Dark Social - Is it hurting your Business?

Don't worry there is nothing scary about Dark Social - it's not going to hurt your business, but you must be aware of it.

Dark Social is the shares, comments, links, discussions that you don't see.  And is a nightmare for a Social Media Manager to report on.

For example, say you see a great Facebook post, but you don't think all your Facebook friends would like to see it - so you share a copy of the page via your What's app, Facebook messenger, text or email to the friends who will like it.

This means that the owner of the Facebook post, never knows that you have seen or liked or shared their page - they don't feel the love.

How does this affect the small business owner?  Well it is important to be aware the your social media maybe being shared without your knowledge, which is a good thing except you can't track it.  So keep posting and keep your presence updated - more people may be seeing it than you think.

And most importantly make sure your posts are worth sharing - work with the Dark Social.  Make people want to copy your page and share it on.

Another thing to really think about is that the younger generation are more likely to be using Social Media privately - e.g. What's app, Snap Chat etc.  They will be connecting directly to their friends and not trawling Facebook and Twitter.  So it might be worth asking your customers to join you on a business What's app or Snap Chat and getting into a habit of talking to people directly.  This is a tricky thing to do - it mustn't be a heavy sell and pushy or they will switch off, but you could maybe contact them to say that you have a sale on their favourite product or you have new stock in that may interest them etc.

So in essence, don't be scared of Dark Social, but do start thinking about your content and maybe developing new strategies.  Good Luck.