Dark Social: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark [Infographic]

If your business is unfamiliar with the term dark social, you should take some time to get acquainted. Dark social is the traffic and conversions that happen on your website when consumers conduct conversations in private messaging apps or share links away from major social platforms such as email or SMS. In theory, your analytics platform should tell you where a referral came from when a consumer clicks a link to your site from an open social platform such as Facebook. However, links shared through private messaging apps or email lack referral tags, so when a consumer clicks on the link their visit will show up in your analytics as ‘direct’ traffic. But, dark social is not really direct traffic which means there is a large portion of referral traffic that is difficult to track accurately. Although it is harder to work with, your business should not ignore dark social.

For a better understanding of dark social, we have created an infographic covering the different channels dark social and how to measure it.

Dark social is extremely valuable because it can significantly improve the ROI of your social media and digital marketing investments. This marketing opportunity is an accurate data source and potentially one of the most lucrative marketing opportunities available today so don’t let your business be afraid of the dark!