84%1 of all web content and social network shares are private shares. Whether through message applications or even during an exchange in a forum, how can you truly trace the underbelly of social media?
How can you gather consumer insights when internet and social users don’t always share them publicly? How do you identify industry trends if they’re online going through private discussions? How do we deal with the data that eludes us? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Dark Social?
Multiple terminologies refer to dark social, from dark social media data, dark traffic, or even dark funnel. While they all sound very ominous, and you may have probably heard of them once before, what do they essentially mean?
The term "dark social" describes the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what can be tracked by web analytics software. Often it refers to some social media, private messaging applications, and online communities. However, in a broader sense, it could also include online or face-to-face events. Let's break down some aspects of these channels, explaining why they could appear untrackable:
Examples: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest...
Examples: Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, Zoom, DMs...
Examples: Spotify, Apple Podcast...
Examples: Discord Servers, Facebook Groups, work channels...
Examples: virtual or face-to-face event, webinar, conferences…
Graph representing the percentage of Dark Social content
Suppose you want to get an idea of what this loss of information represents for your business regarding the actual volume of conversations and users. In that case, you need to look at a specific region. For instance, chat apps are more likely to be used daily by Asian consumers than social media sites. According to a TNS study, 61% of Asian Internet users use chat apps daily, compared to only 43% who use social media platforms daily.
All of these examples illustrate how much data marketers are missing, leaving more to be desired when it comes to benchmarking data. If pieced together, these mentions in the dark represent many unaccounted-for users, traffic, and conversions. What are the negative impacts?
As you will have understood from our definition of dark social, the central problem of dark social is being unable to determine the origin of your traffic. It will be classified as "direct" or "other," but you will not have more information.
There will be bound to be limitations because it is more beneficial to understand how new users arrived at your content, yet this path is not traceable. The result means you can't identify your prospects.
The problem with dark social is, then, strategic. The web data fed to your organization’s decision-making is not as reliable as it could be. Even more troublesome, if that traffic leads to a sale, it cannot be attributed to a channel or activity.
So how can you shed light on dark social?
Dark social represents a gold mine of information that it would be a shame not to know how to exploit. It is, therefore, in the interest of companies to look into this practice to better understand their social data.
Given that social data represents a significant proportion of the company's data, knowing how to collect it, sort it and complete it with data from other sources will allow your company to:
And what is the difference between a dark social interaction and a social audience? The user's trust!
The interactions on dark social have more weight than a comment shared on traditional social networks as netizens who forward "dark" content (article links, image or video sharing) could have stronger closer ties to the community.
People are looking to share a piece of information or even an emotion. By sharing a funny video on TikTok with a friend, we are not looking to collect likes or comments: it is a disinterested sharing.
That's why brands increasingly prefer User-Generated Content (UGC) for their branded content strategy. Partnering with well-known influencers and celebrities could be less effective in landing the desired impact when viewers realize it is sponsored content, resulting in less trust. As opposed to user-generated content created by everyday netizens without a "partnership" label tend to appear more trustworthy and credible.
For instance, in 2021, the “sky-high mascara” trend from Maybelline, a New York Cosmetics label, became viral, generating thousands of UGC videos. The hashtag ‘#skyhighmascara’ has more than 800 million views on TikTok, not counting videos that did not feature the tag.
Example of UGC content - Maybelline’s mascara campaign in 2021
To have a more scientific look at the hidden opportunities of social, here are eight statistics that will help your brand in discovering the dark social cog:
Many of these figures show the importance of UGC data that only a handful of companies leverage. But how can you keep track of it?
To be alerted of what is being said about your company online, including missing mentions of your brand, seek a modern solution such as social media listening and monitoring software, allowing you to access critical dark social data easily. Thanks to the power of artificial intelligence, it is even possible to recognize your logo or sign on a photo or video. Using such software would allow you to stay informed on this side of social.
Think about all the future potential that dark social could bring you. It's an area of potential for brands, and marketers should start taking advantage of it as soon as they can. The most important thing is ensuring you have access to the right data. You can only make intelligent decisions about your marketing budget if you have a complete picture of what works and what doesn't.
Find a proper strategy for your brand and get started on the dark side of social! 💡
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