Audience Engagement Archives | Page 5 of 10

How to Increase Website Engagement: 5 Ideas Included

As Generation Z and Millennials make increasing contributions to global shopping trends, it only makes sense that they are driving the online shopping revolution. With more than 2 billion people making their purchases online, it’s loud and clear that the web is the place to be for global companies.

However, with the abundance of online products and services, modern companies need to find a way to stand out amongst the thousands of websites. It’s easy for your web platform to fall into obscurity if you aren’t engaging with visitors to your website and converting them to loyal subscribers.

If you’re wondering if optimizing site engagement is necessary when you already have good website traffic, we can assure you that it definitely is! Website engagement is critical since it’s the key to converting visiting traffic into members of your online community.

This article will discuss some fundamental audience engagement concepts and how you can incorporate them into your web platform and foster a growing online presence.

What Is Site Engagement?

Website engagement is the process of building relationships with your customers to create a community around your brand, which you can then interact and participate in to foster trust and brand loyalty . An engaged audience is more likely to continue to use your products and services, and is more likely to share your brand within their communal circles, which helps attract more like-minded people to your site.

You can build relationships with your customers on the site through different methods. Below are some key links between your brand and your customers that have a lot of influence on web engagement.

Content

Web content is the backbone of the material that your community will read over, discuss, comment on, and share. This means it’s vital that you provide content that is interesting, relevant, and as close to what your audience wants as possible. These can be updated on specific programs, new products or services available for your audience, community spotlights, and more.

It’s also important to provide content at a steady, reliable pace, as this is a big part of what makes your audience revisit your website and increases overall web engagement. In addition, this lays the foundation for the establishment of a community within which your users can feel included.

Social-media style features

Social media is popular for a good reason; they utilize several popular functions and tools to foster community engagement. Using social media style features such as likes and follows, comments, community posts, news feeds, and engagement carousels are a great way to get your community involved in your brand and creating a buzz about what you have to offer.

Through use of an online community engagement and management software, you can employ many of the tools we’ve mentioned to increase community engagement. If you’re interested in learning more about these features, check them out here to learn more about how to use them within your own web platform.

Active participation

In addition to providing tools for your audience to engage with your content and their fellow members, it’s also important to note that as a brand, your contributions to the community’s growth are just as important, if not more, than those of your users. Your audience wants to know that you care about their opinions, and that you’re willing to directly engage with them regarding their praise, feedback, complaints, and contributions.

Make sure to assign someone to manage your community and engage with them regularly, if not daily, and regularly go over the audience engagement data to examine what your community has to say about your brand.

Website Engagement Analytics

Now that you understand what web engagement is, you need to know how to process the data you receive from your platform to adjust and modify your engagement strategy.

Some of the metrics that you can check regularly include page views, time on page, bounce rate, pages per session, and new visitors. These can be easily accessible via Google Analytics, and it is strongly recommended and if you’re not already doing so, to utilize this tool to analyze data and make informed decisions on how to continue to promote site engagement.

How To Increase Website Engagement

This section will talk about five effective tips that you can use to increase your site engagement. This is not a comprehensive list, but it will go a long way towards resolving any major complications that are proving to be a roadblock for your web engagement.

Faster page loading

Let’s say you are looking for something on Google. What happens if the page you click on takes a long time to load? Chances are, you are going to bounce back and select another result. This is definitely something you want to avoid; your website should load in two to three seconds as a rule of thumb. If that’s not the case, then you are potentially losing traffic and chances at community growth.

There are numerous ways to improve the loading time of your website, such as image compression, combining files, avoiding redirects and reducing HTTPS requests. Talk to your web designer/programmer to discuss how you can optimize page load speeds to ensure your web traffic successfully reaches your platform.

Simplify your navigation

Your users need to reach any part of your website within two to three clicks to increase web engagement. Therefore, you should create an easy structure for them to navigate; in this regard, many people focus on internal linking. This is how you direct the users from one part of your site to the other. You can do this using images, CTAs, and even navigation links embedded in your content. Make sure that you are linking to other pages on your site in a natural way to provide value for your customers and help them find similar content to what they’re interested in seeing.

