Stephen Darori is a Social Media Expert,Author, Publicist,Finance and Marketing Whiz , Strategist ,Journalist, Editor Prolific Blogger. Editor. You can follow Stephen Darori on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media Platforms.
Stephen Darori & Associates has led major Social Media and Digital Campaigns for wide ranging clients that have included Hilary for America, the Democratic Party ,Democratic Alliance ( South Africa), Fortune 1000 companies and Shabbat.com
Showing posts with label The Darori Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Darori Foundation. Show all posts
E-commerce and online businesses have witnessed a phenomenal transformation in the area of online marketing. Every second of the day, all over the Internet, many commercial websites are springing up on the internet. These websites are making their best effort to be visible in the online world as well as in the offline. More importantly these online business owners are focused not only on their internet presence but want to offer consumers a convenient shopping experience in the privacy and comfort of their homes.
Commercials websites compete against each other by using the two most powerful advertising strategies: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay per Click (PPC) in trying to attract more traffic to their websites. When these two strategizes are coupled together ranking of the websites improve drastically and thereby has an opportunity to keep an edge over the competition. Twin equalizers to outrank the competitors
The importance of combining SEO and PPC in a marketing strategy are formidable tools that act to form twin equalizers in the effort to counter act the strategies of the competition. Benefits of combining SEO and PPC are:
The combination of both SEO and PPC will improve both organic and paid results. The keywords that are found to be profitable with PPC can then be used for SEO.
Enhances the Click Through Rates (CTR). Generating and testing content will be advantageous to both search engine ranking as well as the PPC click through rates.
High conversation rates: When using PPC along with the organic results the chances of conversion into paying clients drastically increases.
Best keywords identification: PPC is considered to be the best tool for measuring the results by which one can identify the best keyword and ad copy. These results can then be applied to the SEO strategy as well.
With the right combination, a company can outrank the competitors from the first page of Google and simultaneously increase the brand identity with overall increased exposure.
By dominating results a company can increase branding and protect online reputation as this combination guarantees a very strong online presence.
With well-planned integration of SEO and PPC online business owners can maximize the efficiency of their marketing efforts and at the same time optimize the spending for the campaigns that effectively increases the bottom line.
When managed properly and handled by the right experts, online business owners can achieve favourable results by combining these two great tools. This integrated approach will attract potential clients both from organic as well as paid channels. Statistics reveal that this combination increases conversion rates around forty percent. The combination enhances the online marketing strategies which deliver online business websites greater exposure with a much quicker ROI (Return on Investment).
In any business one cannot control the strategies adopted by the competitors. This is true in the online world as well. It is always suggested to follow proven techniques to attract more people to your website in order to retain existing customers and to turn the prospects into new customers. Smart online business owners will enhance their SEO strategies in integrating their organic SEO campaigns with a Pay per Click campaigns in order to outrank their immediate competitors. A combination of SEO and PPC will prove the best results in improving the bottom line. Through utilizing both SEO and PPC a well-planned home based online business can do better than the poorly designed websites of multimillion dollar global companies. The history of ‘Big companies eating the smaller ones’ has been changed to ‘Smart companies eating larger, slow to adapt companies’. When it comes to online businesses this is the new reality.
How many social media network accounts does your business have? Every week, we recommend businesses to hop on the latest trending social network bandwagon, whether it’s to promote brand culture on Instagram or engage your audience with Vine videos. According to the eBizMBA Guide, there are currently 15 social networking sites with over 30 million unique monthly visitors; depending on the size of your business, your company may be required to join at least half of these to maintain a steady social media presence.
