How Small Businesses Can Leverage Dark Social to Drive Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Social media is a great way for entrepreneurs and small businesses to engage with their customers by sharing useful content, company updates, promotions and responding to questions. Most importantly, customers can easily share this information with their network of friends and family.

For many small businesses, this helps generate a significant portion (over 40%) of their annual revenue. While most social media platforms come equipped with tools and buttons for easy sharing, more and more consumers are turning to a practice known as dark social.

Dark social refers to sharing online content and social media through private communication channels like email, instant messaging or encrypted apps like WhatsApp. While you might think that all shares are equal, dark social is creating headaches for entrepreneurs trying to optimize their marketing efforts. Globally, about 70% of all social media shares happen through dark social channels by simply copying and pasting the link into messages. While traffic from these sources is great, it becomes impossible for traditional analytic tools to track.

Despite these challenges, dark social sharing can provide many benefits to the business. Since the links are being shared directly from a trusted source like friends or family, the recipients are more likely to trust the link and click through. For this reason, every small business owner must learn how to maximize the impact of tapping into this hidden audience. Here’s how:

Related: The Majority of Small-Business Owners Rely on Word-of-Mouth Referrals. Here Are 3 Ways to Get Them.

1. Create content specifically for dark social

Since the click-through rates are higher with dark social sharing, content should be tailored to encourage this level of private sharing with friends and family. First, dark social content must be mobile-friendly since the majority of online use now happens over mobile devices. The most successful content will include things that trigger emotions or stimulate discussion.

For example, content that brings back feelings of nostalgia may be popular with older audiences. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box to make the content visual or entertaining. Short video reels (like TikTok videos) and infographics make great dark social content.

2. Leverage UTM parameters

Unfortunately, incoming traffic from links shared through dark social channels often registers as direct traffic, meaning analytic tools can’t tell the difference between a visitor who clicked a link or typed the URL into their browser. One solution is to incorporate UTM, or Urchin Tracking Modules, parameters into your links. In a nutshell, these are small bits of code that are added to the end of a URL that provides additional information to the web analytic tools. These UTM parameters can be used to identify the source as a certain campaign or specific location on your website.

The only problem with UTM parameters is that the URL can become quite long. This increases the risk of the user not copying the full URL, leading to a broken link. To solve this, you can utilize tools like Bitly to shorten the URL and make it more user-friendly.

3. Provide more sharing options

In some cases, you can actively encourage dark social sharing by providing additional sharing options to your audience. For example, you can add a quicklink at the end of your content that makes it easy to email a friend with the link. Content that contains a clear CTA (call to action) directing the viewer to pass along the information or send to a friend is more likely to be shared.

Offering exclusive or limited-time offers is another way to foster an environment where people want to share your content. For example, some brands might offer a shareable discount code that encourages people to pass along the savings and promote the brand to others. This is especially powerful with gated content (such as eBooks or webinars) as it provides an exclusive feel.

Related: How to Create Content That’s Meant to Be Shared

4. Leverage social listening tools

The thing about private communication is that it’s private. Understanding how consumers feel about your product and brands is difficult when their conversations happen “behind closed doors.” To make the most of your dark social efforts, you sometimes need to get a feel for consumer sentiment.

While you can’t track dark social directly, you can leverage tools like Brandwatch to help monitor trends, specific keywords, hashtags and brand mentions in real time. This can not only provide valuable insights into the types of conversations that are being held in private channels but can also be segmented into useful demographics and geography.

Dark social will continue to be a challenge for small businesses looking to leverage social media and understand their customers. But it doesn’t have to be a roadblock. Since dark social is more impactful and meaningful than direct messages from the company through advertisements, embracing this trend can significantly boost your business’s reputation and sales.