Mobile friendly

Today, most web users prefer using mobile devices to browse the web and engage with the web platforms. This means that it is vital that your website be properly optimized for mobile users.

There are several steps to creating a mobile-friendly website, such as format optimization, making navigation easy through the internal linking strategy we explained above, and testing if everything is in order through Google’s mobile-friendly test. Any issues outlined need to be addressed by your web developer.

Adding chatbox

Providing a chatbox service can be a great way for users to get the answers to frequently asked questions and narrow down where they need to be to find content. Using a live chatbox service is a great way to increase audience engagement by having users communicate with your brand’s reps directly through your platform. Having one of these on your site is one of the most powerful website engagement tools.

Guide users

Guiding your users can help your online engagement while achieving conversions at the same time. Here, you will need to use different CTAs (call-to-action) that are persuasive while avoiding direct commands. For instance, instead of a button that says “Buy Now,” use words such as “Subscribe” and “Learn More.” As a result, users are less pressured to decide and won’t feel that they need to commit to your brand right away. This also does wonders for fostering trust and a sense of community because the user feels valued as an individual and not a sales figure. It is key to regularly go over key engagement tool metrics in order to keep up to date with the current state of your sites online engagement.

Study your audience

Your audience are living, breathing people, with their own individual tastes and preferences. There’s a lot of information you can obtain from them when they visit your website, and you can put that information to good use by customizing their experience with you when they return from time to time. Using tools like Google Analytics can be a great way to visualize your audience’s behaviours, and on a personal level, using cookie data to suggest content similar to their previous choices allows for simple personalization that makes it much more likely that they remain engaged with your brand and website.

We hope this has been useful in helping you come up with your own website engagement strategies. We also recommend you check out our webinar on a new approach to engagement and our suite of online community management solutions to learn more about how they can help you construct your virtual community and increase overall site engagement for your organization.

How To Build An Online Community

Businesses face an ever-expanding digital consumer market, and it’s important to adapt to this shift in user preferences and respond with the provision of a well-designed, web-based platform that offers a unique and customized customer experience. The key to success lies in establishing a reliable web presence that inspires trust, loyalty, and a sense of community around your brand, which makes it extremely important to know how to build an online community for yourself.

There are a lot of benefits that come with building an online community; an increased ROI, a base of loyal customers, and a surge in brand awareness. Regardless of the industry, brand, or market sector, well-built virtual platforms that can sustain a growing, engaged community are a tremendous asset to your business and should be highly prioritized within your marketing strategy.

In this article, we’ll go over what an online community is and examples of the various types, how to build an online community, and some of the best practices for when you’ve put together your own.

What is An Online Community

An online community revolves around bringing people together around a specific concept, subject, or purpose. Depending on your organizational goals and the digital platform you choose, your users could share their opinions about a topic, go over educational resources, and even collaborate on projects.

So when you decide to build an online community, the first thing you have to consider is its purpose. To help you sort this out, here are some examples of online communities modeled around specific goals.

Interest-based community

As you might have guessed, these communities form around shared interests, hobbies, or pursuits. These are usually formed around recreational activities, and people in these communities are passionate about its basis. For instance, book clubs, wine tasters, coffee blend aficionados and sports fans are all great examples of this type of community.

Geographic location-based community

It is common to see these communities formed in small neighborhoods or towns. They’re usually built around a sense of neighbourhood, and often involve posting updates on the happenings around the neighbourhood, ranging from information regarding community projects, the best places to eat, and public service announcements.

Profession-based community

Some online communities are dedicated to connecting people that work in the same industries to share tips, solve problems, and find work. These groups share similar experiences in their work life, and their members can understand the unique challenges or circumstances that come with the profession, which can make them particularly well-knit at times.