It’s not a surprise that sometimes, the pressure to maintain all accounts results in neglecting your brand’s social media presence on at least one social media network. And it doesn’t have to be completely abandoned in order to be considered neglected—a decreased frequency in posts and lack of replies to your audience’s comments is enough to tarnish your brand’s online reputation. To make sure your time is evenly distributed among all your social media accounts, we’ve come up with a list of reasons why neglecting a social network hurts your social media presence—and how to address these issues. 3 ways ignoring a social media network can damage your social media presence 1. Ignoring a social media network betrays your audience’s expectations
Remember what lead to your brand to joining the social network in the first place—it’s a great way to interact with current customers and educate potential customers about your company. But if your Twitter followers are greeted by the default egg display picture, and witness sporadic updates, they receive the opposite message: you don’t have time for your social media audience, and you don’t finish what you started. My guess is that’s not how your brand wants to be perceived. 2. Ignoring a social media network can cost you online followers—and potential customers
People sometimes find it more convenient to tweet a comment or a concern using the brand’s official Twitter handle, instead of putting in a phone call or submitting a comment card. By ignoring your online audience’s feedback you risk not only losing those customers, but also failing to address the potential hurdles in your services or product development. Not paying attention to your online audience can cause you to lose followers on your social networks, and even potential customers. 3. Neglecting a social media network can tarnish your brand’s online reputation
Your brand’s online reputation management isn’t so hard if you don’t neglect the social media networks you’re on. Decreased attention means a higher chance of committing one of many social media faux pas that could seriously threaten your brand’s reputation. To make matters worse, if you don’t regularly monitor your accounts, you miss the opportunity for timely correction or removal of the culprit post, thus risking an even bigger backlash. How to avoid neglecting a social media network 1. Create social profiles on the same networks as your audience
The most prominent reason why people neglect their social media presence is because they chose a social media network that’s not the top choice for their audience. The best way to avoid this situation is by creating a social media profile that aligns with your company’s objectives. Most importantly, follow your target audience to the social media network of their choice: for example, if your goal is to talk to professionals in the marketing industry, then you should definitely be on LinkedIn. If you don’t think you can spare more time or effort on another social media network, it’s better to avoid making an account altogether. Absence from a social network is better than neglected social media presence. 2. Create a social media content schedule
Once you’ve created your social media profiles that you have committed to maintaining, the next step is to create an effective way to manage your social media content. One way to do this is by creating a schedule for engaging content to publish on your social networks. This will help you keep track of planned posts across all of your brand’s social media networks. Once you’ve created your social media content plan, you can start scheduling Twitter messages and other social media posts to ensure your social media profile doesn’t lay dormant. 3. Use a social media management tool
An easy way to ensure no social media network gets left behind is to use a social media management tool. The Hootsuite dashboard allows you to manage social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and much more, all in one place. You can monitor, engage, and converse with your audience in one place. Additionally, it can complement your social media content planning by scheduling posts in advance.
We often write about things you should include in your social media strategy: tips, tricks, hacks, trends, and other topics that anyone working in social media should know. But what about the things you shouldn’t do? Many common tactics are ineffective at best, and can be damaging to your brand at their worst.
We’re going to touch on those things—the darker side of social media strategy. When it comes to social media blunders, there’s certainly no shortage of examples. Here are some of the more common ones.
Like-Baiting
Like-baiting, much like click-baiting, is the practice of using provocative or controversial headlines to stir up social attention for likes and clicks. More often than not, the content rarely provides the reader with any new or insightful information, and has nothing to do with your business objectives. Sure, it’ll get you a few likes, shares, and retweets here and there. It borders on spam, does very little for engagement, and most of your audience will see right through it. Recently, Facebook adjusted their algorithm to curb this kind of behavior, too. Avoid it on all your social networks.Image courtesy of Facebook
Buying Likes And Followers
Did you know that you can buy followers and likes for certain social networks? Yep! Is it a good idea? Nope! Yet it’s still a widely followed practice. Acquiring followers in the triple and quadruple digits with little-to-no work on your end is tempting, but it’s an empty number. They don’t care about what you’re saying or what you’re doing. The quality of your audience diminishes, as does the real impact of your social media posts. A lose-lose practice, through and through.
Posting Too Much
People follow you because they like you, what you do, or what you make. That’s a great thing because it means that they’re engaged with and receptive to your brand. But their loyalty does not make them immune to post fatigue. Use restraint when posting to your social channels. You might have a lot to share with your audience, but before posting something, ask yourself, ‘Do they even care?’ If they don’t, there’s no quicker way to lose them than spamming their feeds. What defines ‘spamming feeds’ is difficult to quantify. But you can use HootSuite’s analytics toolsto determine which posts resonate with your audience, and which don’t.
Ignoring Social Media ROI
Sure, social media is a relatively inexpensive marketing channel. But if you consider how many hours go into planning, engaging, and executing, the dollars add up. Measuring your ROI is crucial to ensure that not only is your social media strategy working, but that you’re not actually losing money on it. HootSuite Pro includes very powerful analytical tools that can help you measure just about every facet of your social media campaigns.
Only Using Social Media To Advertise
Along the same vein as posting too much is using your social networks only to advertise your products and services. It’s a practice that can quickly dull engagement and customer trust. Having a big sale? Launching a new product? Go ahead and mention it. But avoid reminding your followers over and over again. Trust us, they know. More than promoting, social is a channel for engagement. That means sharing great curated content, interacting with followers, and simply helping your business or brand stay at the front of the consumers mind.
