Tag: Audience Engagement

Behind the Data: 78% Of Consumers Give Their Loyalty To Brands That Treat Them as Individuals

It’s very easy for publishers to lose sight of the fact that the readers who consume the content they produce are, in fact, individuals. As much as publishers want to profile their readers and establish common themes or pain points that resonate with their collective tastes and interests, it’s important never to lose sight of the fact that each reader is his or her own individual.

Publishers can’t allow themselves to lose sight of those facts while collecting audience data in an effort to stimulate audience-growth strategies. Everyone wants to feel like they’re valued, and that a publisher offers a user experience that’s unique to their specific preferences. A reader who feels valued and appreciated through personalized content recommendations is far more likely to become brand loyal, which is the pathway to earning subscription revenue from loyal readers.

Majorities of readers reward brands that earn their loyalty

Here are some helpful facts to paint a clearer picture. According to the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index, as many as 78% of consumers admit to having a favorite brand because that brand rewards them for their loyalty. This could be expressed in the form of discounted subscription rates, or a free month of access to premium content.

Additionally, 74% of those same consumers prefer brands that treat them as individuals. It further validates the point that every person has unique tastes and preferences. When a reader visits a website to engage with new content, they want to believe that the content was created specifically for them. They want to feel as if the entire user experience is built to appeal to their unique interests.

Readers provide plenty of incentive for publishers to earn their loyalty. Over 70% of readers say their favorite brand is a business that strives to build a relationship with them. Another 64% say their favorite brand rewards their loyalty with surprise benefits, and 58% cite their favorite brand as the one that treats them like a VIP.

Everyone wants to feel like they’re special. Publishers that know how to create those feelings among their readers earn that invaluable brand loyalty.

First-party data shines a light on how to personalize content

Here’s the truth: 90% of readers respond positively to personalized experiences. As publishers, it’s essential to speak to individual readers using messaging that appeals to their interests. It’s through this approach that publishers show the humanity behind their brand identities, effectively communicating as one individual to another.

First-party data is how to create that personalized engagement and boost reader loyalty. First-party data enables publishers to learn specific details about individual buyers and monitor any change in those behaviors over time. Publishers use these insights to build rich audience profiles to develop behavioral patterns of their most avid readers.

A data-driven content strategy prioritizes personalization

Using these audience profiles, content creators produce highly personalized content across the entire website. Audience segmentation is one of the building blocks of a content strategy that’s informed by behavioral data.

Once you begin segmenting your readers, you can go a step further and analyze where in the subscription journey different types of readers happen to fall. Segment readers between new visitors, known readers, and subscribed loyalists to build richer details of how people respond to your content.

Using an audience insights solution, all of this data can be pulled into a dashboard that your creative team can review at their convenience. Creators can review the journeys taken by current subscribers to understand what types of content converted them into brand loyal readers. With those insights in hand, a data-driven content strategy can flourish and ultimately guide more readers to cross that threshold into the realm of becoming loyal subscribers.

Profile readers, build loyalty, boost subscriptions

Rich audience profiles tell creators how individual readers will respond to freshly created content. Using those insights, your creative team can double down on creating the types of stories that foster greater reader engagement. By relying on first-party data to direct the content strategy, you successfully create those personalized experiences that foster reader loyalty.

As data-driven content strategies develop over time, it’s important to never lose sight of the fact that the audiences that you depend on for first-party data, helpful insights, and subscription revenue are all made up of individuals. Individual readers have their own tastes and preferences, but it’s incumbent on publishers to learn about those interests so that readers are incentivized to provide more first-party data or, as they become fully brand loyal, subscription revenue.

Loyalty Plays: The Next Era Of Retention

There’s an old saying in marketing that “it costs more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one.” Some studies have shown it can cost up to five times more to focus solely on customer acquisition at the disservice of customer retention.

Publishers who focus solely on registration and pumping out as much content as possible often neglect relationships with existing readers. By taking stock of current relationships and finding new ways to reward subscribed readers for brand loyalty, publishers are far more likely to improve customer retention rates.