Learning-based community

These types of communities are very common, and its members are brought together after they subscribe to a course or purchase a membership for an instructional or educational program. Some examples of this include communities built around continuing education courses, language study, and vocational training. These communities benefit from exchanging information, knowledge, and study materials with their peers.

Brand-based community

These types of communities are the most relevant to business, retailers, and media brands looking to engage with their customer audience. They’re specifically built around the user’s shared experiences with a particular brand, and are usually fostered by feelings of satisfaction, loyalty, and pride that are a result of a great customer experience.

How To Create An Online Community?

Now that you’re aware of the benefits of creating an online community and how it can benefit both your brand and your audience, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to build an online community for your brand.

1. Choose the platform and outline your goals

As we mentioned before, the first thing you need to do is determine your brand goals and the purpose of the online community. This will probably align closely with your business goals, and will ultimately shape the way you engage with your audience and increase the appeal of your community.

2. Create guidelines

If you are going to build an online community, then you need to determine a set of rules to regulate the behavior of your members. Remember that you want to avoid any harassment, spam content, and illegal posts, and generally want to create a positive, brand-focused environment that makes your users excited about your content. Make these guidelines clear and readily available, and have systems and tools in place to enforce them when necessary.

3. Set up the community

Review some of the key features needed when figuring out how to create an online community. Ensure all the basics of user personalization are in-place, and make sure the tools your audience has access to for community engagement are functioning as intended. Ensure your content is separated by categories and tags so users can easily find the information they are looking for. Finally, also make sure your sign-in process is clear and bug-free so users can build their identities without issue.

4. Strategic engagement and community growth

A big part of engagement is input from your side as the brand. Engaging with your community by asking questions or proposing topics to discuss offers new sources of discussion, and your presence within the community will show your users that you’re taking an active, forward-facing role in its growth. Use the tools your audience does to promote discourse; like favorable posts, post comments and responses to questions, address complaints promptly and transparently. These are all great ways to develop community trust and growth.

Best Practices When Looking To Build An Online Community:

When it comes to building an online community, there are no shortcuts. Having an audience engagement strategy is the first step towards establishing a meaningful connection with your customers. Below are some of the best practices to keep in mind when creating your strategy for an online community.

Be Personable

The key to building a thriving digital community is by focusing on audience engagement. By nature, human beings want to connect and talk about things that matter to them, such as current events, their interests, or hobbies. Expressing what your organization stands for and infusing your brand’s unique perspective into your content can help connect with audience members who share the same views. This is the first step to building a lasting relationship with the members of your online community. Take the time you need to actively communicate with your audience and participate in the discourse, and you’ll see fantastic results in return.

Get to Know Your Audience

Providing an engaging digital space for your audience to engage and interact in requires both a keen understanding of community essentials as well as web elements and software. If you don’t have either of these, that’s okay!

At Viafoura, we offer an end-to-end platform that can help you engage with your web audience and convert them into members of a community. Our customizable and scalable solutions can help you convert first time visitors and unknown audiences into loyal subscribers. Check out our unique suite of solutions here to learn more about the ways in which online community management and engagement software can help you provide a unique experience for your audience.

Take Advantage of Tools

Building a community online comes with a number of responsibilities that can get daunting if you don’t utilize specialized tools. Connecting your social media tools to your online community platform can also be a challenge.

At Viafoura, we offer an end-to-end platform that can help you engage with your community and convert them into leads. Our customizable and scalable solution can help you uncover loyal subscribers and turn them into your brand’s ambassadors. Check out our unique platform here.

Grupo Clarín Upgrades Its Audience Engagement Solution With Viafoura

In pursuit of a new community-building partner, Grupo Clarín enlists the help of Viafoura to develop a highly active and lucrative digital audience.

