What even is dark social media and how will
it affect you as a business owner and as a marketer? I'm gonna
hopefully answer those questions and at least give you some more to think about
in this episode of the Mindful Marketing podcast.
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show notes and use the code D'Raya at checkout for
your little discount. Alright. Let's get into dark social. So first,
let's define it. I have resources for this episode. As always, I'll put the
links in the show notes. But the term
dark social, was first spotted on the
interwebs, and coined by Alexis c
Madrigal in 2012, wrote an
article for The Atlantic all about dark social.
And dark social basically is social sharing,
say content that you share from social media, but it's outside
of measurable analytics. So I'm talking about when
someone texts you a TikTok video, when you DM a
friend with, like, a link to an account that you just found. These are
not public facing ways that we can see if
people are engaging with our content. Sometimes too, when you go in,
to tools like Google Analytics and you see direct
traffic coming in, that direct traffic could potentially be
something that someone shared from dark social. So for example,
I love watching TikTok videos. Now that I have 2 littles,
I, basically text my husband, cute ideas, and I'm like, oh,
we could do this with the girls. And so I'm on Disney
TikTok, which is fun and also overwhelming at the same
time. But we, have Disney on our vision board.
And so I saw this video of these 2 little girls doing, like,
the princess experience, and I texted that video to my husband.
Now it ended there for us, but for someone watching that video, if they wanted
the Disney experience, there's no clickable link in that
TikTok video. In fact, the video was by an influencer.
So or or a content creator wasn't even cosigned
or collaborated with by Disney themselves. And so I would
then go to Disney's website or even go to Google and search the
Disney Princess experience. But tracking is
totally lost in that scenario. And so this is
where the term dark social comes from. It's different from
your traditional social media engagement. Right? So dark social
is on the rise right now. Studies are showing that
particularly with Gen z or as my toddler
has been correcting me now, Gen zed because, you know, we're Canadian and
it's a zed in the rest of the world, apparently. Gen
z, Gen zed, they are into dark social.
And if we think about platforms like the rise of Snapchat, for instance,
Snapchat is a platform that is all about private
messaging. And in fact, it's where Instagram stories came
from. Instagram stories became a thing because Instagram
was trying to steal the idea from Snapchat. And
with Snapchat, you're sharing content. Sure. But it's not
link focused, and it's not really discoverable. The
whole point of it is you're having conversations with your inner circle, with
your friends. And I have friends who use social media
instead of texting, which is wild to me maybe
because I work in social. But I would never message
someone on Instagram and in replace of a
text. I guess I'm the weird guy out in this scenario because a lot
of people do that. Instead of texting, they'll use Facebook Messenger, Instagram
Messenger. But even if we think about other messaging
apps, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, all
of these are examples of dark social. If we
even broaden the term further, we see private
communities, Facebook groups. Even my circle
community could be considered dark social. Any
sort of exchange happening, whether it's a SMS or
email where you're sharing links, that also is considered
dark social. And then anything else like, you're
on a Zoom call with someone and they're like, oh, you've never heard of this?
Here's the link. That could also be considered dark
social. So all of these variety of communication
styles have an impact when we think about tracking. And
that's why they're under the umbrella of the term
dark social. K? Dark social. Now
this is on the rise, like I said, because of Gen z. But this is
actually really important for business owners to understand the impact of
this. Because when we start looking at our content, we
start looking at, you know, engagement on Instagram is down. We start looking
at, you know, video views on TikTok have gone
down over the past year or so, and we start seeing,
you know, all of these metrics kind of taking a
downturn, it may feel discouraging. It may
feel like, what what am I even doing this for?
However, if we think about the lack of tracking
that happens on dark social, if dark social is on the rise,
then a correlation that we could perhaps make
is that engagement may be down. Yes. But perhaps people are
doing other actions instead of liking and commenting.