Deleting Negative Comments
One of the biggest mistakes those new to social media make is deleting negative comments. It seems counterintuitive to let these damning testimonials be seen by all. But it also represents a great opportunity to 1) make a customer happy in a very public place, and 2) publicly address a problem within your business that perhaps you didn’t know about. You won’t always be able to make every customer or client happy, but you can certainly use social media to soften the blow and look good while doing it. By responding publicly, you can even sometimes turn the conversation to your favour. (Note that when we say ‘negative comments’, we’re excluding abusive, threatening and otherwise hateful comments. Delete those.)
Not Keeping Up To Speed
Social media is a constantly changing world. What was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow. It’s up to you to not only get up to speed, but to stay there. At first, this will seem like a daunting task. But there are endless resources available to help you along the way (like, for example, HootSuite University, or following blogs through the HootSuite Syndicator). All you have to do is put in the time.
Not Having A Social Media Strategy At All
Social media is no longer optional. It’s the first—and in many cases, only—point of contact for consumers. As such, it should be treated with the same level of care and thought as every other mission-critical part of your strategy. Take the time required to consider what you want to accomplish with social media and how you’re going to get there, rather than going in blind.
There’s no silver bullet approach to building your social media strategy. There are endless ways to build one that depend on variables like your business size, business type, brand, location, and demographics. Organic growth and engagement are the core of any successful social strategy. The above points will help you avoid some of the pitfalls of those newer to the social game.
Manage your social media accounts across more than 35 global networks
Reply with a single click
Anyone on your team—in any region or department—can quickly respond to messages, mentions, and comments through a single dashboard.
Identify influencers and leads
Listen closely to the people that matter to your business. Create, import, and share lists of social influencers and important clients.
Save time with pre-written responses
Quickly respond to common questions or customer requests by saving pre-approved and on-brand responses for future use.
Engage consistently—across any sized organization
Manage engagement workflows
Mirror your existing workflows so people see the posts that matter to them—ensuring responsive engagement and avoiding missed messages.
Track interaction history
See all interactions with a contact—across your organization—so conversations are in context and consistent, no matter who engages with them.
Search by location or language
Monitor social conversations across the globe or around your neighbourhood—in multiple languages—and be exactly where your audience is.
As we launched our social media program, we knew we needed a platform that would be able to handle and scale with our increasingly complex needs. Hootsuite absolutely accomplished this for us.
Your online reputation can make or break your business, as the internet is often the first and last place potential customers go to find out more about you. Even the most reputable organizations deal with bad online reviews, posts on social networks, as well as blogs and other online forums. The one thing you can learn from these organizations is that it’s not so much the complaint or poor review that defines your reputation, but rather the way it’s handled. Here are 6 things you should do when confronted with a scathing comment. Step 1: Stop. Breathe.
When someone attacks your small business— the thing you pour endless hours of blood, sweat, and tears into— it feels personal. It’s not. Take some time to think it about the situation. It’s impossible to be pragmatic or genuinely apologetic when you’re emotionally charged. But if you give yourself some time to mull it over, you’ll be able to see the situation with more clarity.Perhaps the finest example of someone reacting to criticism in the worst way possible.
Step 2: Look into it.
Some online reviews or complaints aren’t valid. Some of them are. You’ll never figure out where you stand unless you investigate. And knowing what really happened will help dictate your course of action. Did your customer have a bad experience with the product or staff? Who was in the wrong? Find out anything and everything you can about the situation before making any decisions. Step 3: Is the complaint legit? Apologize. Is it bogus? Apologize anyway.
Apologize directly and publicly to those affected, whether it’s in a Tweet or a reply comment on the site where you found the bad review. Let them know what you’ve done about it (you have done something about it, right?). In the event the complaint isn’t a valid one, tell your side of the story and see what you can do to resolve the situation. Sincerity goes a long way here. You may not be able to correct something for one particular customer, but reaching out publicly shows you care and that you’re being proactive.An example of a good apology from Delta Airlines
One thing to keep in mind about online reviews and complaints: whether they’re legitimate or otherwise makes little difference to the masses. It’s all about perception. A quick apology will do more for you than a denial of wrong-doing. Step 4: If possible, continue the conversation privately.
At this point, you should have acknowledged the complaint and made any necessary corrections. Someone might attempt to further engage you publically. Ask them to take the conversation to email or a direct/private message. For example “We’d like to know more about what happened, would you mind sending us a quick email? We’re looking forward to resolving this issue for you.” You’ve just made yourself look good while resolving a situation quickly. Social media engagement is important to your social presence, but not when it’s back and forth, he-said-she-said banter with a single online entity. Step 5: Look for patterns.
If you’re seeing a string of bad online reviews coming in from all over the place, there’s a good chance there’s something wrong on your end. You need to put the brakes on, stat. Though it seems like bad news at first, it’s great opportunity to identify a fundamental problem with your business and stop the trainwreck before it happens. Step 6: Avoid the non-apology apology.
