Someone recently asked me about – dark social. According to Techopedia, it is…

the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what can be measured by Web analytics programs. This mostly occurs when a link is sent via online chat or email, rather than shared over a social media platform, from which referrals can be measured.

It’s important to folks who track the impact of social media activity. I just read a report from Simply Measured dark social is a huge chuck of what we should be measuring…

• According to RadiumOne, 70% of all social sharing is dark.
• According the The Atlantic, more than 50% of social traffic is dark.
• According to InsideSocial data, more than 50% of digital sales can be dark for consumer products.

So how can you track the dark social?

• Make it easy to share content through easier-to-track share buttons
• Use trackable links on shared/sharable items
• Dive into stats of individual pages on your site and peruse “direct traffic” it might help you unearth some interesting mentions and unknown champions (or non-champions) of your business
• Search for your name (company, product or service) on Google – see what comes up. Again it might help you find something interesting – good and bad.