Category: Engagement

The Baltimore Banner Launches New Era of Community Engagement with Viafoura Tools!

We are thrilled to announce that The Baltimore Banner has officially launched Viafoura’s suite of community engagement tools, bringing a transformative new experience to its loyal readers. With a rich history of delivering trusted, quality journalism that strengthens and unites the Baltimore community, The Baltimore Banner is now doubling down on its mission by fostering deeper, more meaningful interactions between its readers.

Eric Ulken, VP of Product at The Baltimore Banner, shares his excitement about the launch:

“We’ve been searching for a solution that not only supports commenting and live blogging but also integrates with our app vendor, Pugpig. Viafoura ticked those boxes for us. With their platform, we’re confident that we can create a thriving community where subscribers feel valued and engaged. We believe that community conversations will become an indispensable part of our subscriber experience. As this community grows, we expect non-subscribers to feel the pull of FOMO, while subscribers derive such value from their connectedness that canceling will be out of the question.”

Eric UlkenVP of Product

The Baltimore Banner’s commitment to enhancing local news aligns perfectly with Viafoura’s mission to create safe and secure digital communities. With the launch of Conversations, Live Blogs, Live Chat, AI Moderation, and Mobile SDK, The Baltimore Banner’s team now has the tools they need to offer exclusive, interactive experiences for subscribers while building stronger connections with their audience.

Dalia Vainer, Vice President of Customer Experience at Viafoura, adds:

 “The strategic alignment between The Baltimore Banner and Viafoura is rooted in our shared vision of empowering local journalism and building a loyal community. By leveraging our platform, The Baltimore Banner is set to deliver an exceptional digital experience, where meaningful conversations thrive and readers feel like they’re a part of something bigger. Together, we’re creating a space where the voices of Baltimore are heard and celebrated.”

This partnership is all about creating a safe, engaging space for community-driven discussions, offering exclusive perks for subscribers, and supporting the growth of The Baltimore Banner’s loyal readership. As The Baltimore Banner moves forward, the team will be closely monitoring key metrics, including: 

  • Increased subscription conversions
  • Higher engagement rates, and 
  • Streamlined moderation efforts

The future of community at The Baltimore Banner looks bright, and we couldn’t be more excited to help fuel that growth. Stay tuned for more live blogs, interactive conversations, and deeper connections—all powered by Viafoura!

Building a Thriving Tech Community: Authority Media Goes Live with Viafoura!

Authority Media’s Android Authority and SoundGuys are now powered by Viafoura’s community engagement tools, bringing real-time interaction, AI moderation, and personalized experiences to their audience. As a leader in tech reviews, Authority Media is committed to building deeper connections for its over 18 million monthly users while leveraging first-party data to refine content strategy and drive growth.

“We chose Viafoura for its seamless integration, AI-powered moderation, and audience analytics.
The platform aligns perfectly with our goal of building a loyal, active community.”

Derek ScottCo-founder/CEO

The onboarding process was smooth, with Viafoura’s team providing hands-on support. Derek adds:  

“It was among the best we’ve experienced”

Viafoura’s suite—including Conversations, AI Moderation, Author & Topic Follows, and Custom Badges—is designed to drive tangible results. Authority Media anticipates:

    • Higher engagement: More user interactions and longer time on-site
    • Efficient moderation: AI-powered tools reducing manual effort
    • Deeper audience insights: Data-driven content strategy optimization
    • Growth in registrations & subscriptions

“We’re thrilled to partner with Authority Media as they double down on community engagement,” says Dalia Vainer, Vice President of Customer Experience at Viafoura. “With our tools, they can create a dynamic, interactive space where users feel heard, valued, and connected—while also unlocking the power of first-party data to drive strategic growth.”

As Authority Media continues to grow its community, Viafoura is proud to support their mission of fostering deeper connections and meaningful engagement with their audience. Here’s to the next chapter of building a vibrant, engaged tech community!

We’re Live! Viafoura’s Community Engagement Tools Now Powering Planet Sport’s Network of Sites

We are thrilled to announce that Viafoura’s full suite of community engagement tools has officially gone live across all of Planet Sport‘s digital properties! This is a massive milestone in our partnership with the UK’s largest independent sports media business, and we couldn’t be more excited about the impact our solutions will have on their thriving community of over 25 million monthly fans.

