Imagine you’ve just stumbled upon a hilarious meme that you know your best friend would love. Instead of sharing it with them on Facebook or Instagram, you shoot them a text. Or an email. Or you drop it in your private Slack or WhatsApp group.
That’s the definition of “dark social.”
As much as it sounds like the name of a secret underground network, dark social is just a term for all the online sharing that happens through private channels. Simply put: It’s the stuff that doesn’t show up in traditional web analytics.
First coined by Alexis Madrigal in 2012, dark social refers to web traffic that comes from sources your analytics tools can’t properly track. When someone lands on your site from Google or Facebook, you can tell. But when they get there because a friend DM’ed them a link? It might as well have originated from a black hole.
Common breeding grounds for dark social include:
- Text messages
- Messaging apps (WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, etc.)
- Private or closed social groups
- Shared documents or notetaking apps
Dark Social Matters More Than You Think
The more people make internet privacy a priority, the more common dark social sharing becomes. According to Hootsuite, dark social is responsible for a mind-blowing 95% of your web traffic.
So if you’re running a business — especially one that relies on content marketing, e-commerce or word-of-mouth — dark social matters a whole lot.
The problem? Traffic from dark social usually shows up in your analytics as “direct.” But let’s be real — nobody memorized the exact URL to your latest blog post and entered it into their browser. Someone shared it with them. But you can’t see where they shared it.
That means that your data could be lying to you. You might think that your homepage is super popular, but it’s actually your product page — shared in a private group chat — that’s doing the heavy lifting.
Think of dark social as the part of the iceberg that lies beneath the surface. It’s huge, it’s powerful and it’s (mostly) invisible.
What Can Marketers Do About Dark Social?
Now that you know what dark social is and why it matters, the question becomes “How can you deal with something you can’t see?”
You can’t eliminate dark social, and honestly, you shouldn’t want to. Private sharing is a sign that people trust your content enough to pass it along to the people they care the most about. That’s a good thing.
Here are a few ways you can leverage dark social to your benefit.
1. Use UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are those weird little codes you see at the end of a URL. They allow you to see where your website traffic comes from. Add them to the links you share in emails, social posts, or newsletters to better track what’s working.
Encourage your audience to share those specific links, not just the plain URL. It won’t solve your dark social problems completely, but it will help.
2. Give People More Ways to Share
You probably already have sharing buttons for your social media platforms, but you should also add them for email, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Also, make them easy to find. If people are going to share privately anyway, at least give them a trackable route.
3. Look at Behavior, Not Just Sources
If you see a sudden spike in “direct” traffic to a deep blog post — something no one would type in manually — dark social is the most likely culprit. Use patterns, timing and some good ol’ common sense to fill in the gaps.
4. Ask People Directly
A simple post-purchase or sign-up survey that asks “How did you hear about us?” can reveal a lot that analytics miss. You might be surprised how often the answer is “My friend texted me” or “Someone in my parenting group chat posted a link.”
Are You Ready to Embrace the Darkness?
As people grow more protective of their privacy and move away from algorithm-driven feeds, dark social is only going to become more common. While you may not be able to shine a spotlight on every corner of the web, you can build a strategy that acknowledges (and attempts to harness) the unseen.
Do you want to create content that’s worth sharing with your audiences’ nearests and dearests? Mischa Communications can help. Click this link.