Engagement Archives | Page 3 of 15

After The Build: How To Realize ROI On Your CMS

Selecting the right content management system (CMS) for your business is vital to support your storytelling and community development initiatives. Having the right CMS influences the entire content strategy for a business, which is how to build a brand loyal community that supports revenue objectives.

According to the Content Marketing Institute Insights for 2022, only 26% of B2C marketers rate their content marketing efforts as very or extremely successful. That’s a big drop from 2021 when over one third rated their efforts as handily paying off.

What caused the massive dropoff? Marketers, and publishers, need to demonstrate ROI from posting content on their CMS platform, and many just don’t know how to do that.

Break down conversion rates into segmented touchpoints

One of the challenges in proving ROI on your CMS is that executives at the top of the business are most persuaded by revenue numbers. All they want to know is how much revenue did a story help generate.

It’s a necessary mindset for the sake of the business, but it’s a very hard metric to use when evaluating content marketing and publishing. While 61% of B2C publishers admit to measuring content marketing ROI, the savviest publishers measure the share of conversation attributed to particular stories.

They use metrics like website traffic, audience engagement, pages per viewing session, and paywall conversion rates to identify top performing posts. They’ll also monitor comments, discussions, and UGC content in threads or forums attached to published stories.

Content creators need to know why they’re writing a story

A great piece of content is educational, by nature. But it should also plant a subconscious seed in the mind of the reader for them to want more. The story should be so insightful and so thought provoking that readers feel an inherent need to get more information from your CMS.

Creating content that appeals to different segments of readers is the top creative challenge cited by 42% of all content creators. Audience data evaluates what readers think about existing content, providing a roadmap for what stories to focus on next. When you align creators with audience intent, you lay the foundation for a winning CMS content strategy.

First-party data is the best way to profile your readers

To get your creative team on the same page as your reading audience, they need to know what the audience cares about. This is how the power of first-party data can prove the ROI of your CMS content strategy.

First-party data is how you profile your audience and learn to understand what matters most to them. Aligning creators and the goal of the user experience is how to build a loyal network of highly engaged readers and subscribers. In fact, highly engaged subscribers have a 50% retention rate by the second month of the subscription. That means half of your subscriber base is brand loyal by month two, provided you speak the right language to them.

Use the right audience insights platform to profile readers

When you have the right data, your entire creative team is aligned on how to connect with the audience. This means that new content will support that ubiquitously important “share of conversation” in a positive manner by boosting traffic, pageviews, time on site and, most importantly, paywall conversions.

Audience insights tools like Viafoura help your publication make strategic decisions with content. You’ll be able to track audience engagement and plug those analytics directly into your CMS console. By creating a central pillar of truth, you can acquire the first-party data necessary to convert more readers into subscribers, and identify new ways to boost revenue for the business.

Embrace the art of data visualization for simplified analysis

Data visualization describes how companies use charts and graphs to visualize information. In 2017, the global data visualization market was valued at over $4.5 billion dollars. By 2023, it’s forecast to exceed $7.7 billion.

When people think of data visualization, the first thing that comes to mind is publishing a chart of insights to make it easy for the reading audience to understand. In this case, apply those same data visualization concepts to your internal content creation team.

In order to get your creators to think like your reading audience, make it easy for them to understand the data points. Using audience insight tools like Viafoura, centralize your findings within the existing analytics of your CMS. From here, you can produce graphs that track the flow of traffic growth, engagement rates, and paywall conversions for your creators to visually digest.

Turned internally, data visualization is a great way to educate your internal team on what content is deemed most valuable by the reading audience. Once you profile the big winners in your content library, your entire team knows what to double down on to support the revenue strategy for the business. With your entire team on the same page, you have the winning formula to prove ROI from your CMS content strategy!

How UGC Contributors Boost Retention And Registrations

There’s an old marketing rule of thumb that successful companies emulate. It costs 5x more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Companies that heavily invest in retention strategies increase the customer lifetime value (CLTV) of their customers, which translates into heavy cost savings as it requires less money to be spent on net new acquisition campaigns.

