Open, Closed & Dark Social
When you’re on social media, you can share the content in one of two ways. You can click the share button, or you can right click copy/paste into your chosen social media channel. Just by doing that, you can tell the difference between open social networks, closed social networks as well as dark social networks.
Open social and closed social sharing present themselves in your analytics programs as social, “correct” traffic, but dark social does not. When talking about Dark social (it’s not what you’re thinking — this is NOT the dark web), is what you can’t see. It’s the invisible world of social sharing that you can’t gain access to.
Defining Open, Closed, & Dark Social Platforms
Open Social is the most fundamental type of sharing and its the simplest one to measure. Open social sharing means a person issharing a post in their open social platforms, for example, Twitter.
Closed Social sharing happens in closed social networks, for example, WhatsApp. The way it contrasts from dark social is that the sharing has happened through a sharing button— this protects the metadata.
Dark Social sharing happens when someone copies a link and pastes it into a closed social channel like WhatsApp or email. During this method, the metadata inside the link is gone and when the next user clicks the link, it will appear as direct traffic.
You Can’t Ignore Dark Social.
- Dark Social Is All Over.
Most clickbacks come from mobile devices. Clickbacks on dark social shares coming from mobile devices are up from 53 percent in August 2014 to 62 percent in February 2016. The remaining clickbacks come from desktop computers.
2. Dark Social Greatly Effects Social Traffic.
Just in the last two years, the jump from on-site shares went from 69 to 84 percent globally.
3. Dark Social Is A Golden Opportunity.
Dark social data gives a comprehensive description of the community’s real interests. Acquainting yourself with this information will allow your business to access a targeted audience of connections.
Private Messaging
Users are most likely to be sharing on Facebook messenger, personal photos as well as other random content. Links to pages to “endorse” products and services are popular as well. This is a good thing as well as a bad thing.
- Bad: many website visitors will be coming from unknown places.
- Good: you probably have more brand supporters than you would have ever thought.
The Future Of Dark Social
The dark social network is not going to go away anytime soon. Users are always going to be sharing privately because that’s how users behave online. I do it, and everyone else is doing it too. While it may bring some difficulties for brands around the world, there’s always ways to do something about it.
It’s best to create more interactive content. Make it shareable so that you’re encouraging family and friends in private messenger apps, etc. The good thing about it is that you’re still respecting people’s privacy and that is what matters most!