This is a form of testing where you try out two approaches at the same time. Half the audience sees version A and the rest see version B. The version that performs best is the one you stick with. Rinse and repeat.

The sum total of traffic and attention that you command. This includes the size of your list, your engaged social media followers, and your blog subscribers.

The software used to run your blog. Not to be confused with an Author Platform

An engaged user is someone who is interacting with you or, at the very least, paying attention. Followers on social media that never see your content are not engaged. Non-engaged users are pretty much useless. Keep users engaged with good content.

Platform can refer to Author Platform, Blogging Platform, or social media Platform. You may have to work out which from context.

Federated networks are spread out among many different parts of the Internet which all cooperate to offer users a joined-up experience. See this guide for me.

This refers to the entire ecosystem of the brand of social media you are using not least of which is the site and the app.

Just as the name suggests, reach is the number of people that actually see what you publish. A Twitter account with a reach of 10 is no different to a Twitter account with 10 (engaged) followers. Reach is the measure of your author platform’s effectiveness.

Return on investment. Your ROI is the value you get back for any given expense in time or money. If you are advertising without measuring ROI, how do you know if it is cost-effective?

Search engine optimisation. See the SEO section to learn more.

Spam content is content (posts, pages, comments, etc.) that is just there to game the system and fill up space. It offers no value to users. Spam content is very bad. Do not engage in spam.

Traffic is a term that means the people coming to your site. In SEO our aim is to get traffic from search engines. With social media, the aim is to get traffic from social media. Traffic is all the people coming to your site. The more traffic, the better.

Qualified or targeted traffic is distinct from general traffic in that these visitors most likely really want to be on your site and are looking for the content you are providing.

The blogging platform is offered by Author Buzz and used by a lot of bloggers. It is also good for making a site quickly if you do not fancy writing HTML, CSS, and PHP/ASP yourself.

Content is said to have “gone viral” when it is spread organically from user to user through shares and interactions. The viral post might be passed around hundreds or even thousands of users and be seen by ten or more times that number. Popular memes are a classic example of viral content.