For several years now, the frequency of publications on social networks has increased remarkably; we post if we want to share something fun with our friends, and when we share “secretly”, we give life to what is called Dark Social Media.
Dark Social Media does not mean that we enter illegal content networks or that we are sharing prohibited content; (for this there were dark social networks such as Suicide Apartment, BlackBook and Galaxy among others) it means that we are staying “off the radar”.
For marketers, tracking the activity of users is essential, in this way we can know which part of our campaign is having more success.
If we could not trace the results, we would be walking with our eyes closed.
How do we share?
Finding good content that we want to share with our friends and close relatives is something we do day by day, where we share, depends on the type of content and the time to find it.
For many people, social networks are prohibited at work, but that does not stop them.
Either by messaging apps, (even those that are included in large social networks like Facebook), by mail or by Snapchat, there are certain links and content that are being shared “below the water” and escape the analytical platforms.
When this happens, we, as strategy analysts, are left with a gap in the journey.
Generally we share so that everyone can see us, when this does not happen, the platforms bleed.
What to do with Dark Social Media?
First, we must learn to recognize it.
Depending on how people got to our link, it can appear on the analysis platforms as “direct traffic”.
This makes us lose a little balance, because nobody would search the url of our page as it appears in the navigation bar.
With the rise of security failures by social network administrators, people increasingly want to trust less in how these networks manage their private information.
However, we continue to openly share something that we know that most of our contacts may be interested in.
That link, although it can carry information about a product that our contacts need, will only be floating in the newsfeed, with one or two like but with few possibilities to convert.
On the other hand, dark social media comes directly from a person we trust.
By far, it may come from a WhatsApp group, but it will usually come from a person we know and trust.
This gives the link a very high potential to convert.
How do I use it for my strategy?
Dark social media is not bad, it’s just more complex.
The analysis platforms will not tell us where they come from and where our users go, they will only tell us that they are there.
So, what can be done to use it in favor?
There are different ways of taking charge of dark social media.
First, we need to identify it.
Since we know that, as we said before, there are certain links that cannot be typed directly in the search engine, we will have easier work to identify which sessions come from the dark social media.
Another way to use dark social media in our favor is with more accessible sharing buttons.
In this way, people tend to think of a person who might be interested in the content.
If you are reading a note and the share buttons follow you, then you are in a highly dark social media content.
For those who are not marketers, but are interested in knowing more about what happens when we stop being visible, we can tell you that we have all been participants in this trend at least once in Internet life.
Content creators should keep in mind that content that is worth sharing “one on one” will help us create a good reputation and credibility in the brand.
Marketers or not, it is always important to keep up with the trends in the world of the Internet, because we are all part of the great virtual mass.
Sources
www.econsultancy.com
www.blog.hootsuite.com