Dark social is perhaps the most crucial channel for your B2B marketing strategy. Just because you can’t measure it or track it does not mean it is not extremely important. To make it work, you need content that will inspire your audience to share it behind the scene.

What is Dark Social?

Dark social is an opaque marketing channel that can’t be tracked by traditional digital marketing and attribution software. This is essentially your word-of-mouth channel, the most powerful in driving new business. Instead of customers sharing content on traditional social media platforms such as LinkedIn, where activity can easily be tracked, it is shared on a private messaging channel that is designed to be private. Without instant feedback on how your content is performing, it can be hard to embrace the value of dark social. But, you must.

While B2C digital marketers may fear dark social as it makes it harder to justify their activity, it is where most content is shared. A regularly cited statistic from RythemOne says that 84% of content sharing is on dark social. This is also where the majority of B2B technology decisions are made. According to several estimates, 50-90% of the buying decision is made privately before a buyer engages a seller. 

If you are not generating vanity metrics with your content, it does not mean you are not making a difference. You need to be constantly providing valuable content, even if prospects are not actively or directly engaging with you.

What content works on dark social

So how do you create content that is sharable and will resonate behind the scenes? A study conducted by Berger and Milkman, two Penn State professors, found that New York articles that were shared via email most often were positive and got the reader excited.

Creating positive content seems straightforward. A story with a happy ending and an upbeat tone will probably do the trick. The challenge is getting your audience excited. Typically we get excited by new ideas and possibilities. Learning something new that sparks new insights, gaining a new perspective on current issues, or discovering a solution that makes our lives easier gets people excited. If done right, thought leadership is a great way to get your audience fired up. To create thought leadership content that is sharable on dark social, it needs to be:

Relevant – the reader must make a connection with your content and be relevant to the challenges they are facing and issues they are struggling with.

Unique – If the reader has already read a piece that presents the same data or argument in the same way as they have already seen, they will not share it. Not only is this not exciting, but readers will also assume that the person they would share it with has already seen it.

Valuable – We all get excited when we find valuable information. We also get satisfaction when we can provide value to others whom we respect.

The challenge is that these triggers are different for everyone. To get your target audience to share your content with their peers, you must first understand what new ideas they value. While this requires some research some ideas to consider for relevant, unique, and valuable content include:

  • Custom research projects can be valuable in helping make decisions but they can also confirm existing notions or provide a new perspective.
  • Unique insights on industry trends that provide a greater perspective into the industry’s future can spark new strategic ideas.  
  • Clarification of misconceptions in the industry provides a more solid platform for new ideas.
  • Challenging traditional thinking and ways of doing things. Looking at possibilities and what could be instead of what is can be very inspirational.

 If people share your content, they are adding validity to it. This increases its value and the trust in your community that you have something worth saying. 

Generating thought-leading content

Delivering the right content to the right audience to inspire them to share it is much easier said than done. 

Typically the big ideas that will move your audience are locked up in the heads of your leaders, sales group, or customer success agents. You need to engage with SMEs throughout your organization and even customers directly to see what is on their minds and the challenges they are facing. 

Creating a process to collect, synthesize and deliver this information and insights is paramount to creating thought leadership content that will inspire. You also need to work with your team to develop points of view that can move your audience. 

Word of caution

Avoid the temptation to add sales and marketing content to your thought leadership pieces. In many cases, as great content is developed and feedback is solicited, product marketing and sales want to include product-specific messaging to drive new leads. Lead gen will want to add a gate to capture contact info. These are all barrier to sharing and reduces the probability that the content you worked so hard on will resonate with your audience. Thought leadership and dark social are long-term strategies. They appeal to the 95% of your market that is not ready to buy now but are looking for guidance. Offering genuine guidance builds trust and goodwill that will pay back in spades when they are ready to buy.