In the digital publishing industry, the model is very similar. Some studies suggest that converting unknown readers into new subscribers generates, on average, between a 5% to 20% success rate. On the other hand, converting registered or known users into subscribers is far more effective with success stories in a range of 60% to 70%.

How to build audiences: foster fast-paced communities

When you have communities of engaged readers, you’re more likely to create a lively forum. People love to express their opinions on a topic, especially if an argument has been so articulately laid out by a subject matter expert in a written article. A healthy commenting platform allows readers to share their own thoughts on the subject and open up a lively debate.

These UGC contributors demonstrate their affinity for your content by leaving their comments and engaging in lively discussions with other readers. This shows an active willingness on their part to increase their CLTV for your business.

On top of that, your UGC contributors can actively help you attract new readers at no additional cost. According to AdWeek, nearly half of millennials and over 35% of baby boomers trust UGC content over branded content. This means your commenting section can be one of your top acquisition channels. You just need to invest in a solid retention strategy to get your active UGC contributors to engage with the content.

Use first-party data to profile your most avid commenters

First-party data is fully consented data. At a time when consumer privacy is paramount and third-party cookies will be eliminated, first-party data has become the most valuable resource to help publishers gain a deeper understanding of their most avid consumers.

If a user creates an account on your site to read or comment on your content, that action is an example of first-party data. Each action that user takes from that point onward is a first-party data touchpoint that you can use to build a rich audience profile. Using a first-party data strategy, you can gain consent from audiences to:

Send more personalized notifications to your active readers
Develop segmented audience experiences based on user preferences
Boost community engagement by monitoring audience behavioral metrics
Deploy data-informed push notifications to increase engagement with premium content

Deploy content recommendation modules to boost audience engagement

Once you have data-driven audience profiles, you can start personalizing the experience on your website. Using your first-party data, you can identify common themes, topics, writers, keywords, and other commonalities that motivate your UGC contributors to leave a comment.

With those insights in hand, use your content recommendation modules to tailor the articles that appear for those users. Studies have shown that personalized content recommendations will boost paywall impression rates by at least 10% and conversion rates by 30%. You can motivate more readers to go beyond the paywall so that they can post their own thoughts and engage in healthy discussions with like-minded participants.

Encouraging UGC commenting and healthy discussions is a growth strategy that can prove to be very effective. The Independent, one of the world’s leading publications, used this exact commenting and conversion-based experience strategy. Over the course of 12 months, the Independent was able to add 2,000 new website registrations with comments.

Grow your community and encourage real-time conversation

As you profile highly engaged users, you can use your automated moderation tools to create a healthy digital community for your UGC contributors. Automated moderation tools are designed to keep communities engaged, prevent toxic or harassing comments, and reward meaningful contributors with special labels to elevate their status on the forum.

Creating a safe and healthy community for discussion is essential to boosting audience engagement. Studies have shown that 4 out of 10 news comment readers refuse to publish their own thoughts or opinions due to toxic or argumentative communities.

Remember that nearly half of all millennials and over one third of baby boomers trust UGC contributors over branded content. Audience engagement and UGC contributions are essential to create that vibrant community and encourage new readers to register their own rights to comment on your content.

If you’re not creating a healthy community to facilitate lively UGC discussions, you don’t have an effective retention and engagement strategy. And without an audience retention and engagement strategy, you can’t rely on your commenting section to help grow your business. Ultimately, you’re leaving a viable path for growth untouched on the table.

Funnel Functionality: Maximize Conversions From The Top Down

It’s a publisher’s dream to view the analytics on recently published content, especially when the data shows a healthy volume of pageviews and reader engagement. The data validates that the topic was a strategic win for your publication as it brings readers onto your website where you can monetize their interest in your content.

One of the challenges that publishers can run into is reader retainment. The initial influx of traffic is great for morale, but it’s hard to maintain that positive outlook if bounce rates are high and pages per session are low.