TORONTO, ON, Jul. 21, 2021 — Grupo Clarín, the largest media producer in Argentina and one of the top Spanish news brands worldwide, and Viafoura, a leader in audience engagement and content moderation, today announced an ongoing partnership to forge stronger, long-lasting audience relationships. Replacing its previous audience engagement tool, Grupo Clarín is embracing Viafoura to improve user experiences on its website — and ultimately drive registrations and subscriptions.

Before turning to Viafoura, Grupo Clarín did not have an effective way to moderate Spanish conversations on its digital properties. Viafoura’s advanced moderation capabilities allow Grupo Clarin’s main sites clarin.com (News) and ole.com.ar (Sports) to automatically block up to 90% of offensive comments, facilitating positive and productive conversations.

By combining Viafoura’s AI-driven, multilingual moderation services with its social engagement tools, Grupo Clarín is starting to see the quality of on-site discussions improve.

“We were looking for more than a basic commenting platform; we needed a solution that could consistently drive civil engagement and loyalty on-site,” explained Marcelo Rizzi, Chief Technology Officer and Big Data at Grupo Clarín. “We liked how Viafoura could bring an intuitive social experience right to our websites, with real-time engagement features such as likes, shares, personalization and notifications.”

“At the end of the day, we chose Viafoura because of its superior functionality, business model and price,” Rizzi added.

“Viafoura’s Audience Engagement Suite is designed to add value across digital communities, boosting user engagement and brand loyalty,” stated Jesse Moeinifar, Viafoura’s founder and CEO. “With Viafoura, Grupo Clarín can continue to inject new growth opportunities into its business.”

About Viafoura

Viafoura partners with over 600 media brands to engage, convert and monetize their digital audiences. With best-in-class engagement and content moderation solutions — including real-time conversations, live blogs, community chat, personalization tools and AI-powered moderation — Viafoura helps companies create active, civil and loyal online communities. Advanced data analytics also offer customers access to unique and valuable insights into their audience’s behaviors and preferences. As a result, the Viafoura solution drives higher registrations and subscriptions as well as better-targeted content and advertising.

About Grupo Clarín

Grupo Clarín is the largest media company in Argentina and a leading company in printing, publishing, broadcasting and programming markets. Its flagship newspaper — Diario Clarín — is one of the highest circulation newspapers in Latin America. Grupo Clarín is the largest producer of media content in Argentina, including news, sports and entertainment and reaches substantially all segments of the Argentine population in terms of wealth, geography and age.

Clarín actualiza su solución de comentarios con Viafoura para mejorar la experiencia e interacción de sus usuarios

En la búsqueda de un nuevo socio de ‘community-building’, Grupo Clarín contrató los servicios de Viafoura para desarrollar una audiencia digital altamente activa y valiosa.

TORONTO, ON, 21 de julio, 2021 — Grupo Clarín, la empresa de medios más grande de la Argentina y una de las marcas líder de noticias en español a nivel mundial, y Viafoura, compañía líder en interacción de audiencias y moderación de contenido, anunciaron hoy una alianza para crear lazos más fuertes y duraderos con sus usuarios. Reemplazando su herramienta previa de interacción de audiencias, Grupo Clarín se une a Viafoura con el objeto de mejorar la experiencia de los usuarios en sus sitios web, y como consecuencia continuar creciendo en registros y suscripciones.

Antes de contactar a Viafoura, Grupo Clarín no contaba con una manera eficaz de moderar las conversaciones en sus propiedades digitales. Las tecnología de moderación utilizada por Viafoura le permiten ahora a los sitios principales del Grupo Clarin – clarin.com (Noticias) y ole.com.ar (Deportes)- bloquear automáticamente hasta el 90% de los comentarios ofensivos, facilitando de este modo las conversaciones positivas e interesantes.

Al combinar los servicios multilingües impulsados por la inteligencia artificial de Viafoura, con sus herramientas de interacción social, Grupo Clarín confirma cómo la calidad de las conversaciones de sus sitios mejora.

