Welcome to the New Age of Digital Marketing: Dark Social

The first time I heard the phrase “Dark Social”, I couldn’t help but think of the dark web somehow being connected to social media. Were people taking your posts and pictures without your consent and using them with malicious intent? Or was it a phenomenon of how innocent social media users fall for phishing traps?

Fortunately, it’s anything but that.

It’s a concept that shows how content goes viral without you noticing it at all. Do you remember those forwarded messages you always receive in your family groups? That’s dark social. It’s the referral traffic that isn’t tracked directly but indirectly through shares between friends, family and strangers.

As a content marketer myself, the concept was surely intriguing. But more than the fascination, I had questions.

How do you measure something that isn’t measurable yet has the potential to make your content go viral? Is it another of those fads? Can brands actually leverage the concept and take off with it? The answer can be a little complicated.

The story behind dark social

When Alexis C. Madrigal of The Atlantic coined dark social, it was only a decade ago, in 2012. He knew that the traffic people were witnessing wasn’t entirely based on the effectiveness of their landing pages, and a significant amount of eyeballs were coming from invisible sources.

His personal experience of growing up as a teenager in the 90s gave him enough room to argue that the idea of the Dark Social was always around. Then, as chat rooms and instant messenger platforms were more prevalent, so was sharing of links between friends and strangers online. Since this was always “in the dark”, without any analytics to track, most of the shared links had no trackable source.

Unsurprisingly, the social networking tools of today also function in the same way.

Think of the last time you shared an Instagram link with a friend on a different platform. The company tracking your friend’s visit would record it as a “direct social/direct” source, which means the traffic came from an untraceable source. Surely, someone needs to shine a light here.

Why should you measure dark social?

Have you sent out a campaign and got results that didn’t make sense? For example, are you sure the 54% direct traffic you’re getting is all “direct”? It can’t be right, can it?

Without making proper sense of your data, you’ll miss out on good marketing opportunities. For instance, what if you could tweak your content so more of it gets shared on dark social, bringing you more traffic? This could be better than sharing content that doesn’t rank well despite being “trackable”.

Studies consistently show that dark social plays a significant role in your content. About 80% of your shares are all dark, meaning your campaigns really aren’t optimised for tracking.

Lucky for you, you can still measure dark social, albeit indirectly.

Measuring dark social

Due to its inherent nature, measuring dark social metrics isn’t as straightforward as its peer metrics. However, not all is lost, for you can make a few tweaks to identify where your invisible traffic is coming from.

#1 Tweaking your analytics platform

Most analytics platforms track where the source of traffic is from. This can be direct, referral, email and the like. But for dark social, these visits are recorded as either “direct” or “social”, leaving you in the blue.

A trick would be to add a segment or a filter with pre-set conditions. These can be excluding certain pages, such as the ones which can be typed (like www.google.com) or bookmarking specific landing pages (like www.company.com/blog)

This exclusion can set your tracking in such a way that you get a much clearer insight into where your traffic comes from. Once you see changes, you can create further segments or add/remove pages that work best.

#2 Ask your website visitors

If you’re still unsure where your traffic comes from, why not just ask your visitors? When you have a lead form for a demo or some gated content requiring access, you can include a field that asks how they got to know about your service.

From there, you can trickle down to the source you want, such as radio or even a recommendation from a friend. This can help you figure out how much of your leads come from dark social and tweak your marketing strategy accordingly.

#3 Provide access to the most relevant channels

Your content might get good shares on social media, but you might still miss out on tracking them right. For example, if you share a piece of content on Facebook but notice that a significant portion of your traffic comes from “direct”, it could mean they’re using another platform.

So, knowing how your content works can help guide you on which channels to use. Providing the right social media share buttons can help you share the link directly than copy-pasting the link to your friends’ group. This can help you save time and focus your efforts on channels that work.

It’s time for a fresh approach to marketing

Dark social has the potential to make your content stand out.

Whether you’re an emerging startup or an established company, being aware of dark social can help scale your marketing. By focusing on this untapped area, your marketing can finally get the push to make a more significant impact. So, the next time you see a sudden burst of traffic coming out of nowhere, you know what to do.