This has been confirmed by Adam Mosseri, the head of
Instagram. In a recent video, Adam Mosseri
said that there are more people engaging
with DMs, direct messages, in the app than they are with
feed posts. So because of that, Instagram is actively seeking
to amplify content that prompts more sharing behavior,
I e, posts that inspire more users to tap the
send, you know, that little paper airplane icon and forward it
to their friends. K? And to to further this,
he said, you know, don't force it. But when you're making content,
think about making content that people wanna send to a friend, to someone they
care about, and it will help you reach over time. So Instagram,
mega platform, mega, you know, meta sub
brand of a of a platform, which also I'm assuming
is, part of what Facebook and threads is deeming important as
well. Instagram has deemed that sharing
content, sending it, not necessarily sharing it to your stories or sharing it
publicly, but sharing it privately is one of the
best ways to increase
your reach and engagement over time straight from the horse's
mouth, friends. So is, social
sharing important? Absolutely. How does this affect your engagement as a
business owner? Well, you're measuring success differently.
You're measuring success differently. So I talk about this with,
my members a lot. When we look at our analytics for posts,
sometimes we look at a post. Let's say we are,
you know, sharing a Black Friday sale. Okay. We post about
it and then we don't see as much likes. We
don't see as many comments as we'd like and we get discouraged. But
ultimately, when we're talking about Black Friday sale,
we don't want someone to like and comment. We want them to go to our
website and buy the dang thing. Right? And so when they think about
the success of social media, it is not in likes and
comments. It is in people taking action in other ways. And in
dark social, that means sharing. Now for some
brands, sharing privately is actually the thing that we
want people to do. It's the thing we want to encourage. So, for example, I
used to work with a client of mine who was a
almost like a sexual education brand, particularly
for, black and indigenous, people of color.
And when we think about the type of content that they were posting,
it's not often that someone would like and comment on that content.
In fact, those aren't metrics that we would look at for
that brand really at all. Because while engagement,
liking, and commenting is great, sharing and saving
is more likely an action that that audience would take just due
to the subject matter and the nature of the brand. Right? And so when we
think about this rise of dark show social and
people shifting their, social activity and their
behavior away from liking and commenting and towards sharing and saving,
we start to acknowledge that sharing and saving are more
important, and we don't need the validation from likes and comments when
it comes to social media analytics. I also wanna acknowledge
that some of these shifts, don't just affect gen
z. I think they're they're affecting everyone. And this is just my hypothesis.
But when we think about all of the data privacy breaches and issues
that we've had in the recent history, I
think a lot of people are shying away from putting
I think a lot of people are shying away from putting everything online. My generation
so I'm 35 now. So my generation, we got the
Internet and we're one of the first generations to be using the
Internet quite young. I remember being on forums and things when I
was 14, you know, and we had the family computer in the basement.
Right? And so I remember having
access to the Internet and having access to sharing.
And in fact, I remember there was a,
daily journaling tool that was photo based.
I don't remember the name of it, like Be Real or Be Live or something
like that, where, me and my Tumblr
friends would share,
our lives on this live journaling
tool. And thinking back, it's actually
just wild how much information I would put on the Internet. I would never do
that today. But we kind
of went all out because we didn't fully understand the
consequences of doing that. Plus I was like young at the time. Right? And so
now with all of these privacy breaches and how
our data is being scraped and even things like the rise of
AI and people creating deep fakes of
people. You can, you know, use AI to
video, for voice. People could literally steal your
likeness and do whatever they want with it online.
So there's a there's a lack of trust happening with public
facing social media right now as well that has to
impact, in my opinion, the rise of dark social. The other
thing is I think we are collectively experiencing
a bit of fatigue from social media. So
with the pandemic, which was over 4 years
ago now, almost 5 years, it doesn't feel like it's been
that long. But with the pandemic, we all turned to virtual
connection because frankly, that is all we had. Right?
But I think it we got overstimulated by it.
And now there's a bit of a fatigue for social media, and I'm seeing it
a lot with my business owner friends where we
put so much of ourselves in our business into social media. We're doing we're
checking all the boxes. We're doing everything we're supposed to be doing. And
yet, we feel exhausted by it
all. And some days we just wanna log out of everything
and disappear. Never log in again. And I think that's
because we give too much to social media and
there's there's that fatigue from it. Right? And and we're craving more
real connection, more in person connection from it. And so those
how these hypothesis hypotheses together
create the perfect storm for dark social to
be on the rise. So what are we to do? What are we to do
as business owners and as marketers? Well, I think that there's a way
that we can lean into the craving for dark social
without doing the most and doing all of the things. Right? And so
I wanna give an example of a brand that did this. I actually so I
follow this substack of Rachel Carton. It's called
link in bio, and it's one of the few substacks that I actually
pay for because her BTS roundup I don't know. Are
these emails? Are they blogs? I don't know. Posts? They're amazing.