“Estábamos en la búsqueda de algo más que una plataforma básica de comentarios; necesitábamos una solución que pudiese manejar en forma consistente la interacción amable y la fidelidad en el sitio”, explicó Marcelo Rizzi, Chief Technology Officer and Big Data en el Grupo Clarín. “Nos pareció atractivo cómo Viafoura podía aportar una experiencia social intuitiva directamente a nuestros sitios web, con características de interacción en tiempo real, tales como ‘me gusta’, ‘compartir’, ‘personalización’ y ‘notificaciones’.”

“Al final del día, elegimos Viafoura debido a su funcionalidad superior, modelo de negocios y su valor”, agregó Rizzi.

“El paquete de interacción de audiencia de Viafoura está diseñado para agregar valor a las comunidades digitales, promoviendo la interacción de los usuarios y la fidelización del cliente a la marca”, anunció Jesse Moeinifar, fundador y CEO de Viafoura. “Con Viafoura, Grupo Clarín puede continuar inyectando nuevas oportunidades de crecimiento en sus negocios.”

Acerca de Viafoura

Viafoura se encuentra aliada a más de 600 Medios con el fin de interactuar, convertir y monetizar sus audiencias digitales. Contando con las mejores soluciones de interacción y moderación de contenido del mercado, incluyendo conversaciones en tiempo real, blogs en vivo, community chat, herramientas de personalización y moderación impulsadas mediante IA, Viafoura ayuda a las empresas a crear comunidades online leales, amigables y activas. Un análisis de datos avanzado, también ofrece a los clientes acceso a información única y valiosa acerca de los comportamientos y las preferencias de sus audiencias. Como resultado, la solución de Viafoura impulsa un mayor número de registros y suscripciones, así como también ayuda a que la publicidad y el contenido estén mejor dirigidos.

Acerca de Grupo Clarín

Grupo Clarín es la compañía de medios más grande de la Argentina y una empresa líder en los mercados de impresión, publicación, transmisión y programación. Su diario emblemático, el Diario Clarín, es uno de los diarios de mayor alcance en América Latina y llega sustancialmente a todos los segmentos de la población en términos de nivel socio-económico, geografía y edad.

Mastering Live Blogs: Strategies That Drive Positive Results

Spotlight

With the right features and applications, live blogs can help publishers enhance their content strategies.
ClickOnDetroit created a Vaccine Hunter live blog that generated a significant amount of engagement: 50,000 views, over four million impressions and positive user feedback.
The Baltimore Sun’s live sports blog pulled Tweets in from several staff members to attract digital visitors to its site.
The National Post provided a safe, trusted place to share important election information through various post formats.
The Morning Call’s COVID-19 blog featured short updates, which pointed to longer in-depth articles.
The Online News Association hosted a live blog to share key event takeaways for attendees.

Viafoura’s live blog tools trigger increased content consumption, audience satisfaction and brand loyalty.

What kind of content experience will keep consumers informed and engaged online? That’s the million-dollar question that practically every publisher struggles with.

Luckily, media companies have begun to notice that the live blog format can be a dependable way to share critical content and maximize the time audiences spend on publisher properties.

“[2020] reminded publishers how valuable live news, updates and analysis can be to readers,” writes Digiday Senior Editor Max Willens. “The relentless bombardment of big stories gave publishers a fresh chance every month to break down what was going on for readers in areas ranging from public health to politics to sports to business.”

There’s no doubt that live blogs are loaded with perks. You just need to figure out what kind of live blog works best for your organization — and how your editorial team can implement it successfully.

Get some inspiration to enhance your company’s content strategy by checking out some effective live blogs below.

ClickOnDetroit’s Vaccine Hunter Live Blog

When Ken Haddad, a digital content manager for a ClickOnDetroit, realized that thousands of people couldn’t find vaccine appointments, he launched a live blog to help.

Haddad’s Vaccine Hunter-style live blog acted as a single place people could turn to in Michigan for critical vaccine updates and appointment openings.

In addition, essential information was pinned to the top of the live blog to ensure that it stood out to page visitors.