You’ve seen these a hundred times before. “Our company has been supplying our product to our customers for 100 years. We’re sorry that your experience did not match your expectations.” See what they did there? Reinforce their leading market position while telling the customer they were wrong for expecting more in a roundabout way. There was no real apology and the lack of sincerity was as transparent as a freshly-cleaned window.
Every business is different. Every customer is different. And every reason for a bad review is different. These 6 steps combined with a bit of common sense, courtesy, and a genuine desire to help your customers can turn a conflict into a positive experience for everyone involved, and look good while doing it.
There are many occasions in life where you will hear or be given the same advice over and over again. Often, this advice is conflicting and you feel as if you’d have been better off not hearing anything at all. The moment you get engaged, you’ll hear all of the reasons for having a large wedding, as well as why a small, more intimate gathering is best. Announce your pregnancy, and you’ll hear unsolicited advice on everything from whether you should find out your baby’s sex to whether you should use pain medication during the birth. As a social media manager or content marketer—yes, I’m comparing marketing to giving birth—you can probably relate to the feeling of trying to sift through an overwhelming amount of advice.
As someone who stays up to date on social media news and best practices, you have probably heard some form of the following pieces of advice. With a focus on staying critical of all popular opinion, I challenge these commonly shared tips. Success is measured by followers
One of the most popular topics in the social media marketing world (and the actual world) surrounds the number of followers one has. While there is a grain of truth to perceptions around an official social media account having enough followers to support their authority, if all you are concentrating on is the number of followers your brand’s account has, you are most likely missing huge opportunities for growth.
The success of your organization’s social media strategy should not be focused on the quantity of followers you have, but rather the quality of these followers. If you approach your plan with the aims of increasing engagement amongst your followers however, you will naturally see this community grow. I have too often heard people get worked up and obsessed with how many followers they have, or companies using this number as an indication of whether their social media strategies are successful. This is misguided, and can lead to not only missed opportunities for community growth as mentioned above, but to questionable practices such as purchasing followers. What’s more embarrassing for your brand—Having under a certain number of followers, or getting caught buying followers? The answer here is clear. Keep your accounts clean
When I was on the job hunt, one of the top pieces of advice I heard was to scrub my social media accounts clean. Keep everything super professional and conventional, unless you never want to find that dream job. As someone who was using my Twitter account to post ridiculous quotes from my dad, feminist and social justice articles, and countless photos of cute animals, my account wasn’t exactly working as a purely professional resume.
However, I was told shortly after being hired that my Twitter presence actually helped rather than hurt my chances of getting the job. In having an online presence that wasn’t super sterile, my future employer was able to recognize that I had a personality and a (debatable) sense of humor.
It’s also a widespread belief that when you actually have the job, your social media accounts should act as a reflection of your most professional self. Many imply the belief that one should not post anything that even remotely suggests you have a life outside of work. All that you do is think of marketing plans, KPIs, and content strategies, right? Obviously, wrong. Your followers know that your life is not 24/7 work, and to suggest anything otherwise comes across as inauthentic. Our own Ryan Holmes even wrote a comprehensive piece on the subject, Why employees shouldn’t have to sanitize their social media accounts, where he explains “People have private lives outside the office—lives full of family, friends, goofy selfies, bar nights, and all the rest. Why, then, do we insist employees’ social media accounts reflect some buttoned-down ideal of an office drone? Honesty in the workplace means moving beyond that and understanding that employees are people first.” Of course, I trust it’s understood this doesn’t mean posting a racist rant, sharing prejudiced beliefs, or inappropriate content on your accounts. As Holmes states, “There’s no reason a company or organization should tolerate racist or insensitive content shared by its employees.” Use your judgment, but let your personality and interests show. Delete negativity
While this advice is usually presented as common sense, it’s truthfully more of a knee-jerk reaction. Although it’s understandable that you may naturally feel that it is best to immediately delete or hide any kind of negativity aimed at your brand on social media, complaints or insults (when respectful and without offensive language or content) can act as a great source of information. If, for example, a customer complains that the flowers they had delivered arrived looking less than perfect, your company has a wonderful opportunity to showcase your stellar customer service skills. As we explain in our post about what not to do on social media, a negative comment enables you to: Make a customer happy in a very public place. Publicly address a problem within your business that perhaps you didn’t know about.
