Have you turned to the Dark Side??
Today everyone is very aware of Security and Privacy when using Social Media. There’s a noted decline of sharing on social channels. However, it’s not that users are sharing less, they’re just doing it differently turning to Private Messaging Apps like WhatsApp to share photos and information. DARK SOCIAL is about messaging that sidesteps Social Media and cannot be measured accurately. It is becoming so important in tracking how people interact with brands.
What is Dark Social? It is a term used by marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists to describe website referrals that are difficult to track and don’t seem to have a specific source, which creates a challenge when trying to monitor website referrals and social media activity.
Most often dark traffic is the result of people sharing website links through email, text messages and private chats.
Dark social links don't have tracking code automatically linked to URLs, it is not possible to know where the user came to the webpage from is Facebook, Promoted Post or Search results.
If you are monitoring your website’s analytics using Google Analytics, you may have noticed an increase in “direct” traffic. I believe that thousands of people don’t type full URLs into browser windows to land on specific pages which are then labelled “direct” in GA, but it’s really traffic from dark social.
According to Radium One’s research, 46 percent of consumers age 55 and older share only via Dark Social, as opposed to those in the 16 to 34 age group, where only 19 percent do so.
For example, they advise if your business is in personal finance, food and drink, travel, or executive search, more than 70 percent of social sharing is done through dark social.
As always, you want people talking about your business or products and sharing it with their friends. The best way to ensure your content gets shared is to create interesting, informative, original material.
Read more about Dark Social in these Blogs -
https://blog.hootsuite.com/dark-social/
https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/02/how-brands-can-get-dark-social-right
https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/03/how-brands-can-capitalise-on-the-rise-of-dark-social