Don’t devalue retention: it’s more profitable than you know

There’s money to be made in retention, even with a slight move of the needle in the right direction. According to a Harvard Business School study, improving customer retention rates by as little as 5% can improve profitability by 25%. In some cases, profits can rise up to 95%.

Those findings are similar to research conducted by Gartner, which determined that 80% of business profits come from 20% of existing customers. Additionally, the success rate of converting an existing reader into a paying subscriber ranges between a 60% to 70% success rate. Conversely, the success rate of converting a new reader into a subscriber ranges between 5% and 20%.

The bottom line is that there’s plenty of value to be found in reader retention. Publishers just need the right approach and the right resources to engage with existing readers to convert them into brand loyal subscribers.

Personalization fosters loyalty and retention

Communicating with your existing readers using personalized content experiences is the best way to earn reader loyalty. What and how you communicate with your readers makes all the difference between retaining their business and losing their interest.

For example, if you were to publish generic content week after week, it’s hard for readers to see the value in the experience. Instead, the audience sentiment will be that you’re just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. The content loses all of your brand’s personality that first resonated with readers, increasing the likelihood that they churn and never return to your site.

On the other hand, personalized content that appeals to specific reader interests is far more engaging to your audience. By demonstrating that your creative team understands their readers, and chooses to publish content that adds greater value to their experience with your website, you have a winning formula to improve retention rates and, hopefully, subscription rates.

Collect first-party data to gain those audience insights

One of the best ways to boost audience engagement and increase the value that readers experience from your publication is to encourage their engagement with your community. Encourage your authors to add the first comment to freshly produced content in an effort to kickstart a conversation with your readers. Encourage your audience to post their thoughts and use a commenting moderation tool to analyze the sentiment shared by your readers.

As more comments are submitted, you automatically build a wealth of first-party data that you can leverage to gain more insight into your reader tastes and preferences. You can pick up on things like what themes within the content people react towards, and you can measure the preference for one type of author over another.

Once you collect enough first-party data to really understand your audience, you can revamp your content strategy into a data-driven initiative. Focus the subject matter of your content around the themes, topics, and interests that your data informs you is what matters most to your readers. Show your avid community that you listen to their responses by producing more of the content they’ve indicated is what they want. This is how you build a loyal following that is likely to provide customer lifetime value for years to come.

Incentivize readers to act with special recognitions

To encourage further debate around your content, you can assign badges to comments that generate responses from other readers. Show your most valuable readers and/or subscribers that you recognize their contributions to the discussion, proving to them that they’re considered VIPs among your reading audience. Earn that reader loyalty and reap the fruits of those labors!

La Voz del Interior is driving enhanced engagement experiences and improved subscription volumes with Viafoura’s solutions

La Voz del Interior is a daily Spanish language newspaper edited and published in Córdoba, Argentina. La Voz is the leading daily in Córdoba, and one of the most significant in Argentina outside of Buenos Aires.

La Voz is focused on providing its readers with an exceptional, personalized experience while also increasing their subscription volumes.  With Viafoura’s Conversations, Live Blogs, Community Chat, and Moderation solutions, La Voz will be able to drive engagement across its audience while collecting significant volumes of first party data – enabling personalization and deep reader insight.

“The goal is to use the data to deliver content in line with each reader’s preferences” said Alan Porcel, Digital Platforms.  But, it’s not just about personalization for La Voz, says Lisandro Guzman, General Editor and Multiplatform Chief: “We want to create a robust community of readers who contribute their point of view, engage in lively but civil conversations, and interact with our editorial team. We are excited to move forward and we know that with a growing, engaged community, and the data insights we’ll have, we will be driving readers through the funnel into subscriptions more easily.”

“We’re excited to welcome another LATAM publication into the Viafoura customer community,” said Dalia Vainer, Director, Customer Experience. “We know that access to first-party data is a top priority for the folks at La Voz del Interior, and can’t wait to see how the team leverages the data supplied by Viafoura to drive business strategy.”

