How Marketers Can Make Dark Social Work for Them

People love sending links on social media. From skateboarding tree sloths to far more relevant topics, there are plenty of them to be sent. And experienced advertisers have taken advantage of this over the years.

Even so, dark social - such as IM, emails and texts - has quickly become the preferred method for sending links to one another. And by a pretty sizable margin. 

Yeah, Dark Social Is A Big Deal

Dark social is far more personal than its show-off cousin social media. That’s because when someone shares a link on dark social with someone they know, it’s typically about a common interest. Or possibly a link to something that will help them solve a problem. 

Where social media is a performance, dark social is an interaction. It’s genuine and real. And THIS is what users are demanding more of these days.

For example, let’s say you’re a purveyor of authentic scones. You know they’re authentic because British people say they’re the “dog’s bullocks” and, disturbing though this sounds, means they like them. 

Anyhow, you’ve recently started baking savory scones and are offering them BOGO free with a link to a coupon. You can post this on Facebook, Twitter and the like. And it will be cast to a broad audience - some of whom will be interested and many of whom who will not. Whatever the case, you’ll able to use analytics to measure this. 

In the mean time, dark social is all abuzz with discussion about your savory scones. And that’s not a euphemism. There were three chaps from jolly old London who came in two weeks ago who were thrilled when you told them you’d be offering savory scones soon. Now they’re texting and emailing fellow Brits - and even an Aussie - about your amazing scones.They’re talking about their experience at your bakery and sharing the coupon link with others who have a genuine love and appreciation for scones. One woman has been on a quest for the perfect scone at her weekly teas, and now she has the link too. 

And this is what makes dark social so important. It cuts through all the digital noise. It’s the private world where your customers share what truly interests them with others who share that interest. Or again, as in the case of the woman with afternoon teas, where a problem can be solved.

Gaining Insight into Dark Social Sharing Is Crucial

And yet, as of now, all of those analytics tools that measure direct traffic cannot measure traffic that comes from dark social.

It’s likely that in the future, all messaging apps will offer chat bots who, in all their artificially intelligent grandeur, will be able to track every interaction with customers to help you measure success. And bully for them. 

In the mean time, it’s not enough to just post your link, sprinkle it with fairy dust and then hope it moves through dark social networks. The key is to make those links as shareable and traceable as possible. 

Here’s how:

Start with A URL Shortener 

If you want your content to get a lot of exposure, you have to initially link to the pages to which you want to drive traffic.

So when savvy marketers start an online campaign, they typically include links to relevant landing pages or social profiles. And that sounds all fine and good. The problem is, the links are too long and can’t be traced without an analytics platform. And as we’ve said, most analytics programs are unable to directly account for click-backs that are coming from dark social.

Enter the URL shortener. This bad boy comes in and creates short, easy-to-share, trackable links. But wait, there’s more. Most link shorteners include real-time analytics on click-backs which gives you data without your needing to invest in a full-service analytics dashboard. They also allow for segmentation of the incoming data.

Plus, people have a real thing for sharing shortened URLs. Especially when they’re customized with campaign- or brand-specific keywords. This just makes them more trustworthy than those drawn-out links riddled with numbers, symbols and, frankly, suspicion. And seeing a link with the name of a familiar company enables people who really want to view your content to know exactly what they’re getting. Thus, short URLs receive more shares and click-backs. So less is more. 

Set Up Google Analytics to Get Estimates 

Another method to estimate dark social is through custom

segmentations in Google Analytics. You’ll notice we said estimate. Because, and we apparently can’t stress this enough, there’s no solid way to track dark social yet. 

But these estimates will at least give you a clearer understanding of the percentage of direct traffic that came from people who shared a URL versus those who typed in the URL directly.

Here’s how you set it up:

1. Start by creating a custom segment to view direct traffic only. Then select Apply.

2. In Google Analytics, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. You should see a list of your top visited pages via direct traffic.

3. Open an advanced filter to set up a series of dimensions that exclude pages that contain short subfolder names. (That’s the part of the URL after the domain, e.g., /contact.)

Once those pages are excluded, you’re left with only the long URL pages and it’s highly unlikely these were typed out when users came to your site.