Here, when you reply to the negative comment and offer a remedy that goes above and beyond, you are publicly highlighting your organization’s dedication to their customers, as well as allowing transparency. If you saw a branded social media account or page that had only 100 percent positive and gushing comments or interactions, you’d start to get suspicious and probably not fully trust the sources. Through responding to legitimate complaints and fair negativity in a respectful and helpful way, you are adding value and authenticity to your organization. Be present on every platform
Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a real thing and can be hard to ignore when you keep hearing about the newest and greatest social media networks. The truth is that if you’re looking to grow and nurture your social media presence, you don’t need to immediately jump on every social media network bandwagon. The quality over quantity principle rings truer than ever here, as it’s much better to have a consistent, reliable, and engaging presence on a select number of key social media networks rather than trying to do the same on too many and failing. As our previous post on how to manage your social media presence explains, there are three key ways that trying to be present on every platform can do more harm than good. Ignoring a social media network betrays your audience’s expectations
If someone follows you on Instagram or Twitter, they expect that you will be posting regularly and with valuable content. If your last Instagram post was 58 weeks ago, your followers will notice this and question the legitimacy of your accounts and the trustworthiness of your business. Ignoring a social media network can cost you online followers—and potential customers
With social media customer service becoming more common and expected by the day, if you aren’t keeping up to date and active on any of your channels, you are inviting the possibility of missing and seemingly ignoring customer inquiries. As we previously explained, “By ignoring your online audience’s feedback you risk not only losing those customers, but also failing to address the potential hurdles in your services or product development. Not paying attention to your online audience can cause you to lose followers on your social networks, and even potential customers.” Neglecting a social media network can tarnish your brand’s online reputation
As a result of these factors, you risk your brand’s online reputation being damaged. As we explain, “Decreased attention means a higher chance of committing one of many social media faux pas that could seriously threaten your brand’s reputation.” With the aim of an organization’s social media being to enhance a reputation and engage with customers, if you can’t satisfy these two key areas it might be time to rethink your current strategy.
With all of this said, my main piece of advice would be to question everything. I don’t mean this in a tinfoil hat-wearing way, but as a suggestion to always think critically about information you see, read, and hear and use your own judgment. All businesses are different, so test out various pieces of advice and find what works best for your specific industry and brand.
For small businesses which have shorter budget than their competitive entities in the market, a synthesized and more active sort of guerrilla marketing plan was developed and designed by marketing experts in the past era.
This strategy called as Guerrilla marketing is set of few interactive and iterative marketing strategies related to the on field publicity of your product or services. This is especially a treated for those businesses which have no large budgets for advertisements, publicity on random scale and which cannot afford the late outcome for their profits.
WHAT IS GUERRILLA MARKETING?
This large set of activities which is known as guerrilla marketing help all such small businesses overcome their need of marketing in effective way. This strategy is based on such activities which help a business to grasp the attention of public in an unconventional way which is more prominent and memorizing for them.
Apart from ordinary show, this marketing technique involves interaction with customers and general people in a way highlight their existence in the correlated market and make their brand more visible. This unconventional approach is less attained by large businesses which have wide extended marketing budget.
PLAN OF ACTION FOR GUERRILLA MARKETING STRATEGIES
During the tactical phase of marketing, there comes many obstructions and delays, therefore small business cannot afford huge cost of advertisement and then awaiting the response from limited customers. By implementing this plan, they can induct serious response by personally invading the customer base. Some saliences regarding this plan of action are listed below here. Take a look on them and learn how effectively you can patch up due market share by attracting your customers.
Make certain boundaries for your operations
Classify different categories of people and their approach towards your product
Plan out distinguished working model according to each category
Start implementing your work in proportions and take instant review over each action
Marketing Strategies
Action Plan
ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR PROJECT MANAGER
The most enchanting segment of work is that you need to be more operative and self deployed in the field rather than depending on other medium and channels to communicate your product marketing. Here are some of the useful marketing strategies listed below;
Flyers distribution in public and personal motivation by stating the competitive edges of your product or services
Ambush marketing is a strategy in which associative approach is utilized by the companies. Utilizing any events or gathering, attention and loyalty of people is gained
Stealth marketing is also another useful portion of this plan in which companies penetrate the market without prominently mentioning their brand and secretly eradicate their activities
Road shows are the type of activities done on the roads and streets, directly connecting to your customers without any middle support
Event actions are another useful portion of plan in which any interactive activity such flash mob, dance or interesting thing is done to gain the attention and devised memory of people in your targeted region
Imagine this scenario: You’re at work, hitting the 3 o’clock wall. To revive yourself from the slump, you navigate over to BarkPost, angling your monitor slightly more towards you to avoid being seen by your boss.
You find an amusing listicle—18 Signs Your Dog Has A Secret Second Family—and, wishing to confer with your dog co-parent, you copy the URL in the browser and paste it into an email message. Congratulations, you’ve just engaged in “dark social.”