Hope can still be preserved in these situations. By creating a vibrant community of passionately engaged readers, you lay the groundwork to guide more people through your subscription funnel. When you have enough readers willfully contributing their own comments to topical discussions, they’re more engaged in your site experience. This is the key to earning that customer loyalty.

Featured Comments From The Journalists Kick Off Lively Discussions

PostMedia is a media conglomerate with multiple publishing sites. They implemented what was known as the first comment initiative, a plan that incentivized content creators to leave the first comment on their published stories. It was an initiative implemented across 15 publications, and it worked like a charm. Over the span of three months, PostMedia reported a 380% increase in total average comments, and a 55% increase in registrations per news article.

An editorial commenting strategy kickstarts the debate around the published topic, which incentivizes more readers to participate. Over 60% of news commenters or comment readers prefer when journalists participate in community discussions. By inspiring your own creators to open the doors to commenting and community participation, you can convert more passive readers into active commenters.

This is a great way to build vibrant community forums that inspire more readers to share their thoughts and opinions about the content. You want more readers to think this way because each instance of participation is a valuable piece of first-party data that you can leverage. You’ll learn about your readers’ interests and passions, which you can use to engage with them again in the future. Use those insights to personalize future content experiences so that you guide them further down the funnel towards becoming a paying subscriber.

Featured Comments Seamlessly Increase User Registrations

Sportsnet is the leading sports media brand in Canada and, like PostMedia, they saw an opportunity to guide readers through the funnel using the comments section on posted content. Traditionally, Sportsnet posts included a “load comments” button that readers would have to click to open the comments section.

The Sportsnet team suspected this button was disrupting the reader experience and discouraging engagement. As a pilot program, Sportsnet removed the button and replaced it with the top featured user comments that had the most reader engagement. Using Viafoura’s audience engagement solution, the test results showed a 262% increase in the number of comments from readers, and an 80% increase in time spent on page by those commenters.

Most importantly, Sportsnet was able to insert registration forms for readers to participate in community discussions. This resulted in a 14% increase in registrations per million pageviews, a massive ROI for their efforts. Registered users have a conversion rate that’s 45 times higher than non-registered users, making this a crucial piece of the subscription revenue model.

Use Insights From Existing Commenters To Guide More Readers Through The Funnel

Once users are registered, you can categorize them as “known” readers. This means you have enough first-party data from their engagement with your website to build rich audience profiles.

You can look at comments left on existing content to gain a better understanding of reader tastes, preferences, and sensibilities. You can also work backwards from those comments and identify what pages registered users viewed that ultimately led them to engage with a particular piece of content. Using an audience insights tool, you can determine how much time registered users spend on pages, how many pages they viewed, and other key pieces of data.

With these profiles, you now have a clearer understanding of what inspires readers to register so they can participate in community discussions. Now, you can use those insights to feed your content recommendation modules, and create highly personalized experiences for new readers.

Make sure you show featured comments on each new article so more new readers feel inspired to add their own opinion to the discussion. This is how you can guide more qualified readers to journey through the funnel on your website towards the path of registration.

How To Prepare For Your Next Live Event Success Story

When it comes to holding live events, a seamless user experience is paramount. People have come to your platform to engage with its content, event coverage, and to interact with like-minded members of the community. If there are barriers to discoverability, technological hoops to jump through, and endless points of friction after their arrival – visitors will look elsewhere and take with them their potential contributions to your organization’s growth.

In the wake of your first big live event, an assessment of your user engagement and registration rates leading up to, during, and after the big day will help you gather valuable insights. That said, if this is your first rodeo, what can be done to set your platform up for success without prior experience or concrete data? What can an audience-first strategy do to drive a frictionless user experience?

Don’t let a lack of data determine the success of your first big live event. There are steps you can take to ensure gains in positive engagement and registration rates. Those gains will come hand in hand with abundant data and audience insights essential for when optimizing your strategy for next time.