Pay Attention to How You Interact

All of the tech tricks aside, this is really the best thing you can do in making dark social work for you right now.

And it’s part of the reason that “permission based” apps like Snapchat have become so popular. Rather than the willy-nilly broadcasting that has defined social media until recently, Snapchat requires you to engage and interact rather than just spew out post after post about your kids or what you ate for dinner. (Or worse, what your kids ate for dinner.)

Make The Most of Dark Social

To gain loyalty to your brand, you have to be willing to discuss, chat, dialog and be involved. You have to interact. Then once you have that interaction, you can directly provide a benefit (a game, wanted information, the solution to a problem) to the user.

Offering people incredible experiences at the right time is the power behind dark social. 

And, lack of analytics aside, it shouldn’t be ignored.

Advertising Question of the Week: What Is Dark Social?

It sounds sinister. Like someone lurking in a corner talking smack about you. (Popularly known as high school.)

But dark social refers to the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what web analytics programs are able to measure. And it often gets a bad rap. Especially from seasoned marketers. 

Dark Social Is Traffic That Comes from the Share of a URL 

Yet analytics tools like Google view it as direct traffic. So companies that are measuring their web traffic solely through old-school web analytics are missing key insights about how folks are really discovering their content and products.

Back in the dark ages of the internet, arriving at a site was predominantly a straight shot. If you wanted shoes, you went to Zappo’s site. If you wanted to start raising chickens or alligators (or both because you have issues), you went… to some other site. 

But now there are multiple ways one lands on a site:

Native Mobile Apps 

Mobile apps either fire up a browser instance in-app (such as Twitter), or force your current browser to open a new browser window with the URL in question in the browser. Either way, the browser goes directly to the site and looks like direct traffic to Google.

Email 

For the (perceived, at least) sake of privacy and security, most email-providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook don’t pass a referrer when a user clicks the link.

Chat 

Whether it’s web/desktop based chat, or through chat-based native mobile apps, chat clients of all kinds don’t pass referrers either, leaving Google in the dark about their true origin. 

Even texting is considered dark social.

Many estimates state that 84% of social shares are dark. And this is precisely why it falls out of favor with those of the marketing ilk who rely on analytical insights to structure their social media strategies.

As such, dark social is often given labels such as ‘challenging’,  ‘worrisome’ and ‘terrifyingly horrible’. The last one is an exaggeration. And frankly, all of these words are restrictive in their scope.  

Marketers who want to achieve success with their social media marketing are approaching dark social from a new - and necessary - angle. And it’s this:  

Dark Social Is An Opportunity

Dark social has a huge impact on traffic. It reaches unique demographics; particularly the 55+ crowd, over 40% of whom share only through dark social. Dark social is

everywhere. And we mean, everywhere. It’s especially prevalent in industries like personal finance, food and drink, travel and executive searches. 

It’s an amazing marketing opportunity in that its data gives a detailed representation of consumers’ genuine interests. Getting familiar with this information allows marketers to access a targeted audience of connections for their clients.

“How do I get the data though?” you might be asking. “Didn’t you just say that dark social can’t be measured by web analytics?”

Settle down. 

Dark Social Is Getting Integrated into Digital Marketing Tactics

So far it’s slow-going, because it’s relatively restricted. And it should be. Sharing is often private for a reason and it would be rather callous of brands to hunt for insights among private conversations between friends. Or alligator and chicken breeders. 

But there are some tactics and tools marketers are employing to tap into some of this valuable information. For instance, they’re:

• Shortening URLs for outbound links in content and emails, then tracking how many clicks those links receive.

• Making sharing easier with thoughtfully placed, sophisticated share buttons that match the quality of content. 

• Watching other social platforms by checking for a simultaneous spike in link traffic coming from sites like Reddit or Facebook.

• Using some of the newer tools that track dark social traffic origins and analyze their outcomes.

And as time marches on, the tools and tactics will become more defined and elaborate. But dark social will probably always defy algorithms. And as long as ethics are in play, there will be no way to game email or people’s instant messages or texts. 

Which, even as marketers, we see as a good thing. There really is such a thing as too much information.