What is dark social? This private sharing is harder to track than content shared on public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, so many social media marketers don’t realize how big of a slice dark social has of the social media sharing pie. Some of the most common dark social traffic channels are: Messaging apps—such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger Email—to protect users’ privacy, referrers aren’t shared) Native mobile apps—Facebook, Instagram Secure browsing—If you click from HTTPS to HTTP the referrer won’t be passed on In other words, dark social describes any web traffic that’s not attributed to a known source, such as a social network or a Google search. See how URL shorteners are the unsung hero of social media marketing: http://t.co/o7IoGkfyYU pic.twitter.com/btPaGmXaMH — Hootsuite (@hootsuite) December 19, 2014 Dark social links, however, don’t contain referrer data. 5 reasons your company can’t ignore dark social Aside from the fact that The Atlantic article is a highly interesting and relatively easy read, no matter your level of familiarity with different engagement metrics, it also makes two very important points about dark social. Dark social has a huge impact on traffic According to marketing firm RadiumOne, in the last year-and-a-half, dark social shares as a percent of on-site shares jumped from 69 to 84 percent globally. Here are a few hot tips on how to make dark social work for your business. On some sites, users have to scroll to find the share buttons. The tool allows users to share content and provides publishers with revenue opportunities and unique dark social analytics tools. GetSocial.io is a social media app store.
Imagine this scenario: You’re at work, hitting the 3 o’clock wall. To revive yourself from the slump, you navigate over to BarkPost, angling your monitor slightly more towards you to avoid being seen by your boss.
You find an amusing listicle—18 Signs Your Dog Has A Secret Second Family—and, wishing to confer with your dog co-parent, you copy the URL in the browser and paste it into an email message. Congratulations, you’ve just engaged in “dark social.”
We’ve all shared articles one-on-one through a means other than social media. Whether it was done to sidestep the no-social-media-for-personal-use policy at work, or because you don’t want the whole world to know you enjoy an article titled An Open Letter From a Corgi to the People Who Laugh at His Butt.
Thanks to the universality of the act, dark social has been reported to be responsible for 84 percent of outbound sharing. So what is this mysterious power, where does it come from, and—most importantly—how can your business harness it? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is dark social?
The term “dark social” was coined in an article written in 2012 by former deputy editor of The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal. Dark social is when people share content through private channels such as instant messaging programs, messaging apps, and email.
This private sharing is harder to track than content shared on public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, so many social media marketers don’t realize how big of a slice dark social has of the social media sharing pie.
Some of the most common dark social traffic channels are:
- Messaging apps—such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger
- Email—to protect users’ privacy, referrers aren’t shared)
- Native mobile apps—Facebook, Instagram
- Secure browsing—If you click from HTTPS to HTTP the referrer won’t be passed on
In other words, dark social describes any web traffic that’s not attributed to a known source, such as a social network or a Google search. Referral traffic is usually identified by certain “tags” attached to the link whenever it’s shared.
For example, if I want to share this blog post on Twitter using the “Tweet This” button on the side, an action window will open, with the following tag attached to the end of the URL: “percent2F&source=Shareaholic&related=shareaholic”. This tag signals that the referrer of the article was a social sharing tool directly from the post’s page.
If you’re curious about a headline in a Tweet and click on the link, you will often be directed to a link with the following tag “&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter”, signalling that this referral originated on Twitter. This is a more common referral tag that you have probably seen in the past, it’s called a UTM code.
See how URL shorteners are the unsung hero of social media marketing: http://t.co/o7IoGkfyYU pic.twitter.com/btPaGmXaMH
— Hootsuite (@hootsuite) December 19, 2014
Dark social links, however, don’t contain referrer data. Common examples of dark social include links copied and pasted into emails or instant messages, or shared via text message. These methods don’t automatically attach any tracking tags, unless the shared link was copied with the tag included (for example, if I were to copy the URL of an article that I originally found on Twitter, including the UTM code attached to it).
If you’re watching your website’s analytics closely, you’ve probably wondered what all that “direct” traffic is. Well, at Hootsuite, we’re pretty sure thousands of people didn’t type “https://blog.hootsuite.com/quick-tips-for-creating-social-videos/” into a browser window. It’s labelled “direct” in Google Analytics, but it’s really traffic from dark social.
5 reasons your company can’t ignore dark social
Aside from the fact that The Atlantic article is a highly interesting and relatively easy read, no matter your level…
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