Monitoring your social media presence is relatively easy, but there’s a hidden realm called “dark social” that poses measurement challenges. It is sharing of content through private channels like messaging apps and email, making it difficult to track and analyze.
In this blog, we’ll delve into the world of dark social, exploring its impact and providing valuable insights on how to effectively measure and navigate this elusive realm.
What is dark social?
Dark social refers to the sharing of content lacking digital referral information about its source through private channels such as messaging apps, email, and direct copying. It represents a significant portion of social sharing, often hindering marketing analytics and understanding user behavior.
Dark social gets its name from the fact that it is difficult to track and measure in analytics programs like Google Analytics. When content is shared through private channels it appears as direct traffic, as if the URL was manually typed into the browser. Since these shared links lack referral tags, they become challenging to monitor and attribute accurately.
According to Wikipedia, dark social sharing is driven by the psychology behind three key factors:
- Identity and context: Dark social allows individuals to express their individualism by choosing what and with whom to share privately, rather than broadcasting everything to a wide audience.
- Relationship building: Dark social creates a personal channel for sharing, fostering deeper connections and building personal relationships, regardless of geographical boundaries.
- Social currency: Dark social sharing enables individuals to feel helpful, trendy, or interesting. Sharing within smaller, intimate circles allows the sharer to establish themselves as knowledgeable, earning social credibility.
Some of the dark social media examples include:
- Sharing links or content through private messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, or Facebook Messenger.
- Sending links or content via email or personal messages.
- Copying and pasting links directly into conversations or social media posts.
- Sharing content through closed groups or forums.
- Word-of-mouth sharing without a digital trace.
- Offline conversations where people share online content without directly referencing the source.
Why is dark social important for brands?
As social networks grow, people increasingly turn to private messaging apps for sharing content.
GlobalWebIndex research reveals that personal photos (72%), entertaining photos or videos (70%), website links (50%), deals or discounts (49%), social media post links (48%), and product picture links (45%) are commonly shared via dark social.
Understanding the importance of dark social is crucial for website owners and marketers. Here are some reasons why:
1. Majority of us use dark social
Dark social refers to the private sharing of content through channels like messaging apps, email, and private browsing, where it’s challenging to track or attribute the source.
As per Sparktoro’s chart:
- TikTok, Slack, Discord, Mastodon, and WhatsApp visits were marked as “direct” with no referral information.
- 75% of Facebook Messenger visits had no referral information, unrelated to browser choice, device type, or web vs. app.
- Instagram DMs, public LinkedIn and Pinterest posts missed significant portions of referral data (30%, 14%, and 12% respectively).
- Reddit posts, LinkedIn DMs, and Twitter DMs also attributed some traffic as “direct.”
- YouTube, public Instagram profile links, public Facebook posts, and Tweets typically provided referral data.
- Website owners and marketers should expect a substantial portion of “direct” traffic to originate from these networks.
Understanding dark social is crucial because it accounts for a significant portion of online content sharing, often surpassing public social media platforms. Ignoring dark social can lead to a distorted understanding of audience behavior and missed opportunities to engage with users.
2. Accurate attribution
Dark social presents a challenge for accurate attribution, as sharing happens privately and referral data is often lost.
By acknowledging and addressing dark social, marketers and businesses can implement strategies to track and measure these private interactions, gaining a more comprehensive view of their content’s reach and impact. Accurate attribution helps allocate resources effectively, optimize campaigns, and make informed decisions based on reliable data.
3. Audience insights
Dark social offers valuable insights into audience behavior and preferences. By analyzing the content shared through private channels, businesses can identify patterns, understand which topics resonate the most, and adapt their content strategies accordingly.
These insights can help refine targeting, tailor messaging, and create more relevant and engaging content, enhancing the overall marketing effectiveness and building stronger relationships with the audience. Understanding dark social enables businesses to tap into hidden conversations and harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
4. Campaign optimization
Dark social is important because it allows businesses to optimize their marketing campaigns. By understanding how content is shared privately, marketers can identify which messages or campaigns are resonating the most with their audience. This insight helps refine future campaigns, allocate resources effectively, and improve overall campaign performance.
5. Audience targeting
Dark social provides valuable information about audience behavior, preferences, and interests. Analyze the content shared through private channels to gain insights into their target audience’s demographics, needs, and motivations.
This knowledge enables more precise audience targeting, allowing marketers to tailor their messaging, personalize content, and reach the right people with the right message at the right time.
6. Brand advocacy
Dark social strategy plays a significant role in brand advocacy. When people share content privately, it often indicates a higher level of trust and personal endorsement.
By understanding and leveraging dark social, businesses can encourage and amplify positive word-of-mouth recommendations, turning satisfied customers into brand advocates. This organic advocacy helps build brand reputation, credibility, and loyalty, as well as expand the brand’s reach through authentic and influential connections.
How to measure dark social?
Measuring dark social is not an exact science, and the data gathered may provide an estimation rather than precise metrics. It’s important to combine multiple methods and approaches to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of dark social on your content and campaigns.
Here are a few approaches you can consider for using dark social in marketing:
- URL Shorteners: When content is shared via private channels, such as messaging apps or email, using URL shorteners can help track dark social traffic. Shortened URLs can be customized to include tracking parameters, allowing you to monitor clicks and gather data on the source of the traffic. By analyzing these metrics, you can gain insights into the extent of dark social sharing and the performance of your content.
- Analytics Platforms: Analyzing referral traffic in your website’s analytics platform can provide clues about dark social. Look for traffic categorized as “direct” or “unknown” to identify potential dark social activity. While it doesn’t provide specific details, this analysis can give you an indication of the volume and impact of dark social shares, helping you understand its role in driving traffic to your site.
- Surveys and Feedback: One way to measure dark social is by using surveys and feedback mechanisms. This involves directly asking individuals about their sharing behavior on private messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp or Messenger. Surveys can be designed to inquire about specific content, channels, or frequency of sharing. Feedback mechanisms can be implemented on websites or apps, allowing users to voluntarily disclose their referral sources, including dark social interactions. The data collected through surveys and feedback can provide insights into the extent and patterns of dark social sharing.
- UTM Parameters: UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are tags added to URLs that help track the source of traffic to a particular website. By incorporating UTM parameters in shared links, it is possible to identify dark social traffic. For example, when someone copies a link and shares it via private messaging, the UTM parameters will remain intact. Analyzing the UTM parameters in website analytics can reveal the proportion and behavior of dark social traffic. This method provides quantitative data on the volume of dark social sharing and its impact on website traffic.
- Social Listening Tools: Social listening tools are software applications that monitor and analyze social media platforms for mentions, discussions, and trends related to specific keywords or brands. While dark social interactions occur outside public platforms, social listening tools can still offer valuable insights. By monitoring public conversations about a brand or content, these tools can help identify instances where users mention sharing privately or discuss specific content without providing a direct link. Although not capturing all dark social data, social listening tools can provide qualitative information and help uncover trends or sentiments related to dark social sharing.
Get started with measuring dark social
In conclusion, dark social is a challenging aspect to understand and measure. It can be difficult to keep up with, especially when it comes to monitoring it.
However, with the help of a social listening and monitoring tool like Radarr, you can stay on top of dark social conversations.
Radarr offers the capability to analyze online discussions in real time, allowing you to uncover what people are saying about your brand. Some of its top features are
✅ Campaign Tracking & ROI
✅ Brand, Competitor and Crisis Monitoring
✅ Real-Time Alerts & Industry Trends
To experience the benefits of Radarr firsthand, book a demo today.
