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WHATTHE HECKISDARK SOCIAL?

ABOUT LINDSAY PUGH

• Digital Marketing Strategist at Something Digital

• Provides digital marketing services, strategy, and support for a variety of clients, from ecommerce to nonprofit

• Passionate about clean, accurate data analysis, good UX, and creative content marketing

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ABOUT SOMETHING DIGITAL

• An interactive agency specializing in ecommerce, website design, digital marketing, & user experience

• Founded in 1999

• A full-service boutique, capable of bringing a vision from concept to launch–and beyond

• A unique place, where people excel, and everyone gets invited to dinner

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BETTERANALYTICSEQUALSSMARTERMARKETINGDECISIONS

Review the standard campaign tracking process.

Define dark social.

Discuss dark social statistics.

Look at examples of dark social.

Learn how to measure dark social.

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OBJECTIVES

Review the standard campaign tracking process.

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Shared links on social media platforms are trackable, even if they don’t have utm parameters.

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Google Tag Assistant can lend transparency to this process.

Links on social can also be appended with utm parameters and shortened.

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Bit.ly is useful for organic social Paid ads include utm in the template

Even links shared in private messages and IG bios and stories are appended with referrer urls.

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A click on this link ^ registers as Source = Instagram in Google Analytics

Define dark social.

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Coined in 2012, dark social refers to all social shares that can’t be directly measured using GA.

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2017 UPDATE

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Tracking has improved since 2012. For

example, it’s now possible to track in-

app link shares through Facebook

Messenger and Instagram DM.

Within apps like Facebook & Instagram, default link share options often contain utm parameters.

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No matter where I share, the parameters are the same

Source = Instagram stays consistent

Discuss dark social statistics.

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Mobile shares are especially problematic. If someone is sharing on mobile, it’s 82% likely to be a dark share.

Source: Right Mix Marketing

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Holiday dark social stats for common industries:

Source: RadiumOne Sharing Analytics Account Data & RadiumOne Purchase Data, 11/11/2016-1/1/2017

Look at examples of dark social.

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Native email sharing, aka finding something cool and sending it to a friend via email.

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Even though I shared these links in an email, GA tracks them as direct traffic

Texting and in-app messaging. Think about how many people you send links to via iMessage, WhatsApp, and Snapchat.

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Both of these links, from iMessage and Snapchat, would should up as direct traffic in GA

Work chat. Ever share a link with your co-worker via Slack, HipChat, or Google Hangouts?

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Learn how to measure dark social.

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Create an advanced secondary dimension in Google Analytics that excludes easy to remember urls.

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Make it easy to share on your site.

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Use social sharing tools to monitor.

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Source: VOL OMNI

Correctly measuring all social will be key for successful digital marketing in 2018.

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BETTERANALYTICSEQUALSSMARTERMARKETINGDECISIONS

Review the standard campaign tracking process.

Define dark social.

Discuss dark social statistics.

Look at examples of dark social.

Learn how to measure dark social.

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OBJECTIVES

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Q&A

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Thanks lpugh@somethingdigital.com

646.561.6561

www.SomethingDigital.com