Planet Sport’s portfolio, which includes fan-favorite sites like Football365, TEAMtalk, PlanetF1.com and Planet Rugby, is now equipped with the full power of Viafoura’s tools: Conversations, Liveblog & Engagement Starter. These tools are designed to supercharge user engagement, streamline content interaction, and foster a more connected and dynamic sports fan community.

Mark Holmes, Head of Publishing at Planet Sport, highlighted how our solutions will transform Planet Sport’s digital experience:

“We looked at a number of solutions that provided some of what we needed, but Viafoura offered everything we were looking for. This allows us to offer a more consistent experience for our users and improve UX while decreasing load times—a rare and beautiful combination. With Viafoura, we've seamlessly integrated user-generated content into our article pages, encouraging better, more civilized debate and enhancing our journalists' engagement with readers, which is crucial for growing our community.”

Mark HolmesHead of Publishing at Planet Sport

Our collaboration with Planet Sport is not just about integrating technology; it’s about strategic alignment and shared vision. Dalia Vainer, Director of Customer Experience at Viafoura, expressed how this partnership exemplifies our mission to empower media companies to thrive in the digital age:

“Partnering with Planet Sport is a testament to our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions that align with our clients’ goals of growing community engagement and enhancing user experience. This collaboration is a perfect example of how strategic alignment can lead to powerful, impactful results. We’re excited to see how our tools will elevate Planet Sport’s community to new heights.”

As Mark Holmes mentioned, “the onboarding process was smooth and stress-free, with our team ensuring a seamless transition to Viafoura’s tools without negative user feedback—no small feat when implementing changes of this scale!”

Since launch we’ve seen an impressive increase in engagement and registrations with 16% more engagement actions and 3.18x more community attributed registrations versus the previous vendor. This is just the beginning of what promises to be an exciting journey together.

Welcome to the future of sports media engagement, Planet Sport! Let’s continue to build, engage, and grow—together.

Communities as Moats: Strategies for Digital Publishers in 2025

At the end of every year, my team conducts planning sessions with some of the brightest minds in publishing from all over the world. We work in an emerging and increasingly vital sector of the industry – community building- and we’ve honed in on being the best at our craft. What we see time and time again is very simple: publishers that go all-in on community see the return in spades.

At Viafoura, we’re capitalizing on user habits and behaviors formed over the past decade on social media. Think of us as the Apple of community engagement for media organizations. In this context, the iPhone moment for media is now: publishers are uniquely positioned to reclaim audiences from social media and drive direct user relationships on their owned and operated properties.

Zooming out, social media landscapes are changing quickly: X (formerly Twitter) slashed global moderation staff and has paid the price with traffic and advertising revenue and what may be an exodus of publisher engagement (see Guardian). Meanwhile, Reddit is consistently ranking higher on SERPs, above affiliate and publisher rankings meaning the Google Gods are beginning to prioritize UGC.

So what does this all mean? My team’s been busy.

2025 is going to bring a big shift into community-centric operating models for publishers. Here’s what I’m keeping an eye on:

1. Publishers are getting really good at defining the value of user-generated content (UGC) to the business.

When discussing community-centric approaches with execs, I often bring up my favorite FT Strategies piece showcasing Der Standard super-users (top commenters). It covers 2 main points:

  • Der Standard did the math: their highest value user segment are community- engaged members
  • They centralized their operations to have business units focus on funneling users into community engagement (aka: study them, talk to them, design with them).

I love this piece because the organization doubled down on attributing a $ value to the community, and for a numbers nerd like me, this is the north star of our ‘why’and single most important number in rallying the many teams it takes to make a community strategy successful.

Here’s the baseline of ROI of community engagement:

  • Attributed registration & subscription conversion
  • Direct ad activation dollars
  • Downstream impact of engagement defined by additional Time on Site and PV’s generated by community contributors and those who spend time consuming their content

The new expanded impact areas:

  • User Generated Content (UGC) as a story idea generator
  • Editorial Engagement sponsorships (Think: commercial teams selling sponsored AMAs)
  • The effect of the flywheel of UGC on your unknown audiences and their propensity to register and subscribe

An anecdotal thought: It’s interesting to me how quickly publishers are beginning to see ROI from community on day 01 of launching community and how naturally user behaviors gravitate toward community (the uptick is almost immediate). The appetite for community is there, and users genuinely enjoy engaging with one another, when the community is well managed and stays within brand community guidelines. In the same breath, moderation at scale and duty of care to your editorial team is more important than ever and that needs to be acknowledged and recognized.