Everyone wins when a live event succeeds

International events like the World Cup are incredible opportunities for platforms ready to make their live event debut. Something like the World Cup gives companies a chance to be the platform that connects audiences to valuable content like live venue coverage, events being held around the world that are World Cup related, and exciting discourse with the sports community. It’s imperative to keep the ‘live’ in live events; create a space where visitors can connect and share, comment on plays made by the world’s superstars, and experience the thrill of watching the World Cup with fellow fans in real time.

Assuming your live event attendance is good and your audience is engaged, satisfied, and happy to register in exchange for the value of the experience you’ve prepared for them, the rewards to your preparation will be immediately evident.

Interactions = Insights: Live events are an excellent opportunity to acquire first-party data and gain insight into the tastes, preferences, and sentiments of visitors. Those insights can then be used to hone your audience-first strategy and optimize the content you put out thereafter.

Reusable: when the event comes to a close, consider keeping it up for a while. If it was a successful event, there’s a good chance it could continue to be a valuable entry point for future or returning visitors. Work the landing page into your overarching experience and motivate more people to embark on deeper journeys into your site.

Consistency earns brand loyalty

Maintaining consistency in the look, feel, and tone of your platform is an important conversion point on its own. Consistency gives way to familiarity and taps into the same user tastes, preferences, and sentiments you should be catering to based on the insights you’ve gathered from their data.

Consistent user experiences are prime examples of how to convert more event attendees into loyal subscribers. The average conversion rate from live event attendees is 12.6%, and over one third of organizations convert users at rates higher than the average.

The purpose of live events is to leverage a time-sensitive, traffic heavy, and topical event in order to convert as many visitors to registered users and reward the loyalty of existing core users. It is, in the truest sense of the term, a value exchange moment. By providing users with the opportunity to engage with a special event they care about with as little friction as possible, your brand stands to earn the trust of users and become recognized as a provider of an experience worth their time and interest, not to mention something they see as worth sharing within their networks and beyond.

Tech solutions for live event first-timers

The right technology can bring all of these ideas to fruition. Digital community experience platforms power highly engaging live event experiences that dramatically increase engagement, page views, and registrations throughout the event. These platforms often also provide assistance with conversion strategies that earn more brand loyal users over time.

The Second Screen Experience

The multi-screen experience isn’t new. For many, scrolling on their phone has become an essential part of watching television – live events or not. Who among us hasn’t googled ‘Is Zendaya a nepotism baby?’. It’s second nature at this point, and an excellent behaviour to consider when optimizing your approach to engagement. People need to be able to watch and interact with content at once.

When planning your upcoming live event, make sure that your platform facilitates a valuable second-screen experience. Give users the freedom to engage through your website or app; let them comment on big moments, interact with fellow attendees, and ask questions of expert speakers or panellists. This is one of the best ways to immerse people within the live event experience and earn their brand loyalty and trust in you as a content provider that understands them.

Live Blogging

Not everyone has time to pay attention to a live event in its entirety. Regular day to day busy schedules aside, some events may be occurring in different time zones and over hours, days, or weeks in some cases. Leaving this consideration out of your pre-event planning would be a disservice to its potential for success.

A platform with a built-in live blogging feature is an excellent way to provide folks the chance to enjoy the event without scheduling conflicts or inflicting FOMO on potential visitors. People can focus on the tasks they need to complete and use their second screens to follow along with minute to minute updates posted to the live blog. If they get a moment, they can comment on one of the updates and start a conversation with other members of the community.

AI Moderation

Not everyone is comfortable expressing their feelings or opinions. Those concerns are stronger on the web where trolls can easily attack or demonize other event attendees. If people don’t feel comfortable, they may stay silent or worse – leave. They miss out on the experience you’ve spent so much time preparing for them, and you miss out on valuable first-party data insights.

