{"id":1840,"date":"2016-11-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenmedia.go4wordpress.com\/2016\/11\/10\/dark-social-what-it-is-and-how-to-deal-with-it\/"},"modified":"2023-01-10T02:00:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T02:00:58","slug":"dark-social-what-it-is-and-how-to-deal-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenmedia.com\/blog\/dark-social-what-it-is-and-how-to-deal-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Social: What It Is and How To Deal With It"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dark Ages, the dark side of the moon, fear of the dark\u2026 What do all of these references to the dark have in common? Ignorance, or the unknown. And that\u2019s exactly what dark social<\/em> is all about.<\/p>\n

Dark social<\/a> refers to the ubiquitous practice of sharing content privately; that is, not sharing something openly via social media, where shares can be tracked by companies, but instead, cutting and pasting links or even whole blog posts into emails to send them to friends.<\/p>\n

This creates a dark spot for businesses and marketers trying to keep tabs on where their web traffic is coming from, and which content is encouraging engagement.<\/p>\n

And this dark spot is significant. According to a June 2016 report from RadiumOne<\/a>, 82 percent of content shared on mobile is shared through dark social \u2013 via messaging apps, email, or text. That\u2019s up from less than 50 percent in 2014.<\/p>\n82 percent of content shared on mobile is shared through dark social, according to a report by @RadiumOne. <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n

And although we\u2019re all very familiar with Facebook\u2019s \u201cshare\u201d button, it turns out we don\u2019t use it as often as we might think. Just 13 percent of content on mobile is shared via Facebook, and 10 percent on all other social networks.<\/p>\n

Worst of all, sometimes, in all the cutting and pasting, great content can be shared without giving credit to its source – which defeats the purpose of writing marketing content!<\/p>\n

To get an idea of how much of an impact dark social has on your traffic, take a look at this chart from RadiumOne:<\/p>\n

\"dark<\/p>\n

So where does all this dark social traffic come from? The biggest sources are:<\/p>\n