Five things marketers need to know about dark social
Dark social has moved from email and messaging apps to closed ecosystems such as WeChat. In this guest post, David Tiltman from Warc reveals the top five marketing strategy and information considerations of dark social…
At a time of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ the term ‘dark social’ seems – on the face of it – a bit sinister.
And maybe it is to some. Dark social – online conversations that are not trackable by marketers – is sometimes portrayed as a threat to social marketing. But dark social is no more than a reflection of our basic desire to share information and ideas with people we know.
We’ve always done it – but for a few years the way we did it was in the open, on platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
The reason dark social is becoming an issue that marketers need to understand is that the platforms we share our information on are changing.
The rise of mobile-based chat apps is changing the social landscape – and in Asia, home of WeChat, that transformation is happening more quickly than anywhere else.
Interesting article David
Chat Bots are certainly getting a lot of discussion at the moment for heavy social care brands.
I think the thing to weigh up here though is the utility and benefit for the brand vs the reason that social care has seen a huge surge in consumer use.
Consumers are coming to social as they are getting a better experience than phone or in person options.
Once this becomes automated does that level of customer experience decline?
The excitement of the technology is masking some of this type of questioning.
I don’t see Chat Bot integration in PI data from CRM being an issue from a consumer perspective more the fact that the bot might frustrate them, as we are a long way off from a tech stand point in delivering a conversational AI experience.
On the topic of consumers discussing brands in a different manner on dark social to public social I imagine there would be little difference. People are not shy of loving or critiquing a brand in public social.
I imagine listening data (if it could be achieved) would back that up.
Time will tell possibly on this one and not for the first time I might well be wrong 🙂