Hello! I’m Sam, a social media manager based in Lancashire.
And let’s kick off with a question I was asked by a client the other day…
“What is dark social media?”.
In a nutshell, dark social is the stuff you can’t really see on the public platforms. Things like WhatsApp groups, DMs, Slack, Discord, Messenger, email and copied links.
Dark social is important because a huge amount of social media’s real influence happens privately, where brands and analytics tools struggle to see it.
People follow people. So if a mate sends you a link to a new restaurant or a new pair of running trainers, you’re much more likely to trust it over a random piece of content you’re served on Instagram.
According to research from the clever folks at We Are Social and GlobalWebIndex, one in five people have booked travel or leisure activities after receiving a link or recommendation through private messaging, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
So dark social isn’t just a great recommendation engine. It also leads directly to purchases, too.
And if your content isn’t optimised for dark social, you’re missing a huge part of your customer journey.
How does dark social work?
Basically, it all down to the metrics.
Let’s take Instagram as an example. Our supreme overlord, Mr Mosseri, says Instagram judges content based on ‘ranking signals’.
The three most important signals for ranking are watch time, likes and sends, with sends more important for reaching people who don’t already follow you.
If you want to get in front of potential new customers, you need to reach people who don’t already follow you. That means optimising your content towards the most powerful metric on Instagram: sends.
If you get more people sending/sharing your content, it has a double-barreled positive effect…
- You’ll get shared more on dark social platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger
- Your content will get a boost from the algorithm, with it being served to a greater audience of potential new customers
How can I make my content optimised for dark social?
This hugely depends on what your business is and what products or services you provide.
But as a rule of thumb…
- For B2B businesses: add value by creating content that your audience will want to share in their internal Slack or Teams channels. Now unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t measure external sends/shares as part of their metrics, which is incredibly frustrating! So ensure you’re using UTM tracking to make sure that any clicks through from dark social channels get measured through Google Analytics.
- For B2C businesses: create memorable, humorous or educational content that your audience will want to share in their WhatsApp group with their friends. And this can work in loads of different ways. For example, I’ve been working with a podcast brand recently and produced a video called ‘What’s the first thing you’d do if you woke up and you were the opposite sex?’. It got shared hundreds of times across multiple platforms because it was both memorable and humorous. On the flipside, I’ve been working with a client in the pharmaceutical sector who prescribes GLP1 medication. A lot of the content we’ve been producing for them has been educational, with the idea that our audience will share it more widely with those also considering taking Mounjaro or Wegovy.
Having these rules within your social media strategy ensures that you’re not just making content for making content’s sake.
It gives your posts a wider purpose and makes sure you’re doing everything you can to get your audience closer to the point of purchase on organic social.
If you have any great examples on how you’ve had success on organic social, I’d love to hear about it! Send me a DM on LinkedIn.