Haddad’s posts also engaged visitors by allowing audience members to upvote, downvote and share updates across platforms to their networks of friends and family.

Since the project’s inception, ClickOnDetroit’s live blog has earned an incredible amount of attention, including over 150,000 views, four million impressions to Haddad’s Twitter account and positive visitor feedback.

The Baltimore Sun’s Live Sports Blog

Many journalists already Tweet regularly to keep their followers updated as newsworthy events and sports games unfold. So why not move that content away from the misinformation and social media trolls and ingest it right onto your company’s digital properties?

That’s precisely what The Baltimore Sun did.

To give audience members real-time commentary and updates on a major football game in early 2021, The Baltimore Sun pulled in Tweets from several staffers into its live blog.

As a result, the media company was able to attract and engage sports fans right on its website in return for ongoing, accurate recaps and content on the game.

National Post’s Election Live Blog

No national election is complete without an overwhelming amount of information and aggressive opinions on social media. And since 80% of people will turn away from news coverage near toxic content, posting live election updates on social media is counterproductive for any media company hoping to build a reputation as a trusted resource.

For these reasons, the National Post ran a live blog to provide audiences with a reliable, safe space to follow the 2019 Canadian election.

The National Post also used Viafoura’s live blogging tool during the election, which gave them the ability to cover the event thoroughly using a combination of updates, social media posts and images.

The Morning Call’s COVID-19 Live Blog

In the spring of 2020, The Morning Call launched a live blog to help Pennsylvanians monitor COVID-19 and related restrictions in their region.

The media company cleverly used the live blog as a way to push readers to longer content pieces. This meant that writers didn’t need to continuously recap old information in new content since all background information could be accessed on the live blog. Plus, they could keep their updates concise, highlighting only vital information.

“The short updates, which can touch on a story from several different perspectives or angles, gives readers a good snapshot of a publisher’s breadth of coverage,” Willens explains.

ONA’s Live Event Blog

With many businesses hosting events to grow revenue or audiences, there’s a tremendous opportunity to engage people before, during and after these events online. And some organizations are now seeing the live blog as an appealing tool to build audience interest around their events.

The Online News Association (ONA), for instance, decided to leverage Viafoura’s live blog to engage attendees during ONA NYC, an event for media professionals.

ONA published noteworthy takeaways from ONA NYC, offering attendees one place to return to for essential highlights and information.

With the support of live blogs, publishers can satisfy audiences, boost content consumption, and encourage visitors to spend more time viewing and relying on their coverage.

If you’re interested in learning about Viafoura’s live blogging tool, you can access a complete list of its features here.

The Independent Selects Viafoura To Foster Civil Discussion Across its Global Brands

The Independent is the latest publisher to replace its legacy commenting solution with Viafoura’s industry-leading suite of engagement tools to gain reader insights, build trust and create a more civil and interactive community

TORONTO, April 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — To support the continued emphasis on civil discourse and journalistic integrity, the leading UK publisher, The Independent, has selected the Viafoura audience engagement solution to build and nurture the reader communities of its premier global news sites, including The Independent, Evening Standard, Indy100 and Independent Español.

Viafoura’s digital experience platform enables publishers to go beyond commenting, and gain insight through actionable first-party data allowing companies to better understand their audiences. The Independent can deliver more personalized content experiences and marketing initiatives through Viafoura’s real-time conversations, live chat, content recommendations and personalized notifications.

The Independent selected Viafoura’s solution because of its ability to integrate the entire content creation and consumption cycle while also fostering civil discourse. The Independent has already seen an increase in civility, fewer articles getting flagged and reduced customer service complaints thanks to Viafoura’s AI-powered moderation service, advanced engagement and first-party data analytics. For example, Viafoura’s AI platform can detect if the term “snowflake” is being used in a benign way — in the context of a discussion of weather — or as an insult in a political discussion.

