ARE YOU EXPERIENCING DARK SOCIAL????

    It happened to me a while back, while going through my monthly analytics for some of my clients and things just weren’t adding up.  I decided to dig a little deeper and research what the heck was going on.  I just did a broad search in Google and type in the issue I was having and all of a sudden, this term ‘Dark Social’ or Dark Social Media’ popped up.  Well, I started to read through some of my search results and this is what I discovered. 
   
    Dark Social, was coined by Alex C. Madrigal, Sr. Editor at the Atlantic and it’s basically, traffic sent to your site that for whatever reason, your analytics can’t analyze.  This usually happens when a link is shared via email, messenger or chat.  Now what happens is that those links have what is called UTM Parameter, extra wording at the end of those long links and when those kinds of links are shared in the ways described above, the coding is being read incorrectly on your site, thus causing inaccurate analytical measurement.  
   
    In my research I have found that the fix to this is to decode the error but to be honest with you, I personally have no idea how that would be done.  I’m a social media consultant, not an IT, Web Developer or Programmer.  I did however discover a quick and easy fix to the problem and that is to use link shorteners such at BITLY.  My real advice to all, is that if you are having a serious issue with accurate measuring of analytics, seek the help of an expert.
 
I Hope you found the information helpful, please feel free to share.  
Thanks for reading and have a great day. 

Valarie Harris.