Dark Social - Is it hurting your Business?

Fiona Service • 1 January 2018

Just what is Dark Social?

Don't worry there is nothing scary about Dark Social - it's not going to hurt your business, but you must be aware of it.

Dark Social is the shares, comments, links, discussions that you don't see. And is a nightmare for a Social Media Manager to report on.

For example, say you see a great Facebook post, but you don't think all your Facebook friends would like to see it - so you share a copy of the page via your What's app, Facebook messenger, text or email to the friends who will like it.

This means that the owner of the Facebook post, never knows that you have seen or liked or shared their page - they don't feel the love.

How does this affect the small business owner? Well it is important to be aware the your social media maybe being shared without your knowledge, which is a good thing except you can't track it. So keep posting and keep your presence updated - more people may be seeing it than you think.

And most importantly make sure your posts are worth sharing - work with the Dark Social. Make people want to copy your page and share it on.

Another thing to really think about is that the younger generation are more likely to be using Social Media privately - e.g. What's app, Snap Chat etc. They will be connecting directly to their friends and not trawling Facebook and Twitter. So it might be worth asking your customers to join you on a business What's app or Snap Chat and getting into a habit of talking to people directly. This is a tricky thing to do - it mustn't be a heavy sell and pushy or they will switch off, but you could maybe contact them to say that you have a sale on their favourite product or you have new stock in that may interest them etc.

So in essence, don't be scared of Dark Social, but do start thinking about your content and maybe developing new strategies. Good Luck.

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Telling Stories...

by Fiona Service • 6 February 2018

You can't just sell on Social Media. It doesn't work that way. Social Media is unsurprisingly social! To get your posts seen, you must, must engage your audience. To do that you need to share a story and entertain. If you tell your customers about the behind the scenes of your business or talk about the people that work for you - they are more likely to comment, like and share. If you mention something silly and funny that happened that day - you will get LOL's and funny comments back. Then you can quietly slip in a sales post - just to remind everyone you have a service or product to sell. Talking about the history of your Brand or providing informative pieces about how to use your products is lot more engaging than telling everyone you have something for sale at £99. When you do get a comment - then you need to keep the conversation going. Add a Gif (small video), an emojie, a comment and even better a question. Engage with your customer - talk to them. When you do a post - try to have a "Call to Action." Ask your customers to message you, visit your website, call you, ask questions - prompt them to keep the conversation going. Make sure all your sites have all the sections filled in correctly, have your story available for anyone to read. TRY THE STORY OPTION. This is the newest and becoming a very important way to talk to your customers. Your posts will get lost amongst the newsfeed, or not even show in some peoples feed. So if you can use Story function on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp - do it, do it now and do it regularly. So start talking, start sharing and start telling everyone your story. It works...we promise.