A platform that incorporates a moderation engine into its framework is a fantastic first line of defence. These AI moderation tools can enforce and maintain community guidelines in the absence of a 24 hour team of moderators. Any language deemed inappropriate is flagged and removed from the comments section, helping others feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings without fear of being cyber attacked by bullies or trolls.

Preparation is everything

All of these strategies, digital experience platforms, and live event engagement styles are at your disposal. Each one (or a mix) is capable of helping you launch a successful live event. That said, it’s imperative to keep in mind that your approach to live events must be aligned with your organization, the rest of your content and communications, and the company’s values as well as those of its loyal subscribers.

Beyond that, another important consideration when planning live events is ‘will this be worth their time and does it show them we are focused on their interests and preferences?’. A well planned and timely live event has the potential to reinvigorate a waning publication, it’s simply a matter of preparing your platform to win over the eager masses headed your way with a valuable and rewarding experience.

Improving the value exchange: How to encourage users to give up their data

The majority of media companies know that having an abundance of user data at their fingertips will allow their businesses to flourish. In fact, publishers need rich user data to understand their audience members, keep people’s attention focused on their brands and grow their subscription and advertising revenue streams.

But recent research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism highlights that news companies are struggling to collect people’s information online. More specifically, the study outlines how 32% of people worldwide don’t trust news media companies to handle their data.

And since user data is critical to the success of your organization, you’ll need to convince them to provide their personal information by becoming registered users.

Luckily, persuading your media company’s audience to hand over their user data doesn’t have to be a complicated process. All you need to do is adjust your data strategy while reinforcing the value of becoming a registered user.

Personalize experiences for registered users with first-party data

With so many competing media brands and online services, publishers need to go beyond their content to convince users that it’s worth taking the time to register on their websites or apps.

One simple way to build up your company’s registration value proposition is to offer personalized user experiences.

Research from McKinsey & Company even reveals that 71% of people actually want companies to personalize their relationships with users.

In the past, media organizations have turned to third-party data to power custom experiences. But since Chrome is now phasing out third-party cookies, media companies need to find other ways to collect data for their personalization tools.

Instead, organizations can persuade users to register and subscribe to their websites in return for personalized experiences using their first-party data.

“[Subscription] services need to employ strategies that build loyalty, provide added value, and offer personalization to compete in the global marketplace,” says Rande Price, VP of research at Digital Content Next.

And offering users personalization — whether that be through notifications, email campaigns or content recommendations — can give them the push they need to hand over their data.

The importance of owning your user data

It feels like tech giants have a new data breach or scandal around irresponsible data handling every year.

For this reason, it’s critical for media companies to operate independently of tech giants. The reality is that Big Tech companies lose the trust of their users with every data scandal — so how can you expect your audience to trust you if you’re relying on a tech giant to gather and access their data?

One of the easiest ways to earn the trust of online audiences is to ensure your organization has complete ownership over its user data. This means moving the focus away from third-party data and toward the first-party data collected directly on your own digital properties.

“Registration from a user means ‘I trust you’ and ‘I also trust you with my data,’” states Jo Holdaway, ESI Media’s chief data and marketing officer. “You have to be very respectful to your audience to get them to come back.”

When your media company owns all of its user data, your organization can reassure audience members that it isn’t associated with data leaks and scandals from other companies. You’ll also be able to communicate that your organization handles data responsibly since it would only collect and store information that users consent to hand over once they register.

Swap engagement opportunities on-site for registration data

Although personalization and data integrity are effective tools in winning over user data, there’s still another way to persuade anonymous audiences to submit their personal information.

Media organizations can enhance their ability to earn registration data by offering interactive digital experiences just for registered users.

According to Viafoura data, implementing audience engagement tools in even the most basic way can make up 30-50% of user registrations on publisher websites.

The bottom line is that people want to engage with each other, content and authors on your company’s website. Giving users opportunities to interact on-site in return for their data will, therefore, encourage them to become registered, known users.

Ultimately, each of these registration-boosting strategies has the power to encourage users to give up their data. Even so, it’s important to use a combination of all three methods to maximize the value of your registration proposition and earn the best business results.