Like, she is, just like on the ground
floor of a lot of things happening in social media. A lot of the things
that she covers are focused on bigger brands, but I
extrapolate from that because, you know, bigger brands have larger teams
and she's interviewing their teams. She's, dissecting
the top performing content pieces. It's just a really fantastic resource.
But I particularly love it be because,
well, I like nerding out about social media and because I get to see them
behind the scenes. So one of the interviews she did with was
with the social media, I don't know, manager or director for a brand
called Topicals, which is a skincare brand. And
they actually created a private
community for their,
customers, and they did it through a custom platform.
The screenshots make it look like social media. Like, it kinda looks
like it could be a Twitter esque style platform.
Anyways, they created this private
space for their customers, and they have
over 9,000, customers in this
space who are happily sharing their experience.
Okay? And so what I think is so neat about
this is that as a brand, they're leaning into, quote, unquote,
dark social. They're creating these separate, like, anti
social media spaces, even though they look a lot like social, private community,
smaller communities, and they're building
trust with their customers and clients all at the same time. K. And so I
read this article and I instantly thought of more brands that I
participate in that do this. So for example,
I wear wigs. I, have alopecia. I've had it since I was
12, so I'm used to this life at this point.
And so I buy a lot of hair replacement products, if
I can put in that category. And one that I
purchased from, they like, I purchased it and immediately I got an invitation
via email, to join their Facebook group. And, of course, as a marketer, I'm like,
okay. Let me see what this is all about. What I loved about it is
it seemed to build camaraderie with
customers. Like, they are all taking pictures of their wig, different styles of their wig,
posting in the group, asking people for feedback like, hey. I have this one. Should
I buy that one? And even though I'm just like a
lurker, I don't post, I don't comment, I do anything. For me,
it made me feel safer purchasing because
it's a lot of money to purchase these units. It made me feel
safer because I felt like I was in a community of like minded people. K?
And this goes for many different communities. I read a lot of romance novels. And
so authors often do this where they'll create communities
for their most avid readers. And I'm in a few of those, and
I just love it because I get to fangirl and and freak out
over my favorite characters in the space with other people who are
doing the same thing. And so I think this is such a powerful
strategy to consider as a brand and a business owner because it's
very different from the free Facebook group model of
the olden years. So when I first started professionally
in social media in 2014, is a very common strategy
to create a fee free Facebook group, funnel those people into your
paid product. The challenge with that is you're getting a bunch of
people who aren't really committed to the to the group.
They're just kind of there. And
it's not really clear sometimes who the owner or founder of the group is, and
it just is a very convoluted process to try in 2024.
K? I wouldn't ever suggest a free Facebook group strategy, like, starting from scratch
in 2024. Not it's not really something that I would do. So I think
there are some ways as businesses and brands that we can
lean into the concept of private or smaller
communities of people, especially people who I would consider super fans,
and really encourage the sharing of
our products. Right? We wanna encourage people to get excited
along with us. I do see my membership as a version of
this. It is the main way that people can work with me
now, and it is the most fun for me to be able to work with
people in this way. And it's just a private space, especially for my pro
members. When I think about the the challenges, the comments, and questions that they may
have, it's not something you'd want to post on social media. Right? You wanna have
a space where you're like, hey. So I have this client problem. I need some
help, or I'm thinking about hiring, and I need to, like, draft up a,
you know, job description, or I need to, like, budget for 2025. Like, all
of these things aren't things you'd post on social media. But in a safe space,
in in a space where you can feel, like, trusted,
it absolutely could help. K? So when we think
about marketing and business and dark
social, how do we take that next step? Well, one of the things I do
want you to consider is what does dark social look
like for your community? K. What does dark social look like for your
community? Is it as simple as, Instagram
broadcast channel? Or are you creating, client customer only communities? Are you building spaces where
you're customer only communities? Are you
building spaces where your people can gather maybe even in
person? Are you encouraging people to message you or
to share content? Are you creating content with the purpose of sharing?
