A new trend is emerging in the marketing and media landscape, christened with the illustrious term "Dark Socials. It sounds exciting, and it is. After all, Dark Socials are channels that, as an average consumer, you don't have a direct view of. You can read about what that's like here.

The hidden layer

Rupert Staines of RadiumOne claims that "social traffic that goes through Facebook, Twitter and other public services comprises only 30% of total social traffic. The term "Dark Social" encompasses that remaining 70% of social traffic that cannot be tracked much, if at all, through Google Analytics, for example. These include channels such as Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Telegram, for example.

Dark Socials are highly influential

Studies show that most consumers place tremendous trust in the opinions and experiences of friends and acquaintances when it comes to making purchases. Through group apps and other private media, there is plenty of information shared about companies' products and services. In 2016, 84% of all links shared were already through Dark Socials.

Dark socials also play a big role in the field of information sharing, including on the Messager platform Telegram. In fact, plenty of more or less private groups are created on Telegram by influencers, companies and knowledge sharers who rapidly gather followers. If you want to join such a group, you can often do so via a link. You must then receive that link through one of the followers of such a group. In this way, the character of this type of group is relatively closed.

If someone clicks on a link to a website via WhatsApp or another Dark Social, an Analytics tool cannot do anything with it.

Torment for analytics

Marketers who deal with Google Analytics and other analytics tools have a soft spot for it. In fact, many platforms, such as Facebook, for example, provide a "referrer" to show where a website's traffic is coming from. If someone clicks on a link to a website via WhatsApp or another Dark Social, an Analytics tool can't do anything with it. Dark Socials are therefore not easy to monitor.

Another "agony" is that information shared through Dark Socials is often more valuable. Because the groups are private in nature, content shared is better targeted and more trusted than content shared through traditional channels. In addition, the content does not have to fight for attention because there are no or much fewer distractions.

Branding you do nice yourself channel

For some time now, Fitbrand has also had a stake in the ever-growing world of Dark Socials. In order to provide our followers with useful, relevant, contemporary and sometimes just plain funny information, we have set up the "Branding do yourself good" channel in Telegram. You can become a member of course, just follow the link t.me/fitbrand.

Oh yes: you can't respond to it. Nice for us too sometimes right?