What is a value exchange moment?

Publishing in the digital age, not unlike advertising, has become a conversation between audiences and content providers. A conversation that’s full of opportunities to form substantial and lasting relationships, that is – as long as both sides stand to benefit from a value exchange. Through entertainment, information and fostering a sense of community, it’s up to publishers to give audiences something worthwhile for what they have to offer as digital individuals: unique, rich, first party data.

If publishers are able to create interest, garner engagement, and earn subscriptions and all the first party data that comes with them, they gain a huge advantage. Continued access to first party data will inform improvements to their audience development strategy and usher in new growth; growth in their following and subscriber base and inevitably a marked boost to ad and subscription revenues.

However, digital savvy consumers are hyper focused on protecting their privacy by knowing exactly who’s collecting their data and what it’s being used for. Just recently, fast food chain Tim Hortons came under fire for collecting data without proper consent. Users will typically agree to provide personal data only if they believe it’s worth what they get in exchange. This decision is what we refer to as a value exchange moment, a point in time where the end user decides if what they receive is worth their trust and, of course, their personal information.

While the value a publisher may traditionally provide is content, more and more we are seeing that community has become a huge draw for prospective subscribers. For example, a user who regularly engages with a publisher’s content has a higher propensity to become an active member of the publisher’s community by registering or subscribing. The social perks may vary, but a more nuanced value point is the sense of reassurance a trusted community gives to newcomers. When faced with a group of folks who share interests and values, all of whom consent to share their data with the publisher, anonymous but engaged users are likely to feel at ease when it comes to sharing their information. As publishers, it’s essential to provide high quality content to draw in leads, but the value of a thriving community to prospective subscribers is just as valuable when seamlessly guiding users toward registered and subscribed states.

Once anonymous users have been drawn in by interest-rich content and/or community, they agree to a value exchange and join the ranks of subscribers. With access to their audience’s first party data (e.g. how much time they spend on site, which pages they view, how they engage with sponsored content, etc.), publishers gain a far better understanding of their audience as individuals and cohorts alike. With this data, publishers need only keep their audience growth strategies and first party data strategies up to date in order to keep optimizing their content and retain registered users while continuing to recruit new subscribers.

Once immersed in the community, formerly anonymous but active engaged users become user generated content (UGC) contributors – another value point for prospects on the outside looking in. These contributors comment often and create posts of their own within the community, typically generating over 41 times more pageviews and 100 times the amount of ad impressions compared to anonymous users. As the numbers demonstrate in the funnel above, engagement improves exponentially as users move further along the registration process. By retaining user interest and engagement, publishers not only get closer to the value exchange moment that earns them subscriptions, but they also reap the rewards of substantial growth in impressions as their audience members move further along the funnel’s stages.

Publishers who understand that the potential to maximize their registration, retention, and revenue lies directly in this value exchange moment are on track to setting themselves up for success. So long as users – anonymous, engaged, or fully subscribed – are benefiting from a continued value exchange for their information, publishers can continuously use that self-replenishing well of information to improve their offerings and win big in both audience loyalty and business growth.

Skip The Toll: How To Deal With Tech Savvy Trolls

It’s the year 2022 and people now turn to devices for human connection. The internet has never been more social and with that constantly growing traffic comes a bounty of wonderful moments of connection… And an all time high population of trolls.Internet trolling is defined as ‘malicious online behavior’ characterized by aggressive or deliberate provocation of others. While this behavior may (debatably) be cathartic for the person trolling communities in anonymity, their presence significantly deteriorates the health and safety of a digital space, and thus its usability.

Publishers big and small suffer equally at the hands of trolls. They’re tech savvy, almost always anonymous, and with an abundance of time on their hands to spread toxicity, they’re a force to be reckoned with. What’s worse? They’re here to stay.

In lieu of surrendering, here are a few troll tactics to look out for and what you can do to skip the toll and protect your peace.