HotNewHipHop focuses on showcasing artists and driving audience engagement with Viafoura

HotNewHipHop (HNHH) is an online publication that covers daily news about hip hop and pop culture, including streetwear, sports, and sneakers. In addition to its editorial news content, HotNewHipHop also produces original features and many video series. The site has been nominated multiple times for the BET Hip Hop Awards in the category, “The best Hip Hop Platform.”

HNHH empowers artists by letting them showcase their music to real hip hop fans while its members enjoy the latest and hottest in hip hop singles, mixtapes, videos and news. Saro Derbedrossian, CEO says that “HotNewHipHop is partnering with Viafoura so we can focus on providing our highly engaged community with a platform for lively discussions and civilized discourse, while also driving registrations and unlocking first party data. Our members will get an unparalleled personalized experience that will ensure they register, keep coming back and spend more time on our site.”

With the use of Viafoura’s full suite of services and features including Conversations, Custom Badging, AMA, Engagement Starter, and  Automated Moderation,  HotNewHipHop’s users will be able to build their identity on the HNHH platform. Whether it’s through sharing their opinions on the latest news, rating songs or album releases, the opportunities for registered users are endless.

“We’re very excited to partner with HotNewHipHop to bring a new layer of engagement and civility to their site,” says Dalia Vainer,  Director of Customer Success. With their eclectic, unique and highly-engaged community, we’re looking forward to unlocking brand new first party data to feed back to their editorial, product and commercial teams! We’re also very proud to welcome another Canadian customer to our collective!”

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.

Community-Focused Tools And Tactics To Hit KPI and ROI Goals

This was originally posted on INMA.

If your current Digital Experience Platform(DXP) isn’t serving your community, or rather, is not enabling your organization to serve, sustain, and expand your community, then it’s not worth your money. 

Furthermore, if you are fortunate enough to be host to a community, particularly one that enjoys engaging with and discovering the realm of their interests that you’ve created, you’re sitting on a gold mine of growth potential and first party data. 

It’s no secret that an active, non-toxic community is a powerful driver of audience growth, but in order to make the most of community driven conversion opportunities there are some preparatory measures that can be taken. 

Community Foundation

Before we begin honing in on the inner-workings of your community, take stock of the tools and strategies you currently have in place and assess whether or not they are providing a worthwhile ROI. Some questions to ask as you set about this task are:

Infrastructure and Discoverability

Does your site’s architecture drive visitors intuitively to where the community is at its best, or are there a number of barriers in their way? 

Consider where on their journey users are confronted with a sign-up form of some sort. Then, evaluate if there’s greater potential for conversion by giving them a bit of free reign to see the value you have to offer elsewhere. Giving unregistered users enough access to see but not join on-site discussions or special events like a live Ask-Me-Anything community chat could be just the kind of content that is worth their time and, subsequently, their registered first-party data. 

Does your current comment interface and strategy help or hinder engagement?

Providing users with the means to easily jump into the comments section and join discussions is an effective way to improve engagement. Recently, Viafoura partnered up with News-Press & Gazette Co. (NPG) to help them over-haul their prior approach to comment sections that relied on manual approval, resulting in endless queues of user contributions stuck in limbo. After integrating Viafoura’s Automated Moderation onto their platform, NPG saw a drastic improvement in their overall engagement as well as the complete reactivation of previously stagnant communities across a number of their sites.

Community Health

Have you and your teams taken measures to ensure that when new visitors arrive they’re greeted by a wholesome and inviting community? 

If some of the first things visitors see are comments and discussions rife with vitriol and toxicity, they won’t stay long – if at all. In order to keep the peace and foster a welcoming space for newcomers, it’s imperative that you provide clear and concise community guidelines. These guidelines will assist in the preservation of your community’s well being by giving its members and your moderation teams consistent parameters to follow while reinforcing your brand values and interests while doing so. 

