In 2012, Alexis C. Madrigal, a writer at the American magazine The Atlantic shares his findings that at least half of the visitors who land directly on the articles of the magazine’s website have arrived there via a link sent directly to them by someone they know. He calls this form of link sharing via private messaging or emails “dark social” to differentiate it from shares that are visible to everyone on social platforms. His article sparks a different approach in the way clicks are measured going forward.
“The only real way to optimize for social spread is in the nature of the content itself. There’s no way to game email or people’s instant messages. There’s no power users you can contact. There’s no algorithms to understand. This is pure social, uncut.”
Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic
So dark social has, in fact, nothing to do with the dark web, and it is extremely important that marketers understand how it works to leverage it efficiently.
In concrete terms, dark social encompasses links sent via emails, messaging platforms such as Whatsapp, direct messages sent via social networks such as Facebook Messenger and Instagram, and all links opened via mobile applications. It basically encompasses any instance where a link is copied and pasted to be sent directly to one or several people. In other words, dark social corresponds to all web traffic that has no referrer data.
As a marketer, you may have noticed a spike in the number of shares from your company’s Instagram page. Dark social is a growing phenomenon and despite the fact that it’s harder to identify and track online shares that take place via it, it is reported that in 2016, they amounted to 84% of all shares made online. From these, 62% came directly from mobile devices.
The biggest challenge that arises from the growth of dark social is for us to understand what is the proportion of visits to our websites that comes from this type of link sharing so that we can better understand our audience. As a first step, you should consider adding sharing buttons for each web platform, including messaging platforms, on your web pages. Another tactic is to use URL shortening links that can be easily copy-pasted by your site visitors, so you can track these direct shares. Finally, you can consider using dedicated tools such as Po.st or Getsocial.io.
Have you started to analyze traffic referrals sources on your website?
