Reels, Reach, and Replies: A Social Media Glossary for Authors

Sooner or later, every author gets told to “post more reels.”

It is rarely explained. The word arrives already assuming you know it, usually in a sentence with three other words that assume the same thing, and you are left deciding whether to ask and look behind, or nod and stay confused. Most authors nod.

So let's start there, because it's the question we get asked most often.

A reel is a short vertical video — usually somewhere between fifteen and ninety seconds, shot to fill a phone screen top to bottom, with music or narration over it. That's the whole thing. Instagram named the format, Facebook adopted it, TikTok does the same thing under a different name, and YouTube calls its version Shorts.

The reason everyone keeps telling you to make them is not that they're artistically superior to a photograph or a paragraph. It's that the platforms are currently promoting them harder than any other format, which means a reel gets shown to people who don't follow you in a way that a text post almost never does. For an author trying to find readers who have never heard of them, that difference is the whole game.

They also don't have to be elaborate. Some of the most effective author reels are a person standing still, not doing much, with two lines of their book on the screen underneath their face.

The rest of this glossary covers the other words that turn up once you start doing this work. Nothing here is complicated. Most of it is an ordinary idea wearing a marketing costume, and the costume is the only hard part.

Formats: The Things You Actually Post

• Post: Any single item you publish — text, a photo, a link, a video. The generic word for “a thing you put up.”
• Feed: The scrolling column of posts a person sees when they open an app. Your feed is what you publish; their feed is what they're shown. These are not the same thing, and that gap is the source of most social media confusion.
• Reel: A short vertical video, typically fifteen to ninety seconds, designed to be watched full-screen on a phone. Instagram's name for the format; Facebook uses it too, and a reel posted to Instagram can share automatically to a connected Facebook page. (Learn more about DIY Video Creation here.)
• Short: YouTube's version of a reel. Same shape, same idea, different building. (24 Ways to Grow Your Readership with YouTube covers the wider platform.)
• Story: A post that disappears after twenty-four hours, shown in a row of circles at the top of the app rather than in the main feed. Good for casual, low-stakes material — the writing session, the proof copy arriving, the cover reveal countdown. (The Quick and Dirty Writer’s Guide to Instagram covers where stories fit.)
• Highlight: A story you've chosen to keep permanently, pinned to your profile. Useful for “About me,” “My books,” and “Where to start.”
• Carousel: A single post containing several images or slides that the viewer swipes through. Popular for tips, quotes, and breaking a book blurb into pieces.
• Live: Broadcasting video in real time, with viewers commenting as you go. Most platforms notify your followers when you start. (Read 12 Video Secrets for Facebook Live Success before your first one.)
• Pinned post: A post you've fixed to the top of your profile so it's the first thing a new visitor sees, regardless of when you published it. Prime real estate, and most authors leave it empty.
• Bio: The short description on your profile, and the one place on most platforms where a clickable link is reliably allowed.
• Link in bio: That single permitted link, and the reason you'll see the phrase in so many captions. Because most platforms won't let you put working links inside a post, the bio link is the door out of the app and toward your website.
• Caption: The text you write underneath a post. Also, confusingly, the word for on-screen subtitles in a video. Context tells you which.
• Burned-in captions: Subtitles permanently baked into the video image, often with one word appearing at a time. They matter because a large share of your audience watches with the sound off.
• Trending audio: A music track or audio clip the platform is currently promoting. Attaching it to your video can get your video promoted alongside it, which is why you'll see creators add a trending track to a video that already has sound, then turn the music volume to zero.
• Hook: The first one to three seconds of a video, or the first line of a post. If the hook doesn't stop the scroll, nothing else in the piece matters.
• Evergreen content: A post that works just as well six months from now. Worth identifying, because the good ones can be posted again.