In order to scale down some of the more taxing and meticulous moderation tasks (profanity, hate speech etc.), adopting an Intelligent Moderation Engine is a turn-key solution for immediate deflection of toxicity. 

Create a Playground of Engagement

Plainly: creating an engaging and discoverable user experience (UX) will invigorate your audience. As publishers, there is an obvious responsibility to provide your readers with high-quality content that stands out in the vast and highly saturated digital media landscape. More specifically, as digital publishers, the journey that users go on as they experience your site and its content is just as important.

A digital media platform that gives its users a range of capabilities to engage – be it through exploration, discovery, or community – is guaranteed a far higher chance of earning consistent growth in registrations, longer time spent on-site, and an increasingly concise understanding of their audience’s behaviour and interests. All of which can contribute to an improvement in ad-revenue by providing you with the data necessary to prove the worth of your premium ad space to potential partners.

Topic and Author Follows

Topic and Author following capabilities are highly engaging points of conversion and excellent data collection avenues. By tracking what content and which authors are being followed via built in analytics, editorial and content strategies can be adjusted to meet the evident interests being shown in the declarative data that comes from these community specific actions.

In terms of engagement, users who follow particular authors or topics also have a far higher propensity for return visits because of the notifications they’ll receive when more content tied to what they follow is published.

Conclusion

In this digital age where an extensive and engaging digital experience platform is paramount to the success and longevity of digital media organizations, taking the time to create rewarding and enjoyable experiences for your audience communities is the least we can do. With the right tools and approach to a community focused growth strategy, publishers will make short work of achieving their ROIs and surpassing previous KPI goals.

Top Revenue Diversification Streams For Publishers

At the root of every digital publication is an inherent goal to educate, interest, and engage with the intended audience. By providing relevant and informative content to the end users, publishers create thoughtful and fulfilling relationships with their readers. A consistent stream of high quality content motivates readers to return to the site and continue to consume the content.

The cycle repeats itself until the reader develops an affinity for the publishing brand. Visiting the website for the latest updates on the news of the day becomes part of a daily habit. As that habit becomes a growing need, those same readers become brand loyal users. These are the people with the highest potential to become paying subscribers for your top quality content.

All of that is well and good for building a loyal audience of passionate and engaged readers. But how do you monetize those efforts, and how can you introduce new revenue streams to scale growth higher and faster while maintaining publication standards and providing quality journalism? That’s what we’re going to discuss here.

Challenges for revenue-driven publication leaders

Increasing revenue requires a proactive push for subscriptions and a delivery of highly targeted ad inserts as part of an affiliate marketing program. The good news is that, according to Pew Research Center, 86% of American citizens get their news through a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

More importantly, over half of respondents said they prefer consuming content through these devices as opposed to TV, radio, or podcasts. This means there does remain a sizable audience to monetize from through revenue diversification strategies.

The bad news is that, as polarization deepens throughout the population, the amount of trust in journalism has waned. This is a particularly growing problem for US publishers.

According to a study published by Statista, United States citizens rank lowest on a list of 40 countries whose residents say they trust the media. Only 26% of surveyed Americans say they trust the news media. By contrast, 37% of neighboring Mexicans say they trust the media, while 42% of neighboring Canadians admit they trust their news sources.

All of these insights emphasize why there’s such a strong need for a high quality content strategy. Aligning content production to the tastes and interests of the intended audience is essential to boost onsite engagement. That’s what allows you to run affiliate marketing campaigns with select partners.

Examples of revenue diversification channels

As a business model, it’s always critical to live by the adage “never put all of your eggs in one basket.” The more you can diversify means of generating revenue, the less likely you are to falter if one of those channels stops performing at the level that your business needs. When it comes to revenue diversification strategies, knowing how to utilize each of the channels available to grow your brand is vital to scaling new growth.

So what are some of the channels available for your revenue diversification strategy? Here’s a quick breakdown of each and how best to use them to your advantage.

Subscription models: win them over with quality

This is probably the most straightforward revenue generating model for publications. By convincing more of your reading audience to pay for access to your top shelf content, you’re earning direct value out of each posted story across your publication.