We’ve all shared articles one-on-one through a means other than social media. Whether it was done to sidestep the no-social-media-for-personal-use policy at work, or because you don’t want the whole world to know you enjoy an article titled An Open Letter From a Corgi to the People Who Laugh at His Butt.
Thanks to the universality of the act, dark social has been reported to be responsible for 84 percent of outbound sharing. So what is this mysterious power, where does it come from, and—most importantly—how can your business harness it? Here’s everything you need to know.
Table of contents
What is dark social?
5 reasons why your company can’t ignore dark social
Why you should start measuring dark social (and how to do it)
What is dark social?
The term “dark social” was coined in an article written in 2012 by former deputy editor of The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal. Dark social is when people share content through private channels such as instant messaging programs, messaging apps, and email.
This private sharing is harder to track than content shared on public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, so many social media marketers don’t realize how big of a slice dark social has of the social media sharing pie.
Some of the most common dark social traffic channels are:
Messaging apps—such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger
Secure browsing—If you click from HTTPS to HTTP the referrer won’t be passed on
In other words, dark social describes any web traffic that’s not attributed to a known source, such as a social network or a Google search. Referral traffic is usually identified by certain “tags” attached to the link whenever it’s shared.
For example, if I want to share this blog post on Twitter using the “Tweet This” button on the side, an action window will open, with the following tag attached to the end of the URL: “percent2F&source=Shareaholic&related=shareaholic”. This tag signals that the referrer of the article was a social sharing tool directly from the post’s page.
If you’re curious about a headline in a Tweet and click on the link, you will often be directed to a link with the following tag “&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter”, signalling that this referral originated on Twitter. This is a more common referral tag that you have probably seen in the past, it’s called a UTM code or parameter.
View image on Twitter
Follow
Hootsuite
✔@hootsuite
See how URL shorteners are the unsung hero of social media marketing: http://ow.ly/G06eF
9:15 PM - Dec 19, 2014
44 Replies
6565 Retweets
4949 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Dark social links, however, don’t contain referrer data. Common examples of dark social include links copied and pasted into emails or instant messages, or shared via text message. These methods don’t automatically attach any tracking tags, unless the shared link was copied with the tag included (for example, if I were to copy the URL of an article that I originally found on Twitter, including the UTM parameters attached to it). If you’re watching your website’s analytics closely, you’ve probably wondered what all that “direct” traffic is. Well, at Hootsuite, we’re pretty sure thousands of people didn’t type “https://blog.hootsuite.com/quick-tips-for-creating-social-videos/” into a browser window. It’s labelled “direct” in Google Analytics, but it’s really traffic from dark social.
5 reasons your company can’t ignore dark social
Aside from the fact that The Atlantic article is a highly interesting and relatively easy read, no matter your level of familiarity with different engagement metrics, it also makes two very important points about dark social.
The first is the fact that the most important shareability factor in a piece of content is the content itself. No good content = no sharing, however sophisticated your optimization efforts may be.
The second point Madrigal makes is that the emergence of social networks didn’t create the social web, but only structured the existing channels by the act of publishing—and tracking—our social interactions.
If you’ve got the great content piece covered, read on for why you need dark social marketing to maximize its reach.
1. Dark social is everywhere
For the past year-and-a-half, the majority of responses (clickbacks) to dark social shares have come from mobile devices. Clickbacks on dark social shares coming from mobile devices are up from 53 percent in August 2014 to 62 percent in February 2016. The other 38 percent of clickbacks on dark social shares come from desktops.
2. Dark social has a huge impact on traffic
According to marketing firm RadiumOne, in the last year-and-a-half, dark social shares as a percent of on-site shares jumped from 69 to 84 percent globally.
Compare those numbers to Facebook traffic. RadiumOne’s research in February 2016 found that only 11 percent of site-originated mobile shares and 21 percent of mobile clickbacks happened worldwide via Facebook. In the same month, seven times the number of site-originated mobile shares and more than three times the number of mobile clickbacks happened via dark social.
3. Dark social is a spectacular marketing opportunity
Dark social data gives a detailed representation of consumers’ real interests. Familiarizing yourself with this information will allow your business to access a targeted audience of connections.
4. Dark social reaches unique demographics
According to RadiumOne’s research, 46 percent of consumers age 55 and older share only via dark social, as opposed to those in the 16 to 34 age group, where only 19 percent do so.
5. Dark social sharing is prevalent in many industries
For example, if your business is in personal finance, food and drink, travel, or executive search, more than 70 percent of social sharing is done through dark social.
