There are a multitude of ways in which people share content, but not all of these ways are visible to brands. Quite a bit of online sharing is done through private spaces. These private spaces do not send clear referral data to analytics platforms.
Hence, the teams are often operating in the dark about the real reach of their content and the true user intent. Consequently, it becomes harder to figure out the performance of content and the level of people’s engagement with it. Brand Center USA wants to make this topic less complex by providing an easy and usable guide.
What Is Dark Social?
It is a term that denotes traffic originating from private areas without any referral data being sent. When a link is shared via a private message or a closed community, the click is recorded in the analytics tool, but the source is not. It gives the impression that the user has typed the address manually. However, that’s rarely the case. The concealed route of the visit is part of a silent sharing pattern that numerous analytics tools are not able to track.
This sort of traffic doesn’t depend on the standard referral tags to navigate. Usually, when platforms share data between public pages, they also indicate the place from where the visit has occurred. This info lets brands know the effectiveness of their campaigns.
In case of private talks, this referral tag does not accompany the link. Therefore, analytics tools are not able to find the exact way the visitor took.
The influence of these secret routes is even bigger nowadays as people are rapidly switching between their apps. They share content in a very casual way and most of the time they do not even think about the source. Quite a few people share links with their friends via personal chats as it is more convenient.
Hence, there is a huge number of concealed visits that brands have no knowledge of. The pattern is a perfect indicator of actual user behavior. It demonstrates that private sharing can have the same level of power as public activity.
Why Dark Social Is Challenging for Marketers?
The greatest problem is improper attribution. When brands initiate a campaign, they rely on reporting systems for performance evaluation. They look at the figures of the traffic, interactions, and conversions. They attempt to find out which channels bring the most significant results.
Data becomes fragmented when some audience members come through invisible routes. This confuses the whole thing. A privately shared link can be the source of a hundred of visits.
However, all those visits may be recorded as direct traffic. What this does is distort the overall picture. It becomes really hard to spot what actually generates the interest. There are situations when teams think that a certain piece of content is performing poorly while in fact, it is getting a lot of private attention.
As a result, they may decide to stop or change the campaign without realizing its real effect. The problem has an impact on budget planning as well.
The brands’ decision on how to distribute funds among different channels depends largely on performance indicators. In case the indicators are not reflecting the real behavior, the budget will be allocated to the less effective channels.
This reduces the return on investment. It also impedes longer-term planning since the data does not disclose the complete journey of the audience. Another problem associated with audience insights. When people share content privately, that is a clear signal of trust.
As such, one of the most significant sources of credibility for brands is the development of trust through personal recommendations from friends. Brand layer gains a lot from user’s behavior, as it is the foundation of trust.
However, if this activity is not recorded in reports, brands are at risk of underestimating the trust that has been built. With properly implemented tracking methods, companies will be able to understand the way users interact with their content and how these interactions influence brand perception.
Common Channels Behind Dark Social Traffic
Messaging apps
Private conversations rank among the main causes of hidden shares. People pass links to their friends and co-workers in direct conversations. These visits are accounted as direct traffic since the referral source is not shared with the analytics systems.
Private groups and communities
Closed groups mostly discuss content which is not exposed to the public feed. Such groups are basically either communities based on interests or social circles where information is exchanged rapidly and without leaving any traces.
Email and direct messages
If people get content via email or one to one messages, the links will be landing in either inboxes or personal threads. No referral tag is attached to the click that follows.
Copy paste sharing
Quite a number of users take a link from their browser and drop it into the message of a private chat. Such a method doesn’t leave any tracking code behind. It is among the most frequent reasons for hidden traffic.
How to Identify Dark Social Traffic?
Brands have an opportunity to spot this pattern if they closely examine their direct traffic.
If suddenly there are more direct visits to deep pages which are hard to type, it is a sign of hidden sharing. Almost no one would hand-type a long web address. The increase of direct visits to certain pieces of content very often points to the private distribution of that content.
Another indication of this can also be found in the drastic increase of page views in absence of any public announcement. A quiet campaign that nevertheless enjoys strong traffic is most probably the effect of private sharing.
Time stamps for unusual activity can be another clue that private sharing is taking place. If the sharing of a link happens in a private community, then the traffic will peak at certain hours, which will be different from the typical user activity hours.