Many readers actively want to add their own opinions to a published piece of content. If you gate access to the comments section and the community behind it, you incentivize those readers to become paying customers.

In exchange, they gain the means to participate in lively discussions with other engaged readers. It’s a two way relationship that benefits the reader and your publication. You just need to guide people to that decision by doubling down on high quality content that increases their propensity to respond.

E-commerce strategies: target the right offers to the right people

It goes without saying that data is essential for any digital experience to become a successful venture. However, the type of data makes all the difference between publications that have something to sell to their e-commerce affiliates and those that don’t.

First-party data has become the backbone of any e-commerce engagement strategy. It’s by using first-party data that targeted shopping experiences are provided to the audience. This type of data allows you to build highly informative audience profiles in which you can segment your readers by their interests and what types of content best capture their attention.

By curating these profiles, you can coordinate with your e-commerce affiliates to create relevant shopping experiences for the intended audiences. Align the offers to the reader’s passions, which you can determine based on the content they consume. This is how you improve the user experience and make some extra money through your affiliates.

Affiliate links: personalize ad inserts for maximum effectiveness

This is a very similar approach to your e-commerce strategy. Using first-party data and the profiles you create from it, your affiliates can customize the ad inserts they promote to specific types of readers on your site.

Customization and personalization are the best ways to generate views, clicks, and engagement from targeted advertising. Show your affiliates details about the end audience so that they can create highly curated messaging, images, videos, and other forms of content to connect with the audience. If done successfully, they should see a healthy return for their efforts.

Flexible commercial models: putting it together

Imagine if you could give your affiliate partners the ability to form a trusted partnership built around reliable, audience-driven, first-party data. How much more valuable would a relationship with your publication be to those affiliates as opposed to a standard commercial revenue vendor type relationship that other publishers will offer? There’s no question: you gain a significant competitive advantage by offering a commercial revenue partnership.

The first-party data you possess and the audience profiles you build allow affiliates to send out promotions that will earn engagement. People end up coming to your site and the site of your affiliates. It’s more scalable, more flexible, and more beneficial for everyone involved.

Conclusion

With an analytical approach to the data available to you, a definitive goal, and an audience-first content strategy, the right revenue growth tactics will become increasingly evident. Keep in mind that each of the above approaches, while uniquely effective, may not align with your brand and its interests – which is OK! Carefully curate strategies that are in alignment with your brand’s overarching POV and they will in turn effectively serve the long term goals of your organization and contribute to the growth of your audience and, subsequently, your revenue.

New Study Finds Publisher-Posted First Comment Steers Engaging Conversation

Audience engagement managers know that a healthy comment section is a core component to building a healthy online community. With contentious political debates happening with greater frequency and more people turning to the internet to vent frustration, maintaining a civil yet lively  comment section has become more important than ever.

Thankfully, one simple technique can help publishers and moderators guide conversations with increased peace of mind. According to a new study from Viafoura, media outlets see a significant increase in traffic, civility and engagement when publishers post the first comment.

Posting the first comment has long been a technique used by social media managers and influencers in order to control the tone of the conversation and create engagement. The first comment operates as an ‘ice-breaker’ and helps set the standard for the conversation. It also invites responses from readers, which can increase time spent on site and enhance brand loyalty.


What happens when publishers post first? 

The study took place between September 28th and December 15th 2021 in 15 newsrooms across Canada covering a diverse selection of geographical regions and various ends of the political spectrum. Each newsroom posted the first comment on a number of articles across their publications, within the first hour of the articles going live. This test group was then compared to a baseline group in order to provide context to the results. 

One element of the study that differed from platform to platform was the type of comment posted beneath the article. Tactics varied from newsroom to newsroom. Some editors offered users assistance, responding to particular points in the article or answering questions. Others asked specific, directed, questions about readers’ response to the article. Writers had the freedom to bring their voice and creativity to the comment section!

