What Is Dark Social – And How Do You Track It?

As a website owner, tracking your shares is vital to your

How to Do Dark Social Marketing

If you think tracking web traffic from social media is a lost cause, here’s the good news: You can do dark social media marketing to track users from native apps and other platforms where that traffic may be hidden.

Some popular examples include:

• Brand-owned closed communities: Closed communities, such as an invitation-only Facebook group, allow companies to interact with customers and track engagements and web traffic, all without the complex data tracking from social media traffic sources.
• Other social networks: These include branded subreddits and Quora threads that may be open. Reddit is an easy way to share content, new products, company updates, and more. Even though Reddit hides private information, you can still use this platform to learn your customers’ interests and behaviors better.
• Employee advocacy: You can encourage your employees to act as spokespersons for your brand, a trend called employee advocacy. For example, B2B brands utilize this strategy often on LinkedIn. Encourage employees to share your content on LinkedIn. This way, you’ll have a better snapshot of who’s interacting with your content on social media.
• Private messaging marketing: As long as you’re not intrusive, SMS and DM marketing is a great way for consumers to learn about your deals and continue retargeting leads. You can include a coupon code in your text message and use it for promo monitoring.

Related Content: Social Media Marketing for Business Owners: How to Get Started in 2023

How to Track Dark Social

There’s no need to be afraid of the dark! While the previous dark social media marketing strategies are effective, you’ll still want to know how to track dark social media traffic:

Here are a few easy ways to track dark social.

Shortened URLs

Shortened URLs are popular on many social media platforms, notably Twitter and others with character restrictions.

Marketers also use shortened URLs to track the clicks and shares they receive from users. Shortened URLs can help marketers gain insight into the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaign and if their content is converting leads.

Businesses can use a tool like Bitly to create shortened URLs:

Referral Traffic

There are many ways you can track website referrals on social media. Influencer marketing is a perfect example.

Influencer marketing is a simple way to not only increase your reach on social but also to track social media traffic. When you supply a coupon link to your influencers, you can use this code for coupon monitoring.

Google Analytics

If you’re one of the 28.1 million websites that use Google Analytics, you can track dark social by making a simple change to your platform. As stated previously, most dark social visits are direct traffic, meaning users see your post on social media and then visit your website. You can narrow direct traffic to get a better idea of where your audience is coming from.

To do this:

• Sign into Google Analytics and go to Audience > Overview.
• Click on Add Segment and select Direct Traffic. De-select all other options.
• Scroll down and click Apply.

Marketers should also filter out any website name or link that’s memorable, such as your home page URL:

To do this:

• Go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
• Click Advanced and change the first filter to Exclude.
• Select Page, and type in any URL you find memorable.

UTM Codes

UTM codes, also called UTM parameters, are a string of code that marketers place at the end of a URL:

This parameter tracks the medium, source, term, campaign, and content that made the user click on your website.

Share Buttons

Instead of forcing users to copy and paste your web page URL, make sharing from your site easy by including buttons to post on social networks. You’ll not only increase your reach, but can also easily track who’s sharing your content on social media.

Include share buttons leading to popular social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It’s also worth it to include email, SMS, and messaging app buttons.

Social Listening and Monitoring Tools

With social listening and monitoring, you will receive notifications when users mention your brand on social media:

Major social media marketing platforms, such as Sprout Social, use AI to let brands search through mentions to uncover trends and insights from your followers.

This way, you can better identify audience demographics, interests and behaviors that captivate your consumers. Plus, social listening tools will introduce you to new influencers, which opens up more opportunities for referral traffic.

Referral Marketing

Instead of including a link to your website on social media, offer a referral program. Encourage your customers to refer their friends and families to your business:

Referrals can still be difficult to track, so you may want to include an optional “How Did You Find Our Brand?” section.

Dive Deeper: 6 Referral Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales in 2023

Specific Dark Social Tracking Tools

While all these tactics can measure dark social traffic, you’ll get the most accurate results using dark social tracking tools.

Dark social tools offer different benefits, such as social monitoring and analytics, so you can better identify your previously unseen audience. Many dark social tracking tools include some of the mentioned tactics, such as trackable social sharing buttons.

You have many dark social tool choices, such as ShareThis and GetSocial:

With these tools, you can track copy-and-paste shares to understand your audience better, how your web visitors are reacting to your content, and view pages that are performing well on dark social.

Wrapping Up: Dark Social Is an Unseen Marketing Opportunity

With dark social, marketers are losing insight into a large chunk of their audience. While this may seem discouraging, look at dark social as an unseen marketing opportunity.

Even though you may initially not see where your traffic sources are coming from, you can take the opportunity to connect with your customers via Facebook groups and branded subreddits.

Implementing different hacks in your marketing strategy, such as shortened URLs and UTM codes, will make it easier to track your dark social shares. You also have the option to use dark social software that offers many tools, such as social monitoring and analytics. This way, you can eliminate the mystery behind dark social.

If you’re ready to turn dark social into an opportunity, Single Grain’s web analytics experts can help!👇

Work With Us

The post What Is Dark Social – And How Do You Track It? appeared first on Single Grain.