2. Journalists are becoming rockstars again.

This is hands down my favorite highlight because we are deliberately repairing a decade-long rip and divide caused by the cesspool of social media. It’s baffling to think how we got here given publishing at its core is a product of the communities we serve, so how can publishers, by virtue, hate interacting with communities?

My gut says they don’t, and my gut says they’re scared from their experiences on social media.

The good news is this is a simple fix but requires a high degree of change management – let the AMAs do the heavy lifting here. This past year, we’ve had a record-breaking % of publishers dip their toe into community engagement, and we’ve had a 100% success rate (defined as repeat initiative).

From an engagement perspective, the results are a pretty clear win: AMAs drive 2x more registrations, 3x more first time commenters, 24x more engagement & 16x more time in comments.

Pretty slam dunk but that’s not the purpose of this highlight- it’s actually the softer side:

  • Every time we’ve run a first time AMA, journalists have requested to stay longer because they genuinely had FUN
  • Commenters opened their questions with “Thank you so much for doing this” – a little goes a long way
  • 100% re-engagement rate by newsroom staff

Next year, this is going to take center stage in many newsrooms for a couple of key reasons:

  1. This is a low-lift experiential interaction for your community with a high reward.
  2. It’s safe. Turning on a full pre-moderated approach builds trust with newsrooms and lets journalists step into their fandom 🤘

Customer Spotlight: People.com has started leaning into AMAs and going all in with targeted invites, social recirc, and onsite discoverability during the event.

3. Editorial KPIs: “First Time Commenters” will have a seat at the table.

You’re going to hear me talk a lot about this in the year to come. Knowing the $$$ value of a UGC contributor, your First Time Commenters should be reported in your dashboards, right beside your conversion numbers.

This should be volumes, time to first comment, and % of all new registered users. Here’s what it looks like in practice with a real customer:

  • Average of 9,295 first time commenters per month
  • 10.6% of all new registrations interact with the community in the same day
  • Average of 14.1 minutes for first comment action post registration

Once you’ve got this in, start digging into the mechanics of what prompted your conversions. What drove users to comment? What user ideas drove the most engagement and was there a debate sparked? Was there anything very sentimental that drew people together?

Out loud: This is a slam dunk for GenAI if you’re looking to automate the sentiment of highly-commented conversations and delivering ideas for follow ups to spark ideas in newsrooms.

4. The homepage will be the community page.

Homepages are transforming with more interactivity for users and a big part of that is the concept of active conversations/ top quality comments/ hot takes. You’ve seen these trending on social and you’ll see it transformed on publisher pages as well- again not recreating the wheel, but doing it better.

The concept of bridged discussion, unlike divisive, engagement-driven trends, is poised to be a key player here.

What’s bridging? An academic approach for countering destructive divisiveness across ranking, recommenders, and governance. We’ve partnered with our good friends at Jigsaw, a division of Google, to apply bridging attribution qualifiers to develop a comment quality ranking. We’re able to apply this mechanism at scale and completely reshape the perceived comment quality.  The goal here is fairly substantive—arguably beyond just the comment section—as it tackles a broader conversational divide that has emerged, largely due to social media algorithms pinning people against each other.

Here’s what our data shows when we apply bridging qualifiers to shape quality commenting:

  • Perceived Comment Quality is up 101%
  • Perceived Comment Toxicity is down 36%
  • Community-Led Registrations are up 20%
  • First Time Commenters are up 6%
  • Editors Interaction in the comment section is up 122%

What does all of this tell us? By deliberately promoting higher quality comments (personal storytelling, nuance, compassion, & others) not only do our perceptions of community change for the better, but our interactions become more meaningful.

With confidence in the mechanisms and technology, publishers are using this to highlight quality community as a credit-worthiness of trust on their highest traffic page: home page, baby.