Over the course of the study, Viafoura collected data on volume of comments, time spent commenting and conversion before and after engagement – three crucial metrics used  to evaluate the success of an online community space. 


Posting first means increased engagement, conversion & peace of mind

The study found that activity increased dramatically across all metrics, with a 45% increase in time in comments, 380% increase in total average comments and a 347% increase in average likes. This drastic increase indicates that controlling the first comment sets a tone and leads to more civil discourse. 

With a standard set of behavior in place, moderation needs decreased. While the baseline group was required to flag 6.8% of posts and disable 9.1% of users, the test group saw significantly reduced numbers, with 4.8% flagged and 7.4% disabled. Simply by modeling good behavior, publishers reduced the number of community guideline violations and user bans. 

Perhaps the most surprising result was the significant increase in registrations. 

Previous research has shown that almost 50% of members end up removing themselves from a platform when exposed to trolling. In contrast, when publishers posted the first comment, each article saw a 55% increase in registrations, with a 9% increase in users who attempted to interact with commenting before signing up.

The positive impact didn’t stop at conversion. Viafoura also saw a 21% increase in users who interacted with commenting after signup. This indicates that users participated in the discourse, felt positive enough to register, and then continued to feel engaged and loyal past the point of conversion. 

This data supports the notion that posting the first comment can be a significant step in reaching target conversion goals. When publishers interact directly with their community, they help maintain a sense of safety and attention that can lead to a direct increase in engagement.
 

What can we conclude?

Strong customer loyalty is essential for the wellness and longevity of any online brand. Simple moderation tricks can be the difference between a contentious online conversation and a  thriving online community. 

By setting the tone for conversation, publishers can direct content, invite polite discourse and even tailor their engagement to suit the needs and interests of their target audience. In each case, first comments have proven to be an essential step in the process of protecting and growing digital communities. 

Overcoming News Avoidance And Winning Back Your Audience

If nothing else, one positive element that emerged from the pandemic is a renewed focus on mental health and wellness. From one week to the next, people worldwide became shut-ins whether they wanted to or not. They were forced to sit at home and, after burning through all that Netflix had to offer, think. Think, reflect, and become aware of their mental health in ways that had perhaps been easier to avoid in the before times. 

With this time for reflection, it’s no wonder people began to notice the correlation between their moods and mental health and the non-stop emotional rollercoaster of the news cycle throughout the pandemic. In one sitting viewers would be subject to an inspiring video of Italians singing from their balconies in quarantine, followed by horrifying stories of people trapped in their homes with deceased loved ones – all while a chiron at the bottom of the screen provided an ever-updating death counter. 

While the news cycle is not known for being a constant source of uplifting content, the pandemic brought to light the impact that bad news has on our mental well being. It’s no wonder that new audience behaviors emerged. Ones that, to the detriment of publishers everywhere, would have us sooner look away and avoid the news than tune in to have our days ruined by yet another article about the latest existential threat. 

Mental health effect on news avoidance trends

News avoidance: the active or intentional resistance or rejection of news. 

Though still in the early days of this new behaviour, studies have indicated that people the world over have become more selective of the content they consume. It is a means of mitigating the negative feelings that come hand in hand with a news cycle that seems to skew ever more negative, concerning, and depressing.

In the early days of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Nielsen, publishers tracked a 60% increase in news content consumption, globally. What were the headlines during that period? Stories related to the pandemic, as well as political crises occurring around the world, with more than a few notable mentions belonging to the United States.

As time went on and the headlines became ever more tragic, an overwhelming sense of burnout amongst audiences was being fueled by the news. In an annual Reuters survey of over 90,000 participants in 46 different markets, it was found that 43% of people said the non-stop barrage of COVID-19 or political news triggered their decisions to embrace selective news avoidance. Additionally, 36% of those same respondents said their moods were negatively affected by all the predominantly depressing nature of the news cycle.

Publishers have since then have found themselves in an impossible position: report honestly on the grim nature of our world’s current events and suffer decreased views, report sensationally and lose credibility, or report on benign topics like celebrity divorces and scandals to keep people entertained but uninformed?