Multiple Accounts

Trolls are obsessive, petulant and persistent. If you’re suddenly up against a horde of trolls, keep in mind it may just be one person, on a mission, using many accounts. Trolls have the time and the tech to overwhelm spaces, dodge bans, and sully the hard earned good vibes of your community. How do I solve it? – Once you’re familiar with a troll’s behaviour, you can spot them in the wild (disguised as a new user) as they start fights or encourage incendiary opinions. These repeat offenders leave hints that point to their identity. Armed with your community tools and data, look out for similar names, emails, avatars, or IP addresses linked to existing bans. Check, confirm and then ban them as many times as it takes.

Hate Speech and Vulgarity

Trolls need attention and offensive language is an easy way to get it. In 2019, approximately a third of the posts that Viafoura moderators came across contained hate speech and/or vulgarity. That’s almost 83 million attempts at being nasty for no reason, so we can at least give trolls credit for being dedicated to their craft… But not good credit, to be sure. How do I solve it? – A ‘banned-word list’ can help limit this particular tactic but some trolls may use a tactic called ‘masking’. Trolls will mask banned words with symbols, vertical spelling, periods, etc. to throw off a simple banned-word list. If you’re not sure what to look for, trust – 0nce u se.e 1t, y0u c4n’t uns33 1t. A more sophisticated, natural language processing AI, like Viafoura’s, can spot masked words and block them with over 90% accuracy.

Bonus tip: Many service providers claim to have AI or automatic moderation, but don’t actually leverage natural language processing or machine learning to understand variations of words and sentence structures. Check in with your moderation provider to make sure your tool can learn as moderators approve or block comments, further training the algorithm, which should be customized to your guidelines.

Serial Flagging

User to user moderation can be a valuable safety tool but it also has the potential for abuse. Some trolls will use the ‘flagging’ feature to silence or frustrate innocent users. In some cases, the serial flagging may even result in an unfair ban for people that have not violated any guidelines. If a user flags often and most of the content they flag does not violate community guidelines, you may have a troll on your hands.How do I solve it? – Use your data and work with your community. Consider this incentive to be involved with your community and get to know who your positive contributors are. Asking trusted users for their insights and experiences with the suspected troll will help you recognize false-flag reporters on the spot.

Dealing with trolls isn’t always easy and it’s never a fun experience. Unfortunately, they are here to stay and if left unchecked they can turn your digital space into a tumultuous community rife with conflict – definitely not something you want associated with your brand. By equipping ourselves with the proper knowledge, tools and awareness, we can keep trolls at bay and use those same moderating methods to prevent toxic user behaviour from developing even without trolls fuelling the flames.

To learn more about Viafoura’s suite of moderation tools visit https://viafoura.com/content-moderation/.

Are You Getting The Best Value Out Of Your Engagement Tools?

If you’ve invested in an audience engagement solution, you’re probably well aware of how important the data you collect from the platform will be for the future performance of your business. Insights into how your existing users engage with content and the community built around it allows you to optimise your strategy. An optimised content strategy means you’ll produce more content that should drive additional users to convert into loyal subscribers.

Making those strategic decisions requires the right platform so that you can collect those insights. You need a solution that helps you collect first-party data and analyse on-site user behaviour. With that data in hand, you can effectively maximise the 3Rs:

Registrations
Retention
Revenue

So how do you ensure you’re getting the best value out of your engagement tools? Our latest infographic offers a helpful visual guide on what you need from your platform and how it can help achieve your overarching business goals.

The right audience engagement platform should provide strategic recommendations that you can use to help grow the nature of your business. The technology should help you answer the questions of how to grow registrations, retain existing users, and increase revenue as the end benefit for all of your hard work.