5. Publishers will chip bigger pieces of traffic back from social.

By no means do I hate social media- in fact, some of the largest publishers in the world have built a social-first strategy for growth and holy shit it worked (at least for a while). But building your business model on the current state of social algorithms, which can change at any moment, is very risky, and the only path to stability is owning that audience and the relationship with them.

Publishers are leaning into some really cool recirc initiatives in capturing new audiences on moving over to O&O, and while it’s a little early to share wins, I’m keeping my eyes on targeted audience acquisition for X, formerly Twitter, and Reddit.

One to watch: Rachel Duffy at The Telegraph.

Parallel, I’m also excited to see the big shift toward the creator economy and how that can look for local media. With elections closing out, and a retro on the Kamala campaign, there’s a big highlight on reach with podcasts and the influence creators have over traditional media.I’m wondering if we can see a collab for both next year.

To wrap my musings, I want to settle on the concept of “brands are moats”. If our brand is aging, and by virtue our audiences too, brands get smaller and the word of the brand moves on.

So what makes publishing brands successful and competitive in today’s day-in-age?

First will always be your core offering: trust from your core market.

But second and emerging is the power of your community: a parallel of trust.

Communities are moats.

Feeling hopeful for 2025, watch our space.

Doubling Down on Community: A Generational Opportunity for Publishers

As a publishing executive, you’re no stranger to the shifting sands of digital media. The days of relying on cheap traffic from social media are gone. Today’s audiences are fragmented across multiple platforms, while third-party cookies, once the backbone of targeted advertising, are quickly being phased out. These changes bring challenges, but they also present an unprecedented opportunity to transform how your organization engages with its readers. By cultivating a loyal, engaged community directly on your own platform, you will deepen relationships, unlock new revenue streams, and future-proof your business against ongoing market disruptions. 

This post explores key insights from a recent session hosted by Viafoura at the ONA24 conference titled, “Doubling Down on Community.”

The New Imperative: Owning Your Audience

The publishing industry has long faced an existential challenge—audience ownership. For years, tech companies like Facebook, Twitter (now X) and Instagram provided platforms where readers could consume and discuss content. However, these social platforms have shifted priorities away from news. As Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, put it on Threads, “Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.” 

The truth: If you’re not the one owning the conversation around your content, someone else is—and they’re monetizing it. Anthony De Rosa from On_Discourse framed this aptly: “Media companies have allowed tech companies to steal their content and monetize it by providing a platform for readers to discuss it. How absurd is that?”

The solution? Building your community.

By cultivating an engaged and loyal audience on your own platform, you control not only the conversation but the data, the engagement, and—most critically—the revenue potential. 

When asked, here’s how the participants at ONA defined Community:

Some descriptions came as no surprise: connection, togetherness, engagement, while the most prominent term—trust—drove quite a bit of discussion. More on this later…

Community As a Strategic Priority for Publishers

For publishing executives, the strategic value of building a community extends beyond engagement—it directly impacts the business bottom line. Here’s what we know about the value of community members from Viafoura’s global research: 

  1. Generate 5x more revenue than non-community members.
  2. Visit 45x more frequently than the general audience.
  3. Spend 5.3x more time on-site, driving higher ad impressions and boosting subscription opportunities 

These metrics point to a broader trend: engaged communities are the linchpin of future audience growth.

The Business Case for Community-Driven Revenue

The data is compelling: active community members are more likely to subscribe, less likely to churn, and more engaged overall. But beyond the direct engagement metrics, what makes community an essential driver of revenue growth?

  1. First-Party Data Collection: As third-party cookies fade, publishers must adopt first-party data strategies. Communities offer high-value data for targeted content, personalized experiences, and better ads.
  2. Increased Subscription Revenue: Community members are 31% more likely to subscribe and 2.5x less likely to churn. Exclusive community content and engagement tiers can drive subscriptions and reduce churn.
  3. Optimized Ad Revenue: Communities boost dwell time and page views. First-party data enables precise targeting and higher CPMs, while ads within communities offer new revenue streams.
  4. Higher Retention Rates: Communities foster belonging, encouraging users to return through interactive features like comments, events, and user-generated content.

The 3 Foundational Pillars of Building a Successful Community Strategy

To reap the benefits of community, it’s critical to recognize that community is a significant driver of business value — it’s not simply community for community’s sake. Viafoura has outlined three critical pillars of community building success: intention, cultivation, and operationalization.