Platforms and Accounts

• Platform: Any one social network: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Bluesky, X. There are hundreds. (You do not need hundreds; Your Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Authors can help you choose.)
• Profile: Your personal presence on a platform: name, photo, bio, and posts.
• Page: On Facebook, a separate public presence for a business, brand, or author name, managed by a personal profile behind the scenes. (We also have a Guide to Growing Your Facebook Author Page.)
• Business or creator account: A profile type that unlocks analytics, advertising, and scheduling tools. Free to switch to, and worth doing if you want to see your own numbers.
• Handle: Your @username — the unique address people use to tag you. Distinct from your display name, which can be anything and can usually be changed freely.
• Group: A Facebook space built around a shared interest, which members join. Genre groups are one of the more reliable places to meet readers who aren't already following you. They tend to give you easier access to your audience than pages. (Learn how to market with Facebook Groups here.)
• Subreddit: A topic-specific community on Reddit, written as r/somethingspecific. Reddit's value for authors is precision: not r/fantasy, but the narrow corner of it that matches exactly what you write.
• Fediverse / decentralized platforms: Networks like Mastodon and Bluesky that run across many independently operated servers rather than one company's. Worth knowing the word; worth your time only if your readers are already there.
• Pen name account: A separate profile run under a pseudonym. Genuinely necessary when the point of the pen name is that nobody knows it's you, and mostly a duplication of effort when it isn't. (Don't have a primary account on social media? Sign up as your pen name! But check that that's allowed under that platform's terms of service.)
• Scheduler: A tool that publishes posts for you at a set time, such as Meta's own Business Suite, or third-party services. (Useful for batching, but no substitute for showing up to reply.)

People: Who You're Actually Talking To

• Follower: Someone who has subscribed to see your posts. A follower is permission, not a relationship, and not a guarantee that they will ever see anything you publish again.
• Fan: A reader who actively likes your work; the ones who comment first, share your posts, and ask when the next book is out. Distinct from a follower, who may have clicked once in 2021 and forgotten. (Training #638 goes deeper on turning readers into a fandom.)
• Super fan: A fan who has crossed into advocacy: buys on release day, reviews unprompted, and tells other people about you. A small number of these outperforms a large number of anyone else. (The back of your own book is one of the best places to recruit them.)
• Mutual: Someone who follows you and whom you follow back. Often another author at a similar stage, and often the most useful relationship on the platform.
• Lurker: A follower who reads everything and never comments or likes. They are buying books. They simply aren't showing up in your numbers.
• Influencer: Anyone with an audience who can direct attention. In the book world this includes BookTokers, Bookstagrammers, book bloggers, and newsletter curators.
• BookTok / Bookstagram / BookTube: The book-focused communities within TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Each has its own conventions, and each can move real sales volume when a book catches.
• Reader vs. buyer: For children's books, middle grade, and much of YA, the person who reads the book and the person who pays for it are different people. Your social media has to reach the parent, grandparent, teacher, or librarian; not the seven-year-old.
• Target reader: The specific kind of person your book is for. The more specific, the easier every other decision on this list becomes. (The Ideal Reader Worksheet will walk you through pinning it down.)
• Community: A space you host rather than rent: a Facebook group, a Discord, a forum, a newsletter with replies turned on. Slower to build than a following, and far more durable. (This short quiz will tell you which one suits you.)

Reach: How Things Spread

• Algorithm: The software that decides which posts to show which people. It is not a person, it has no opinion of you, and it is optimizing for how long people stay in the app. Nearly everything else on this list follows from that one fact. (There is also a case for not building your career around it at all.)
• Reach: The number of distinct people who saw your post. (Here are 16 simple hacks that can boost your social media reach.)
• Impressions: The number of times your post was displayed, including repeat views by the same person. Always equal to or higher than reach.
• Organic reach: People who saw your post without you paying for it.
• Paid reach: People who saw your post because you spent money.
• Viral: A post that spreads far beyond your own followers, because enough people engaged with it quickly enough that the algorithm pushed it to strangers. Not a strategy. An outcome you occasionally get.
• Discovery: Any mechanism that shows your work to people who don't follow you; the For You page, Explore, suggested reels, search. This is where short video earns its reputation.
• For You page (FYP): TikTok's algorithmic feed of posts from accounts you don't follow. Instagram's rough equivalent is Explore.
• Shadowban: A widely believed, rarely confirmed situation in which a platform quietly limits your reach without telling you. Sometimes real; more often an ordinary bad week being given a name.
• Cross-posting: Publishing the same content on more than one platform. Convenient, and slightly penalized on most platforms; a visible logo from another app is the usual giveaway.
• Watermark: A logo burned into a video by the app that made it. Downloading a TikTok and reposting it to Instagram carries TikTok's watermark, and Instagram will show it to fewer people as a result.
• Hashtag: A keyword prefixed with # that groups posts by topic and makes them findable by people who don't follow you. For example, #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List) is the one where agents and acquiring editors post what they're actively looking to represent. (Learn more about Hashtags and Handles here.)
• Tag / mention: Attaching someone's handle to your post so they're notified and their followers may see it. Also the polite way to credit someone whose work you're sharing.
• Share / repost: Republishing someone else's post to your own audience. On Facebook it's a share; on X it's a repost; on Instagram it's usually a story share.
• Boost: Paying a platform to show an existing post to more people. The simplest form of advertising, and the easiest way to spend money without learning anything. (If you are going to spend, spend deliberately.)
• Lead generation: Any deliberate action that makes strangers aware you exist; hashtags, groups, outreach, advertising. Everything else on your account talks to people who already found you. (Here are the 6 categories of author promotions, including which to avoid.)
• Lead magnet: Something you give away (a free short story, a first chapter, a checklist) in exchange for an email address. (Training #432: Reader Magnet Types runs through what actually works.)
• Call to action (CTA): The one thing you're asking the reader to do. “Join my newsletter” is the one most authors forget to say out loud. (No newsletter yet? Start with Choosing a Newsletter Service for New Authors.)
• Conversion: A follower doing the thing you asked: subscribing, clicking, buying. The number that actually matters, and the one that never appears on the post itself.