In addition, by comparing public reach with actual visits, one can get information to help figure out the situation. If a post is showing slight public engagement but the page is getting a lot of traffic, it means that users are sharing privately rather than publicly. Media buying teams can use these comparisons to find the gaps and fine-tune their attribution models.
How to Track and Measure Dark Social Shares?
It is possible to keep track of something more easily if there are unique parameters included in the links that are being shared through controlled channels.
Analytics tools are capable of following the visitor when a brand is passing a link via a newsletter or a private community with a unique tag.
So this is very helpful in locating private channels that engage users and make them participate.
It is also the use of short tailored links to track private sharing. If these links are shared by the users, every consequent click becomes open to the analytics tools. There is a drastic reduction in the volume of completely unidentified traffic.
Closest to content, share buttons could also be the source of giving users the power to share via trackable methods which are facilitated by the share buttons.
These buttons integrate tracking tags that remain connected to the link.
When copying the link, if the user decides to give a click on the button rather than a simple copying, referral data will become more transparent.
Those folks that get on with the task of revealing the items hidden in those jaundiced eyes employ tools to spot user behaviors.
They let brands take a step closer to a proper understanding of the public’s actions and also deliver a clearer account of how material is being distributed in private circles beyond the scope of public feeds.
Best Tools to Track Dark Social
Analytics platforms
Contemporary analytics solutions have taken the lead in identifying wrong-doing by drawing attention to unusual patterns. These patterns are brought to light through flow reports and heat maps that show web-vistors’ movements throughout the site. Whenever traffic arrives deep, and at the same time, pages that do not have obvious sources, these patterns let one figure out the secret shares. Such instruments help to understand the audience’s journeys better.
Link tracking tools
One of the ways short link services can be utilized by companies is to generate URLs that are not only shorter but also have tags. Consequently, these tags can be employed to keep track of the area from which links are obtained. The moment people decide to share those links in the privacy of their chats, a brand is the one to receive as much detailed information about the traffic as it wishes.
Social listening tools
These are the tools that keep an eye on conversations happening around the world in different online spaces. They record every mention, quote and discussion, which is, in fact, talking about a particular brand. Even if there is no referral data at all, the tools still indicate the places where the content is being addressed. Such information lets the brands know of the extent of their message dissemination.
How to Reduce the Impact of Dark Social on Your Reporting?
By offering trackable sharing solutions to users, brands are able to lessen the blow that dark social delivers on their reporting. Creation of content sharing buttons using characters that are close to the actual text make users more willing to share content while at the same time not losing the tracking data. Users are given a chance to decide on these buttons through clear call to action prompts. As a result, this leads to higher accuracy levels of traffic reports.
Reviewing attribution models and getting rid of the internal traffic is another way of handling the problem. Most of the time, direct traffic numbers are the ones inflated by internal visits. Taking away those visits from your data produces cleaner traffic. It is now much easier to tell different private sharing activities from internal ones.
Behavior of the target audience is also a very helpful tool. Brands should look at the performance of their content versus the interaction of the users. Whenever a trend is found, departments can change their reports and also modify the strategies they use. Gradually, the gaps in the insights will be diminished, and the quality of campaigning will rise.
Pro Tips to Optimize Tracking
Practical steps to refine attribution
One of the first things to do is putting tags on the links to your campaigns wherever your team has the control of the channel. Newsletters, partner messages as well as community updates are good examples of places where you do this.
Thus, you create a smaller amount of traffic which is unattributed.
Tips for better data accuracy
One should inspect the numbers of direct traffic and take internal visits out of their reports. What usually causes these numbers to be inflated is the activity inside the company.
Correct filters are in place to get rid of the problems and deliver clean data.
How can brands leverage insights?
When the signs get to be more and more visible, companies are capable of producing the kind of content that goes hand in hand with secret sharing of private information. In this way, the spreading of the content becomes smoother as well as trust from the users gets reinforced.
Organizations have a chance also to modify their content by choosing the one that fits best with the way people want to share information.
Summing Up,
One cannot deny that the way people share things from behind their backs has a strong effect on how digital success is being measured by brands. As a result, the understanding of those secret users’ paths leads not only to more precise reports but also to greater strengths of strategies.
Brand Center USA is like a light in a darkened room that makes things clear when it comes to this perplexing topic. It does that by offering help that makes it easier for brands to perform with real output and to refine reporting with assurance.
