This article is a game-changer
Posted by: Irishstu | January 13, 2011 at 02:22 PM
haha, my apologies, i had to curate. . .too funny
http://techavenue.biz/wordpress/
cheers,
Dennis
Posted by: Tech_avenue | January 18, 2011 at 04:00 AM