Conversation: The Part That Isn't Broadcasting

• Engagement: Any interaction with a post: likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks. Platforms treat engagement as evidence a post is worth showing to more people, which is why a handful of real conversations beats a large silent following. (10-Minute Fixes to Supercharge Your Following lists small changes that move it.)
• Engagement rate: Engagement divided by reach, expressed as a percentage. A thousand followers who all engage is worth more to a self-published author than a million who don't.
• Comment: A public reply on someone else's post. The cheapest relationship-building available, and the most consistently skipped.
• Reply: A response to a comment, including comments on your own posts. (If you only have time for one activity on this entire list, it's this one.)
• DM (direct message): A private message. Appropriate for peers and for conversations that already started in public. Not appropriate as a first approach to someone much bigger than you, and never appropriate as a book pitch to a stranger. (Note: depending on the platform, these may not be entirely private between you and the recipient.)
• Ratio: When a post's replies wildly outnumber its likes, usually because people are arguing with it. Rarely a good sign.
• Social proof: Visible evidence that other people value your work: reviews, comment threads, other authors sharing you. Part of why sharing other people's work pays you back. (Learn how to secure reviews before launch with ARC platforms.)
• Community management: The ongoing work of answering, moderating, and keeping a space pleasant. On a small author account, it's just called replying.

Measurement: Reading Your Own Numbers

• Analytics / insights: The statistics panel your platform gives you about your own posts. (Fifteen minutes once a week is plenty.)
• Vanity metric: A number that looks good and predicts nothing. Raw follower count is the classic; genuinely useful if you're trying to impress an agent, close to meaningless if you're trying to sell books directly. (Which numbers matter depends on your goal, so set the goal first.)
• Watch time: Total time people spent watching a video. The dominant metric for reels and shorts.
• Retention / average view duration: How far into your video the typical viewer gets before leaving. A video most people finish gets shown to far more people than one they abandon at second three.
• Completion rate: The share of viewers who watched to the end. Short videos win partly because finishing them is easy.
• Saves: Viewers bookmarking your post for later. On several platforms this is weighted more heavily than a like, because it's a stronger signal of value.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who saw your link and clicked it.
• Follower growth: New followers over a period. Useful as a trend line, misleading as a single number. (If the trend line is flat, there is a method for that.)
• Benchmarking: Finding three or four authors who write what you write, spotting which of their posts outperformed their own average, and making your version of that post. The fastest content research there is, and it costs nothing.

Rights and Risk

• Copyright strike: A notice that you've used music, video, or images you don't have the right to use. Consequences vary by platform. On some it may simply mean you aren't paid for views on that post; on YouTube it is considerably more serious. (Our Authors Guide to Copyright covers the underlying law.)
• Content ID: Automated systems that scan uploads against a database of copyrighted works. They catch properly licensed material too, which is why legitimate license holders sometimes have to prove they own music they paid for.
• Royalty-free / licensed music: Music you have permission to use. Permission is not immunity; automated systems can still flag it, and you may have to demonstrate your license. (The same traps apply to images.)
• Platform audio library: The music built into Instagram, TikTok, and the rest. Using it is the safest route, because the platform has already cleared the rights for use inside its own app.
• Terms of service: The rules of the platform. Worth a skim, particularly around contests, giveaways, and what you're allowed to ask people to do in exchange for something free.
• Account recovery: Your plan for the day you're locked out. Two-factor authentication, a recovery email you still control, and (most importantly) an email list that lives somewhere no platform can take away from you.

Related glossaries: 

Author Website Words · Web Words for Writers · From Serif to Script: A Glossary of Typography