Dark Social: The Newest Buzzword and Its Analytic Impact

While as marketers we’ve been able to successfully develop methods to track user engagement across web pages and social networks, there is one human factor we can add to our analytic repertoire: how users share content OFF the grid. Typically revolving around cutting and pasting to share via G-chat,  Facebook message or other form of text this sharing does not only makes up a considerable section of what we’ve previously lumped into direct hits, but makes up the most engaged and important demographic of visitors. This is dark social, or organic social—the dark spot on our social analytic radar.

Because sharers aren’t necessarily readers, it’s difficult to measure how many people are actually reading our content. In fact in social networks it’s standard behavior to repost content to piggyback or emphasize the originator’s values or statement. But people that are sending to their friends individually are digesters. They are the true active and consuming customer you seek as a content marketer.

It’s what as marketers we’re always after, the most intimate connections possible, because those are the longest lasting and most profitable. And while the share button has gotten more and more prevalent, meaningful referrals are more and more powerful and hard to come by. And the trail of connections has led us here, to the dark social gates.

So we’re here, how do we pillage it? What can we track and how can I package this to my boss in a colorful folder labeled “Dark Social ROI”?  Here’s the kicker: you can’t. Technically speaking it’s more of a factor to consider than a weaponized marketing utensil—a new way to mentally segment our direct hits in a slightly more specific manner. But this is good news! Good news because it gives us a little more positive outlook on our direct hits—that a section of them are true believers and consumers of our brand to the point of referring them ways we cannot (yet) account for. And for those that just see it as a buzzword, they never really understood the value of social media anyway.

So add it to your dictionaries folks, dark social just made our analytics a little bit brighter.

For a detailed report on how dark social impacts analytics check out this article from The Content Lab.