10 Common Business Acronyms, Slang Terms and Abbreviations You Need to Know

Somebody says SEO. You think a little, not sure if you heard it right. After a few moments, you smile and say “Ah, you mean CEO. Yeah, I am that person”. They look at you with disappointment on their face and say “No, no I mean SEO like search engine optimisation”. You get all red and leave the room quietly. It can happen, being an entrepreneur and entering the market brings new slang acronyms for business. To make you feel more confident and up-to-date with the latest business acronyms, we’ve selected a few, so next time somebody uses corporate acronyms, you will understand them completely.

You probably know BRB (Be Right Back), LOL (Laughing out Loud), GTG (Got to Go), AFK (Away from Keyboard) pretty basic stuff here. From ages 7 to 97, these acronyms are found on every social media platforms. Even though you are part of the new technological age, there are still acronyms that you will hear (read) them first here, and they are not even business related. For example, you are a business owner but don’t know what SFW means – Safe for Work. Working in an office sometimes creates a different social element, where you have a chat group where you share funny videos, pictures or memes. By saying SFW, your superior will know that the image or meme you are sending is not offending anyone, yet still have a LOL in the office. Ventures that allow their workers to relax and let some steam out by laughing with their co-workers increases their focus and productivity.

FOMO makes entrepreneurs, dependent on social media and news generators. It is an obligation to scroll on these platforms so you would not miss something game-changing. One of the most popular job acronyms on the internet.

One of the most basic business abbreviations you will encounter. If your accounting firm is sending you a short mail explaining they are closing the India ACCT – it means that the India account is closed. Pretty simple.

Pretty basic and self-explanatory. It defines how much money it is made, for every share sold.

This acronym is business slang 101. If you didn’t know, this is the calculation of how much money your company will make over a period of time.

It is mentioned on meetings and seen on reports. Your financial department will use it all the time. You did good in the Q2, but Q3 was hard. The year is divided into four quarters and each quarter has its number.

Managers love this acronym because it shows a comparison between the current month and the previous one. Not really a good measure, but sometimes it gives valuable data for your sales and marketing teams.

As it was mentioned before, this acronym means search engine optimisation, and generally, it is used by your internet marketing department. Their main job is optimising your website, so search engines find you more easily.

An acronym in close relation with SEO used by the same department, explains how many people visited your site and how long they stayed on it. Higher BR means excellent content.

Like a CEO this is the person who is responsible for making marketing decisions. Not only that, but they expand into the development of workers, strategy creating and financial analysis.