Definition

Traffic that comes from private channels like texts and DMs where marketers can't track it, making it the speakeasy of social sharing. It sounds sinister, but it's really just your aunt forwarding articles in the family group chat.

Example Usage

"70% of our sharing is dark social, which means people love our content so much they share it where we can't take credit for it."

Related Terms

Beginner

sponsored content

Advertising disguised as editorial content, marked with tiny disclaimers that readers routinely ignore while consuming what they think is journalism. It's the art of selling things to people who came for articles, not ads.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

search engine marketing

Paid advertising on search engines, primarily Google, where you bid on keywords to appear when people search for things. It's the practice of paying to skip the line in search results, assuming you can outbid your competitors.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

attribute

In marketing analytics, the act of giving credit to specific touchpoints in a customer's journey for making them finally open their wallet. It's like trying to determine which of your 47 advertisements actually convinced someone to buy, except everyone on your team has a different answer. Attribution modeling is where data science meets office politics.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

attribution model

A mathematical framework for assigning credit to various marketing touchpoints that led to a conversion, because apparently one person needs to get the glory even when seventeen different campaigns were involved. Think of it as the participation trophy debate of digital marketing.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

content syndication

Republishing your content on third-party platforms to reach wider audiences, like licensing reruns of your hit show to other networks. Efficiency gains meet brand dilution concerns.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Advanced

cathedral building

Long-term brand-building activities that won't show measurable results for months or years, requiring faith that someone will eventually care. The opposite of performance marketing's instant gratification.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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