In the last year, a lot has been written about “dark social media” — the vast majority of content sharing you’ll never see because it’s occurring through email, direct messages, texting, and other private communication channels.
In a recent post, I pointed to research that shows that as much as 70 percent of social sharing is unknown to us. And perhaps we only know 2 percent of our non-lurking audience!
This presents a real problem for marketers. Getting content to move through a loyal audience is critical to business success. A study commissioned by Google shows that your most-loyal audience is more than 250 percent more likely to transmit your content and 200 percent more likely to make purchases from your company. These engaged customers don’t just buy your products again and again, but encourage others to do it, too.
In my upcoming book, The Content Code, I describe this elite group as the Alpha Audience – fervent supporters, and a rare breed we can rely on for loyalty, ignition, and most important, action. We urgently need to find more of those people for our businesses, but if most of this powerful audience lurks in the shadows, how do we know they’re there?