I think sometimes as business owners too, we don't create content that isn't
designed to be shareable. We kind of create content and
hope people will like and comment on it or go to our website and buy.
But are we truly creating content where someone goes, oh, this is so
good. I have to share it with my bestie. Or this is great. I have
to send it to the group chat. Right? So how can we
adapt our strategy to build client
customer only spaces? How do we adapt our content to focus more on
sharing versus then public engagement? And then
how do we think about the future
of dark social and the evolution of social media?
Are we too reliant on public facing social media posts? Are we
too reliant on the algorithm? These are all questions that do not yet
have answers, but I wanna prompt you with them to hopefully get you to start
thinking about how dark social can impact you and your
business. Lastly, I want you to think about this. People are talking about you
and your brand no matter what. Okay? So I once
saw this conversation online. I'm trying not to give too much away because it
was in a private community where, an individual was very
upset about a Reddit thread about them. And
I didn't say anything the time. Not my space. Not my not my not my
community. Not for me. K. But my thought was,
people are gonna talk about you anyways. And the fact that they did it on
Reddit just means that more people were jumping into the into
the fray, into the conversation. I don't think that
that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it'd be challenging for sure,
especially if it's factually inaccurate,
or, intentionally, you know, belligerent.
That that can be very challenging, of course. But and
as business owners and content creators, marketers,
we can't really do anything about that. Right? Like, we can't
we can't monitor how people use Reddit.
What we can do is focus in on our
clients and customers who do like us and create amazing product
experiences. We can create amazing marketing experiences. One of my
goals, personally, is when people interact with me and my brand,
that they smile. I don't want them to feel,
overwhelmed. I don't want them to feel judging about themselves or
cringey. I want them to go, That was nice. And
then I want them to feel inspired to go do something about it. And so
can I control if someone goes to Reddit and they go, I purchased this
product and it was terrible? No. I can't control that. However, my hope
is that I've built so much karma and goodwill and put that into the world
that if someone were to go on Reddit and say, I hate this product so
much, that my amazing community would then jump in and
go, well, I liked it. And I had such amazing experience, and here's why.
And so that's my hope. It's I can't control what other people do, what
they share, how they react, but I can control my own
efforts that I put into it. So
the future. I am working on my predictions episode for 2025.
And one of my predictions is that dark social is gonna
become even more important. And not just dark social,
but the community and connection piece of social media. We kinda swung
away from that a little bit. We swung towards broadcasting
and blasting out and shouting into the void and,
we're swinging back. The pendulum is swinging back to connection and
community in such a different way. You know, like, when I started on the Internet
in 2004, I'm an Internet granny, y'all. I've been in here
20 years. When I started back on the Internet in 2004, that was the
point, connection and community. And, really, we were connecting with people we already
knew or were in forums where we had similar ideas
and similar likes. K? Now with the
focus on content discovery, I think it's gonna be very interesting
to see how this shifts the overall
importance or lack thereof on creating content. I think
it'll shift the amount of content that's being created. I think we're there's gonna be
a focus on high quality content. But I will be sharing all of those thoughts
in an upcoming episode. For now, just know that
my advice is to embrace the trend. Think about how you can
layer dark social intentionally into your strategies. So focus on sharing
content, consider building client and customer only groups, encourage
direct messages and emails, and be
nimble. That's been my word so far. Nimble and flexible about the future and how
that may change how you approach your marketing. That's it for
this here episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Make sure you rate
and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Helps keep us in the top
100 marketing podcasts. I also have to say,
oh, next week, I'm talking with Kate Doster. It was an amazing
interview all about bundles, and it just, like, stay
tuned for that. And then lastly, I've rebranded.
The Savvy Social School is now the mindful marketing labs. If you've
been creeping my website, you saw the change already. You're on my email list. You
saw me hint about it. It is now official. I'm really, really
excited about this shift for me and for my members. And
this episode is an example of why I'm making that shift
because less of a focus on social media content production
and more of a focus on like, like building
virtual digital communities online. Right? And that can happen anywhere, not just on
social as this episode proves. It's not just on social,
it's everywhere. So if that's excites you, head on to my website onlinedraya.com
and check out the Mindful Marketing Lab. I'll be back at you next week with
another episode. Bye for now.