Your team should find daily value from their audience engagement platform. They should not only know how to use the platform, but they should also understand why there’s so much value to be gained from these solutions. You’ll know the platform is a success if your team:

Feels motivated to use the platform every day
Increases productivity across the entire spectrum of your business
Understands how each of the core features helps solve the underlying business needs
Has the desire to collaborate with other departments and gain the deepest understanding of user intent and behavioural insights

If answers to any of these questions are anything short of yes, it might be time to ask yourself a much harder question: do you have the right audience engagement solution? Remember that audience engagement is the first step towards monetisation and greater revenue for your business. Without a platform that can help you gain the necessary insights to make effective revenue-driven decisions, you will likely struggle to achieve those aspirational growth targets.

Why media companies need to act as community hubs in times of crisis

When a global emergency strikes, panic, dread and hopelessness can quickly settle in throughout the world, worsening the quality of life for entire populations. And lately, it seems as though people have had to face one never-ending crisis after another.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs forecasts that 274 million people will need humanitarian aid and protection in 2022 alone.

What many media companies don’t realize is that they have the power to help some of these people in times of crisis. In fact, media companies can offer significant support to populations simply by acting as online hubs for communities to gather during an emergency or tragedy.

Why the importance of community intensifies during a crisis

During stable times, online communities bring like-minded people together, encouraging meaningful connections to form between active members, which grows loyalty toward the host brand.

Meanwhile, the value of hosting a safe online community in a crisis goes far beyond growing brand loyalty — giving audiences access to a tight-knit community can reverse declining mental health and support them in their time of need.

“[If] community members let their feelings of fear, anxiety, confusion, and dread grow unchecked during a crisis, they will most likely begin to feel hopeless or helpless… [causing them to] be less motivated and less able to take actions that could help themselves,” writes the CDC in a crisis and emergency risk communication manual. “Helping the public feel empowered and in control of at least some parts of their lives may… reduce fear.”

So by providing people with a safe space to join an active community, your organization can allow people to feel more in control and confident during a chaotic period. Here’s why:

Offering stability in a world of constant change

From global warming disasters to the war in Ukraine, economic, social and ecological conditions worldwide are unstable.

Online communities encourage members to check in on their conversations regularly, giving people a sense of routine or stability.

“Routines can create a positive level of stress that keeps us focused and may avoid some of the depression that many people may experience as a result of… isolation, fear and uncertainty,” explains Ramon Solhkhah, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

Ultimately, chatting with fellow community members frequently can help to give life meaning, make people feel more productive and improve mental health in a time of uncertainty and fear. Any media company can deliver this type of experience to audiences simply by giving people access to safe community social spaces.

Shaping safe online spaces for sharing thoughts and opinions

Media organizations that give people safe digital spaces to meet and talk empower users to share their voices, thoughts and opinions around whatever crisis is at hand. This can help spark social change and heal traumatized or struggling community members.

According to a series of researchers around the world, “[online] communities (OCs) offer the ground for breeding activism as they provide opportunities for individuals who regardless of their location voluntarily form a social aggregation through an online platform for sharing interests, knowledge and experiences.”

Unfortunately, thanks to the rise of trolls and misinformation, social media platforms don’t guarantee safe conditions for these positive, shared social experiences. After all, over 25% of people will avoid joining a discussion if toxicity is present.

Connecting people to a source of reliable information

Between political extremists and Russian troll farms publishing propaganda across the web, it can be challenging for humans to determine fact from fiction in a crisis. At least it is without a reliable news source.

And with 56% of Americans concerned that journalists consciously publish misinformation or exaggerations, publishers must work to connect people to accurate content.

One major benefit of hosting an online community on a media company’s website or app is that its credible content becomes central to that community. More specifically, audience members will gradually form connections around accurate information — which can save lives by keeping people informed throughout a crisis.

Plus, community hubs allow people to discuss and debate the true actions of governments and come up with potential solutions to global emergencies or challenges.

It’s only natural to want to assist others in an emergency — and by bringing people together online, your media company can give people an outlet for support during challenging times. Not only will this enable you to deliver essential information to loyal audiences, but it will also show them that they aren’t alone, reinforcing their resilience in the face of any crisis.