Why you should start measuring dark social (and how to do it)
For anyone who publishes content online, it’s important to know where the majority of their readers come from. Whether dark social accounts for 60 or 16 percent of web traffic, marketers need to be able to track it.
Indeed, measuring dark social should be an essential part of your social media ROIframework. In this section we’ll look at some of the tactics and tools you can use to do it.
Shorten URLs
Use shortened URLs for outbound links in your content to get a deeper analysis of the engagement rates. Shorter links also look cleaner on platforms like Twitter.
Hootsuite’s built-in URL shortener ow.ly can be accessed via the Hootsuite dashboard or on the ow.ly site. This link shortener allows you to upload images, track real-time clicks (not including clicks from bots), and have the ability to post to your various social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Image via ow.ly.
You can also use the shortened URL in emails or on your website and use Hootsuite’s URL click stats to track how many clicks those links receive.
Make sharing easy
Thoughtfully arrange the share buttons on your website so that they are easy for visitors to spot. On some sites, users have to scroll to find the share buttons. Other sites don’t quite distinguish which are “follow” buttons and which are “share” buttons.
The sophistication of your share buttons should match the quality of your content.
Use dark social tools
There are many tools that allow marketing professionals to track dark social traffic origins and analyze their outcomes.
Po.st is a product of RadiumOne. The tool allows users to share content and provides publishers with revenue opportunities and unique dark social analytics tools.
ShareThis is an excellent tool that enables people to share any piece of content on the web through e-mail, direct message, or text message. The tool can be customized to measure copy and shares of your website’s URL.
GetSocial.io is a social media app store. You can create an account through their website or download their WordPress plugin or Shopify App. After you’ve created an account, paste the snippet of code provided into your HTML <head> section (the code is highlighted in red on top of the page). Once you’ve successfully inserted the snippet of code in your website, you’ll be one click away from tracking dark social shares. Find the Address Bar Tracking app, click Activate and you’re good to go.
Watch other social platforms
One of the things you can do to unmask the origin of dark social traffic is to check for a simultaneous spike in link traffic coming from Facebook or Reddit.
Major websites have also reported digging into user agent data, which includes a line of code users leave after visiting a website, which identifies their operating system and browser type. User agent information, while not always translated correctly by analytics software, can provide more details about the referrer.
Finally, as Madrigal pointed out, “There’s no way to game email or people’s instant messages. There’s no power users you can contact. There’s no algorithms to understand.”
The best way to ensure your content gets shared is to create interesting, informative, original material.
“Sorry to hear that. Please send us a direct message and we’d be happy to assist you.” For the majority of brands, this is what customer service on social media looks like. Polite, respectful, and helpful.
But not for every brand.
Businesses now use their social handles to deliver sharp wit, make clever jokes, and throw shade.
While having a sense of humor is important, there is a line. And crossing it can have consequences. Just ask the folks at Hawke and Co.
Still, several brands have been unable to pass up on opportunities for a good burn. In the following 10 situations, it paid off.
Be safe out there.
Bonus:Get the step-by-step social media strategy guidewith pro tips on how to grow your social media presence with Hootsuite.
1. Tesco Mobile tells a hard truth
Tesco Mobile, a UK-based mobile network, is probably one of the sassiest brands on Twitter. They’ve earned a reputation for handing out some vicious burns, to the delight of their nearly 80,000 followers.
It was hard to choose the best Tesco Mobile burn. There are a lot of them. But this one stands out due to its reach.
Over 11,000 retweets and over 7,000 favorites should be enough to convince you that Tesco has the Twitter burn down to a science. They didn’t pick someone complaining about their product or customer service. They sought out someone trying to make a joke at their expense, and decided to defend their brand in an extremely relatable way: with a third degree burn right out of the school yard.
People have started following Tesco specifically because of the guile they show in conversations with their “haters.”
How many phone companies do you follow? Probably only the one you use. Tesco’s approach has allowed them to connect with a wider audience, including many non-clients. I couldn’t resist, here’s another one.
Since then, Wendy has continued to provide giggles on an ongoing basis. The burger joint has earned a reputation for handing out vicious burns—much to the delight of their 1.51 million strong—and growing—Twitter fanbase.
The Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team saw it as an opportunity to maybe spark some interesting social media conversations. They responded with a tweet of their own, on the average height of a Pittsburgh Penguin. Clever… except in retrospect, since it lead to this amazing comeback.
A little context: the Penguins had, only a few weeks earlier, been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs. Maybe Discovery’s social media manager is a hockey fan of a different breed? Either way, a network that is known for providing educational programming definitely taught the Penguins a lesson.
And it paid off to the tune of 31,000 retweets and 34,000 favorites.