Negativity crushes trust, increasing news avoidance

Not only a tricky situation for editorial and content teams, news avoidance has also made it difficult to build communities of passionate and engaged followers. It’s even more difficult when the news itself is deemed untrustworthy by misguided or misinformed consumers. The United States, in particular, has to grip with this growing trend. Only one quarter of US respondents say they trust their nation’s news media.

Audiences will always have thoughts and opinions, particularly when it comes to larger than life concepts like the spread of a pandemic or an insurrection to overthrow democracy. It’s natural to want to share those thoughts and open up a discussion about those ideas, something that the comment section of an article is quite literally made for.

However, nearly one out of five respondents to the Reuters study said they skew towards news avoidance because sharing their opinions lead to arguments they’d rather avoid. This goes right to the heart of the challenge that publishers face as they attempt to come up with solutions for their waning engagement and subscription rates. If people don’t feel comfortable expressing their viewpoints, not only will they avoid engaging in open discourse around enticing subject matter, it’s likely that they will avoid the content altogether.

How to overcome news avoidance and win over audiences

So what can publishers do to overcome news avoidance and build thriving communities of passionate readers? Answer: an audience-first, data informed growth strategy.

By putting the interests of your audience first, creating content that aligns with your orgnizations values, and the goals of your editorial and publishing teams – you’re in good shape to start diminishing the risk of news avoidance. If you’re able to position yourself as a publisher who delivers high-quality content and makes space for community and healthy discourse, you’re on track to winning back your audience and gaining access to valuable first-party data that will further inform your efforts.

Behavioural insights are essential in the current digital publishing landscape. That data can be difficult to acquire without an analytics team, but turn-key solutions do exist.

Shadow banning against community violators

Platforms built by moderators to help other moderators maintain a positive community are available to you and your teams.

One valuable tool for community moderation is time-based shadow banning. These “timeouts” can be handed out to people who frequently disobey community guidelines and spread toxicity. 

Labeling comments can help reinforce those guidelines further, highlighting ones that are aligned with guidelines, ones that are veering off topic with more random postings, and even flagged as outright attacks on authors or other community members. Through careful and considerate moderation you’ll be better able to promote cooperative and respectful dialogue among readers. By making the space for discussion safer, you’ve created an inviting opportunity to potential users who may have been avoiding your content as a means of dodging unwanted conflict and toxicity.

IP lookups to restrict or block suspected trolls

Publishers, obviously, need to grow their audiences to stay afloat. A healthy, sizeable viewership is essential to revenue, data informed learning opportunities, and not to mention extremely appealing to advertisers and affiliates eager to spend money to connect with those readers.

Unfortunately, if trolls or extremists harass other community members to the point of pushing them towards news avoidance, the quality of the viewership is greatly diminished. Quantity is not better than quality, even when views and shares are important metrics to help boost subscriptions.

Instead, you can use platforms with built-in IP address lookup capabilities to find these bad actors and moderate their posts so they can no longer disrupt the rest of the community. This will also help you avoid inadvertently violating publishing guidelines of your affiliates and risk losing vital business, which was a hard lesson learned by the people of Parler following January 6.

Moderate conversations, live events, community chats, and reviews

Finally, use your moderation console to encourage healthy dialogue across all digital streams affiliated with your publication. This can include conversations in the comments section of an article to interactions among live events and community chats. You can even influence the tone of ratings and reviews about your publication to stop misleading negativity from spreading.

The console plugs directly into each of these forums, allowing your entire editorial team to work out of the same space and enforce consistent guidelines across each outlet. Not only will this increase the efficiency and productivity of your team, but you’ll set a standard for your audience about what kind of community they can expect from your publication. This is how you set the stage to build trust and authenticity, two absolutely necessary traits to grow your audience.

While the world is ever-changing and readers adjust the way they consume content, publishers need to be mindful of how to create spaces that can be informative, safe and encouraging for their readers.

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