1. Intention: Tie Community Engagement to Revenue on Day 01

Community is no longer a “nice-to-have”—it’s a core business strategy, with a front seat at the table. Set clear objectives and align your teams around building a loyal, engaged audience around your North Star metrics: converting engaged community members. 

  • Define your success criteria – get as specific as possible 
  • Build the business case  – Community =  Direct Ad Activation + Engagement Lift for Time on Site Attributable to Community + Conversion (Registration + Subscription lift) 
  • Map Your Ownership Framework – Who owns what, what is their  level of disruption, and how long are the stakeholders engaged? 

These practices are designed to mobilize around a key goal, and hold teams accountable to driving results. A successful community strategy is not just the responsibility of your product or engagement teams—it must be embraced across the organization, with clear ownership and resource allocation.

2. Cultivation: Creating Safe, Engaging Spaces 

Managing communities at scales is very hard. Language is ever evolving, trends move quickly and above all it’s nearly impossible to monitor with exclusive human, or exclusively systems. The biggest factor in the crux community is on the line, bringing us back to the concept of TRUST. Trust built by your community to engage in safe spaces, trust from your editorial staff that they can engage in a civil way, and trust from the brand that community meets brand guidelines.

There are two sides of the coin to consider: 

  • Silencing the Bad: Set up systems and processes in place to disable negative comments. Think: spam prevention, banned words disabling, auto moderation for sentiment and context, and including a human in review. 
  • Promoting the Good: Using advanced sentiment scoring, highlight positive engagement at scale to boost your highest quality community engagements to the top of conversations.  Viafoura’s recent Top Comments feature does just this. 

3. Operationalization: Scaling Community Engagement

Scaling a community requires effective, structured strategies ranging from Low to High lift using playbooks and cadences to operationalize community efforts. The core 3 examples covered in market currently highlight: 

  • Live Broadcast Engagement: Driving TV audiences to your digital properties to ask questions answered by hosts directly on air. This is a big win building rituals and offering a unique value proposition for subscribers 
  • Editorial Recirculation: Using community sections to inspire follow up content for editors, and launching new highlights in newsletters. 
  • Live Events Operationalization: Pre-moderated AMAs connecting podcasters, spotlight journalists or featured specialists to audiences directly. Pair with advertising teams for sponsored activations here. 

Moreover, operationalization is about aligning your community strategy with broader business goals. For instance, by tying community engagement to subscription models or using community data to enhance ad revenue, you can ensure that community-building directly contributes to the bottom line from day one.

The Future of Publishing: Communities as Competitive Differentiators

 As the publishing industry continues to evolve, those who invest in building loyal, active communities will emerge as the leaders in audience engagement and monetization. For executives, the question is no longer whether to build a community, but how to do so effectively and at scale. 

By treating community as a strategic priority, focusing on intentional cultivation, and operationalizing engagement at every level, you can position your organization to thrive in the future of publishing. Communities are no longer just a way to engage readers—they are a critical engine for growth, loyalty, and revenue in the digital age.

If you’re ready to build a thriving community, partner with Viafoura. Our platform equips you with the tools and insights to engage, activate, and monetize your audience with ease. Now is the time to act—don’t miss out on this generational opportunity.

Viafoura’s Community Engagement Tools Now Live Across McClatchy Sites!

We’re excited to share that Viafoura’s full suite of community engagement tools is now live across McClatchy’s 29 daily newspapers. As a prominent American publishing company with a weekly circulation exceeding 10 million across 14 states, McClatchy is dedicated to empowering communities through quality journalism. This launch marks a transformative step in digital storytelling and community building for a company that remains steadfast in its commitment to the communities it serves.

Kat Sheplavy, Sr. Director of New Products & Experiences at McClatchy, shared her excitement about the partnership:

“We chose Viafoura because of their best-in-class suite of products, incredible team, excellent track record of human and AI moderators, and unwavering dedication to building community across online publishers. The Viafoura team is among the best I have ever worked with. They are super organized, incredibly responsive, and dedicated to ensuring we meet our goals. Viafoura has already changed the digital experience across McClatchy properties by giving our audience a platform for productive conversations and enabling our engagement editors to focus on meaningful interactions.”