4. #DearEverlane hashtag sheds light on the consumer experience
Everlane’s hashtag #DearEverlane encourages customers to share questions, concerns, and brand experiences online. Everlane then takes to social media to showcase some of their best interactions:
In a specific #DearEverlane post, “Rupert” decided to call the clothing company out on the value of its products:
Instead of burying the negative feedback, the clothing brand presented Rupert’s commentary on their Instagram account.
The retailer fired back with a smart explanation as to why their sweaters cost as much as they do—as well as referencing Rupert’s snarky suggestion to “get a brain scan performed.”
#DearEverlane opens dialogue on social media and gives the brand an opportunity to address topics off all kinds—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s also another great example of using hashtags to drive engagement.
5. Smart Car proves how smart it really is
Smart cars don’t appeal to folks who prefer driving something a little bigger. The small size of these cars has made them the butt of jokes ever since they were first introduced. Rather than take offense, the company is pretty good at letting things slide.
But, just this once, they decided to take on a stupid joke about their product.
‘Oh our cars can be destroyed by bird poop can they? Maybe they can, but it would take 45,000 emus to make it happen. You and your joke have just been scienced. Good day.’
This isn’t so much a traditional burn as it is a mic drop moment. They took a joke made at their expense, proved they were paying attention, and actually transformed it into a brand win. If there was a tweet in this list that you might actually want to mimic, this would be the one.
6. Totino’s responds to S.N.L.’s Super Bowl skit
If there’s one Super Bowl commercial that is sure to delight every year, it’s Saturday Night Live’s Totino’s pizza roll skit.
The parody Totino’s Super Bowl ad sheds light on gender stereotypes when it comes to football. The main character is a Stepford Wives-inspired housewife who plays clueless about the game and gets ordered around at her husband’s Super Bowl viewing party.
Rapper Iggy Azalea made headlines on Grammy night in 2015, not for her award nominations, but for a Twitter battle with Papa John’s restaurant.
Iggy ordered a pizza and the restaurant employee who delivered it distributed her information to their family member, who proceeded to send Iggy unwanted texts. Iggy was less than pleased, with both the texts and the response of a Papa John’s manager, and she spread that displeasure on Twitter.
This was a potential PR nightmare for Papa John’s, which apologized and did their best to address the situation on Twitter. Another brand saw the situation in a different light, however, and rushed in to take advantage.
DiGiorno Pizza is a maker of frozen pizzas that uses the tagline “It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno.” The entire situation was a perfect match for their value proposition, and their generally casual and humorous approach to Twitter. Their tweet was simple but effective, and took advantage of a competitor’s screw-up (smh means “shake my head,” for the record). By entering the conversation, DiGiorno ended up with a quasi-endorsement from a famous rapper. One brand’s nightmare is another’s dream.
8. Arby’s embraces their enemies
In the midst of a rebrand, Arby’s decided to come back with a little more bite.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart had been making fun of the fast food chain for years, with jokes questioning their food’s edibility. “It’s like a shock and awe for your bowels,” the comedian once said.
When Stewart was about to end his hosting career, Arby’s took the opportunity to respond after years of being mocked. The fast food chain produced a farewell commercial called “Jon Voyage,” featuring a montage of Stewart’s harshest slights combined with the Golden Girls’ theme song “Thank You For Being A Friend.”
This was followed by a few clever quips to Stewart on the Arby’s Twitter handle.
Taco Bell is known to be one of the most entertaining and humorous brands on social media. Their target audience is fairly young, making them the perfect target for funny, risky content. When Old Spice, another brand who doesn’t shy away from humor, presented them with the following opportunity, they were sure to take it.
Old Spice threw it up, and Taco Bell hit it out of the park. This tweet is the perfect burn. It doesn’t take down the brand, just the tweet in question. It makes you smile without ever feeling at all malicious.
Brand on brand burns are far less risky, since no clients are involved. They’re usually far more beneficial as well, since they benefit from the substantial network of both businesses. Case and point: RedBull tried to join in on this duel after the fact (though, in this case, it was uninspired).
Since, as mentioned, Old Spice is another brand that embraces humor and risky tweets, they’ve also earned their spot on this list. Old Spice does a great job of throwing not-so-subtle jabs at followers and fans, especially those who send them weird tweets. Like poor old Sunil here.
In this case, the Twitter user sent something weird and off-beat, so Old Spice felt comfortable responding in a similar way. The burn is playful, not insulting, that’s a pretty good description of their Twitter presence in general. If you’re going to burn someone, burn someone who is asking for the burn… maybe even hoping for it.
Perhaps the finest example of someone reacting to criticism in the worst way possible.
An example of a good apology from Delta Airlines