“We didn’t want to simply replace our old platform with a similar one; we were looking for game-changing technology that could improve reader engagement and provide us with a suite of features to help us build our communities and Viafoura gave us that,” said Jo Holdaway, Chief Data & Marketing Officer at The Independent. “By integrating the key moderation features with human interactions from launch, we are able to provide our journalists and community members a safe space where they can share their insight and opinions. The next phases of the roll-out will be based on the solid foundation of positive conversations.”

The Independent identified a need to own its visitor experience and other solutions were not able to integrate that experience across its platform like Viafoura. Publishers are quickly realizing that it is imperative to own their platforms and data so that they can provide a better and more personalized user experience.

“Viafoura lets publishers put reader engagement at the forefront of the relationship,” Viafoura CEO Jesse Moeinifar said. “For a news organization like The Independent, which has built its reputation on decades of quality and thorough journalism, having a platform that streamlines the cycle of discourse is crucial. Whether it is AI-powered moderation or delivering a truly customized experience through first-party data integration, publishers are able to utilize Viafoura to further the relationship between information source and the communities they serve.”

The Independent joins other major publishers such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Graham Media and Reach PLC who can engage their communities and deliver better content through actionable insights. To improve your community’s experience, please visit viafoura.com.

About Viafoura

About The Independent

The Independent has been at the frontline of journalism since its launch in 1986, with its mission to challenge and debate always ahead of its time. It is Britain’s biggest quality digital news brand and top 10 in the US. Publishing from 12 countries and in six languages The Independent is a truly global news organisation. Since The Independent became the UK’s first digital-only national newspaper in 2016, the brand continues to invest in and deliver high quality and trusted journalism while building out its data-driven products, services, audiences, and international presence.

Civilize & Monetize: How to Highlight Constructive vs. Toxic Comments

Spotlight:

A moderation strategy keeps your digital spaces safe, but should also include how to drive positive conversations
Positive, active communities are lucrative for publishers
1. 80% of all user registrations are triggered on pages that feature onsite engagement tools and user-generated content.
2. Registered users spend 225% more time-consuming media content per week.*
  1. *Viafoura study data collected Jan 2019 – May 2019, sampled 14 unique media brands, sampled 85M unique non-registered and 2.5M registered users
Help spark the conversation, pose thoughtful questions
Highlight positive community members, not only does it encourage more engagement, it shows the kind of engagement you’re looking for
Community guidelines must be clear and easily accessible to your community

Online social spaces exist to build value for your community members, generating engagement and loyalty toward your brand. And these tools are most effective when media organizations support them with the right strategies that maximize user activity.

A moderation strategy, for example, is necessary for businesses to keep their digital social spaces civil. But media companies must go beyond reducing offensive comments and trolls in their social spaces to facilitate ideal behavior from audience members.

“Just as it’s important to have a strategy in place to protect the quality of your on-site social spaces, it’s also crucial to have a strategy to drive positive conversation around your content,” says Leigh Adams, director of moderation solutions at Viafoura.

In other words, if you want to drive positive behavior from your community members, you’ll need to take action by encouraging users to participate in meaningful, on-topic discussions.

The Value of Activating Productive Discussion

In the digital world, active communities are incredibly lucrative for media companies.

You can draw on your users’ engagement and behavioral data to personalize their experience and increase your website or app’s appeal to advertisers. Plus, you can assess what people post about to determine the types of content that will resonate the most with your online community.

Keep in mind that digital conversation tools also connect people together, forming long-lasting relationships that are tied to your brand.

But you can’t assume that people will become active, model community members unless they understand what kind of discussions and behaviors are expected of them.

Media organizations that take the time to outline and promote what positive behavior looks like for their communities will be well-positioned to grow attention levels, memberships and various revenue streams.

“The most thriving and profitable online communities are often the ones where positive behavior is encouraged, demonstrated and rewarded by the community host,” Adams explains. “No matter how intuitive and engaging your moderation tools are, you need to develop a battle plan if you want to activate your community effectively.”