Kat SheplavySr. Director of New Products & Experiences

As McClatchy continues to innovate in the digital space, the Viafoura tools will play a pivotal role in enhancing key areas of the business including: 

  • Increase in Registrations (Unknown → Known)
  • Improved Retention Rate
  • Time Saved on Moderation
  • Speed to Market to Publish Live Blogs
  • Increased Engagement (Time on Site + Return Visits)

Mark Zohar, CEO of Viafoura, highlighted the strategic alignment between the two companies:

“Our partnership with McClatchy is a perfect example of how strategic alignment can drive innovation and growth. By integrating Viafoura’s community engagement tools, McClatchy is not only enhancing its digital offerings but also fostering stronger, more meaningful connections with its readers, driving real business impact. We are proud to support McClatchy’s mission of strengthening communities through quality journalism.“

This launch is just the beginning. We are excited to continue working closely with McClatchy to build a vibrant, engaged, and safe online community that aligns with their high standards of moderation and safety.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to bring our community engagement solutions to life across McClatchy’s digital properties!

Gambling.com Selects Viafoura for Enhancing User Engagement and Community Building!

We are thrilled to announce that Gambling.com Group has chosen Viafoura to elevate their digital experience and community engagement. Gambling.com Group is a premier provider of digital marketing services for the online gambling industry. With an extensive network of over 50 websites in 16 countries and 9 languages, Gambling.com Group is a global leader in delivering comprehensive gambling guides and reviews. Their significant operations span four worldwide locations, making them a powerhouse in the industry.

Casinos.com reached their next chapter in their growth journey, looking to solve for 3 key areas:

  • Grow registrations: Create an increased direct relationship with users 
  • Create a rich community built around content: Engaging with communities directly resulting in increased time on site and pageviews 
  • Increase revenue through engagement lift: Create new areas of opportunity for revenue generation 

“Viafoura's platform seamlessly integrates with our existing systems, enhances our user engagement, and creates a welcoming environment for members of the Casinos.com community, which is crucial for our growth strategy. Viafoura’s content moderation capabilities will allow us to maintain compatibility with regulatory compliance requirements, and the AI moderation helps reduce the burden on our content moderation team.”

Niall CusackSoftware Development Manager at Gambling.com Group

Viafoura enables Casinos.com to foster a vibrant online community, and deliver higher-quality offerings based on community insights using the core conversational experience, and cutting-edge moderation AI technology.  

“We are also excited about the custom integrations we have implemented.” Niall mentioned, “We have integrated with Customer.io to capture email opt-ins during the registration process, which will extend our abilities to engage with and best serve our growing community.”

Dalia Vainer, Director of Customer Experience at Viafoura, stated, “We are incredibly excited to launch this partnership with Gambling.com Group to create engaged, meaningful experiences for their communities. We look forward to being a strategic partner in driving their key business goals.”

We look forward to a successful collaboration with Gambling.com Group and are committed to supporting their goals of enhancing user engagement and building a rich online community. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting journey!

Embracing Community over Audience: A Strategic Shift for Brands

Embracing Community over Audience: A Strategic Shift for Brands

In today’s rapidly evolving attention economy, media brands face the challenge of not just attracting but also engaging and retaining their target audiences. In order to compete against Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok for user attention, brands need to shift their focus from audience acquisition and start building active and loyal communities that attract creatives, collaborators and connectors. This shift, which Brian Morrissey has dubbed depth over breadth, is crucial for fostering deeper connections, enhancing engagement, and ultimately driving greater revenue and retention.

From Passive Audiences to Active Communities

Traditional brand content experiences often result in passive and fleeting audience engagement. These audiences are largely disengaged and unmotivated, offering limited value to brands. In contrast, communities are characterized by active participation, collaboration, creativity, and a strong sense of connection and loyalty. As community-building expert Greg Isenberg notes, building such communities involves several key elements:

  1. Togetherness: Providing spaces for collective interaction.
  2. Rituals: Establishing regular activities that foster a sense of routine.
  3. Identity: Cultivating a shared sense of purpose among members.
  4. Belonging: Creating a feeling of being part of something larger.
  5. Engagement: Encouraging ongoing contribution and interaction independent of direct brand involvement.

