Jessica McGreal investigates the world of private social sharing, and asks: Should marketers attempt to measure everything?
Marketers feel pressured to measure anything and everything in a bid to prove ROI and ultimately their own worth. On social media this spans from straightforward stuff, like measuring website traffic from social, to attempting to figure out the value of a Facebook like or the power of a retweet. But, what about the social shares you can’t see? The latest cat viral video friends are laughing about on WhatsApp; the news articles people are debating on Facebook Messenger, or (most significantly for B2B brands) the URLs colleagues are pasting via email. These private social shares have been dubbed ‘dark social’ and, in 2014, accounted for 69 per cent of global content sharing activity, with the figure even higher in the UK (75 per cent), according to a report by RadiumOne.
Dark social is not just people giggling at the latest BuzzFeed list – it’s also B2B buyers sharing content with colleagues. Rupert Staines, European marketing director at RadiumOne, explains: “In actual fact, it is in B2B where you are likely to find the highest percentage of dark social sharing behaviour as typically people within B2B sectors are voracious one-to-one and one-to-many sharers with their most trusted advisers
and colleagues.”
The power of dark social
The research also reveals that 84 per cent of people now share content online. Ninety-three per cent of this group share links via dark social, with 32 per cent only sharing content privately. This coincides with the growing popularity of private messaging apps, which is only set to continue – Facebook Messenger saw a 53 per cent annual user growth, while WhatsApp hit 800 million monthly users in April.
Consequently, brands are keen to understand exactly what people are sharing privately. Messages between individuals tend to be more emotive and useful for the simple reason that they already have a relationship. Although one GChat message doesn’t have as large a reach as a tweet or LinkedIn post it is more likely to be clicked – because it’s personal.
So, how can organisations harness the power of dark social? And should they even try? Monika Lazarowicz, social media manager at The Marketing Practice, stresses: “First of all don’t ignore it; treat it as an opportunity for your social content to ‘travel’ further (outside your social channels). Dark social will only grow, so try and make the most of it. You can do it by focusing on the three main areas: creating great content, improved tracking and the insight you get from analytics tools.”Consequently, brands are keen to understand exactly what people are sharing privately. Messages between individuals tend to be more emotive and useful for the simple reason that they already have a relationship. Although one GChat message doesn’t have as large a reach as a tweet or LinkedIn post it is more likely to be clicked – because it’s personal.
Measuring dark social
Gabriella Cantelo, communications manager at Onyx, explains: “There’s a wealth of tools that are available but they’re currently underused. The most common tools to measure dark social are link shorteners such as Bit.ly and Ow.ly. These link shorteners can tell you where click-throughs have come from. It usually shows any clicks that aren’t from Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn as ‘other referrers.”
Additionally marketers can use UTM codes. These are simple codes that you can attach to a custom URL to find out how people are sharing your content. Tools like Google’s URL Builder makes creating these handy URLs easy and allows you to track campaign clicks by editing the URL to include information about the source. For example:
As you can see the UTM code makes it easier for marketers to understand where traffic is coming from. Above you see the source (Twitter) and the medium (a sponsored update) and the campaign name (‘social campaign sept’).
Ross Tavendale, head of media at Ideas Made Digital, adds: “Using tools like Google URL Builder allows you to tag your campaign URLs and track every click that is generated by the campaign. Further to that, if you have a marketing automation platform that plugs into a CRM system like Pardot or Hubspot running onsite, you can start to capture information around the companies hitting your site.”
Be transparent
However, despite the tools available, dark social is private and, therefore, supposedly untraceable. Tracking and measurement is dubious and can never be anywhere near 100 per cent accurate. It remains guesswork. Additionally, when entering the world of measurement and tracking, moral, ethical and even legal issues arise because who wants a brand reading their private messages?
Jeremy Waite, head of digital strategy at Salesforce, believes it’s impossible to measure dark social accurately and warns marketers to tread carefully when entering this space. He says: “We’re all in this together, we’re all struggling and everyone is trying to make sense of all this data and how to measure it properly – but it’s an issue for everybody and nobody has really figured it out yet. It’s good to raise it and talk it through but we have to be careful because we’ve got a big responsibility to look after our customer’s data, too.”
Consequently, it’s crucial brands are transparent with their customers about the way they are collecting and using their data. It’s unlikely individuals will want to hand over their inboxes but people may be more inclined to share views if it will improve their working lives in any way. Waite adds: “From a personal perspective, if someone was reading all my private emails but there was a reason why they were doing that and I was getting enough value in return I’d have no problem with that.”
Without being open and honest, organisations could easily overstep the line and enter murky waters between
what is legal and what is illegal. Charlie Southwell, co-founder of Transmute, reveals: “I’ve heard rumours of publishers using cookies and tracking beyond what might be considered legal uses of data, to track links through browsers and devices to try and match data up, but it’s in its infancy and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more dubious tracking in the coming years.”
The answer
So, it’s a complex picture: ignoring dark social isn’t an option, but measuring it accurately is problematic too. Here are some suggestions for navigating the world of dark social:
Be aware Marketers need to stay up-to-date with the latest digital and technical developments that impact the industry – that means keeping an eye out for any dark social news.
Don’t get obsessed with numbers As we’ve outlined: dark social cannot be measured accurately. So there’s no point spending your nine to five attempting to measure every single stat. Instead be aware of the number of ‘unknown’ social shares or referrals to specific pages on your site so you understand the influence private conversations have on web traffic. This leads to the next tip…
Join your channels together Don’t think about dark social in isolation. Instead, measure your predicted dark social shares alongside web traffic, unique conversations, press releases or TV ads.
Create shareable content Dark social sharing is only going to rise and, to ensure your content is being consumed and shared by professionals, you need to ensure it’s valuable. Otherwise, you’re wasting your own time creating something that isn’t going to be seen.
Want to learn more? Check out our dark social infographic>>>