The Viafoura Digital Experience Platform: Enabling Community Building

Viafoura’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is at the forefront of this transformation, offering a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance user engagement, personalization and data utilization. Trusted by over 800 global media brands, Viafoura’s DXP empowers brands to create dynamic, interactive communities through features such as:

  • Engagement Suite: Facilitates real-time interactions with conversations, live Q&A sessions, and polls.
  • Moderation Tools: Combines AI and human moderation to maintain respectful and relevant discourse.
  • Personalization: Delivers tailored content recommendations and personalized feeds.
  • Data Insights: Leverages first-party data for deep user behavior insights, driving targeted engagement strategies.

The Transformative Impact of Community Members

Community members significantly outperform standard audiences in terms of engagement and revenue generation. According to Viafoura’s data:

  • Community members have a 5.3x higher increase in dwell time compared to regular audiences.
  • They are 45x more likely to subscribe.
  • They drive 3x more site visits.

These statistics highlight the outsized impact that engaged community members can have on a brand’s success. By focusing on building and nurturing communities, brands can achieve higher levels of engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, profitability.

Practical Steps for Building Robust Communities

To build thriving communities, brands should consider the following steps:

  1. Define Your Community’s Purpose: Clearly communicate the community’s goals and values to attract like-minded individuals.
  2. Create Valuable Content: Consistently provide content that is relevant, informative, and engaging. This will keep members interested and active within the community.
  3. Encourage Interaction: Use interactive tools like real-time comments, live chats, Q&A sessions, and polls to facilitate real-time interaction among members.
  4. Recognize and Reward Contributions: Acknowledge active members and reward their contributions. This can be done through shout-outs, badges, or exclusive content.
  5. Leverage Data: Use first-party data to understand your members better and tailor your engagement strategies accordingly.

Conclusion

The shift from an audience-centric to a community-focused strategy is imperative for success in today’s attention economy. Viafoura’s digital experience platform provides the tools necessary to make this transition, enabling brands to create engaging, personalized, and data-driven experiences. By fostering a sense of togetherness, establishing rituals, and encouraging ongoing engagement, brands can build loyal communities that drive substantial value.

Welcoming Maine Trust for Local News to the Viafoura Family!

Viafoura is excited to announce our latest collaboration with Maine Trust for Local News. The Maine Trust for Local News is the state’s largest network of independent news and media outlets, which together form an essential part of daily life in Maine. With 158 journalists on staff, we serve audiences through our 5 daily newspapers and 15 hyper-local weekly newspapers, in print and online. We cover what matters to Maine, putting a spotlight on issues of vital importance to our people, community and state. The Maine Trust for Local News is a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, a non-profit committed to conserving and operating vibrant, sustainable local news enterprises across the country.

Led by Matt Fulton, Chief Audience Officer, and Karen Beaudoin, Vice President of Digital Product Development, Maine Trust for Local News has a clear vision: to drive registrations and subscriptions while building vibrant digital communities. They selected Viafoura to achieve these goals, after carefully considering how our solutions aligned with their strategic objectives and operational challenges.

Matt and Karen emphasized their need for a platform that could support engaging community discussions safely while allowing their newsroom to focus on promoting our journalism and digital storytelling. Viafoura’s comprehensive suite of products, including Conversations, Community Chat, AI Content Moderation, and our Analytics Insights, provided the perfect fit. They appreciated the thorough and attentive onboarding process, which ensured a seamless integration.

This partnership is set to redefine the digital experience for their readers, encouraging more active participation and fostering a stronger sense of community.

The team at Maine Trust for Local News expects uplifts in these core areas of focus:

  • Increased registration and known users
  • A more personalized user experience
  • Higher engagement levels
  • Improved subscriber retention

Mark Zohar, Viafoura President & CEO, shares his thoughts on the partnership: “Our collaboration with Maine Trust for Local News is a perfect example of how our solutions can drive meaningful engagement and community building. We are proud to help them achieve their digital growth objectives and enhance the overall experience for their audience.”

We are proud to support Maine Trust for Local News in their mission and look forward to driving innovation and engagement together. Welcome to the Viafoura family, Maine Trust for Local News!

Stay connected with us for more updates on more exciting partnerships & more!

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