Ultimately, media organizations can take a few simple steps to ensure their communities are overflowing with activity:

Pose Questions for Users To Answer

If you want to increase activity from your digital community, you can spark discussions and debates by showcasing thought-provoking questions.

“One of the best ways to keep discussions in your commenting section buzzing and on-topic is to give your readers a prompt through a question that relates to your content,” Adams states. “Not everyone will understand how you want them to behave if you don’t give them some level of guidance to follow.”

Consider highlighting questions for community members at the bottom of your content piece. Or, you can pin them as posts within your commenting widget.

Interacting with your community members, even by just getting a conversation started, will give users the direction they need to post comments that are on-topic and positive.

Reward and Highlight Model Behavior

Your community members play a significant role in the success of your business. So how are you taking the time to reward your most active users?

“By rewarding commenters for positive and productive contributions, you’re incentivizing your most loyal supporters to continue participating in your digital community,” says Adams.

There are several ways you can show readers that you appreciate good behavior.

You can give top contributors badges based on their participation levels, pin their comments to the top of your commenting widget, invite them to help you moderate live events and send them an email to thank them.

Set Up Clear, Accessible Community Guidelines

Your community guidelines essentially act as a blueprint for acceptable and positive behavior on your website or app.

According to Adams, you should be direct in your community guidelines — tell your audience exactly what’s expected of their behavior on your digital properties. That includes outlining what kind of behavior isn’t appropriate.

Adams suggests “your guidelines should make it clear that comments that appear legally objectionable or [encourage/condone] a criminal offense or any form of violence or harassment, will NOT be tolerated.”

Crafting clear community guidelines posted in an easy-to-access spot on your digital property will pave the way for acceptable behavior and positive conversations.

Media organizations must implement strategies to outline, reward, highlight and facilitate positive behavior in their online communities. By doing so, companies can benefit from a closely connected, active and growing audience that can be monetized continuously.

For more information on how to build positive behavior in your community, view a list of community-building best practices here.

Why Every Media Company Needs an Audience-First Business Strategy

Growth — every media company strives to achieve it. And yet, many business strategies are unsuccessful in driving continuous, long-term growth.

So what kind of growth tactics are the most worthwhile and effective for media companies?

It’s quickly becoming clear that organizations that position their audiences at the center of their growth strategies set themselves up for ongoing success and stability.

As a writer for Columbia Journalism Review put it, there’s a “need for better media structures — in which readers are no longer audiences, but partners in the work.”

This means that organizations must do more than deliver content and products that align with their brands. Instead, it’s essential for media companies to prioritize their audiences and work with them to create engaging content, products and experiences that support and represent their digital visitors.

Explore the following text to find out why audience-first business strategies are necessary if you want your organization to survive and grow within the industry.

The Connection Between Reader Revenue and Sustainable Revenue

In the past, the media industry was mainly fueled by advertising revenue. But when the pandemic caused marketers to slash advertising budgets and block ads near specific keywords, the world saw that advertising revenue couldn’t sustain organizations on its own.

Now, publishers need to unlock new revenue sources that they can control, completely free from third-party organizations.

That’s where reader revenue comes in.

By monetizing readers directly on their digital properties, media companies can break free of their dependence on third parties, like advertisers and social media, and become self-sustaining.

“Reader revenue directly supporting your business is something that you have control over and can continue to grow,” says Amalie Nash, SVP of local news and audience development at Gannett.

As organizations engage and nurture their digital audiences — on their own terms — they can increase loyal followers who are willing to pay and keep paying for premium content and experiences. In other words, these dedicated, paying subscribers provide a robust and stable source of revenue.

Funke Mediengruppe, a German media organization, also notes that one digital subscriber brings in 11 times more revenue than a person who reads free, ad-supported content.

Embracing an audience-first business strategy allows media organizations to earn and maximize sustainable revenue.

People Will Support Brands They Care About

When you put your audience at the center of your business growth plan, you can transform ordinary website visitors into engaged, paying brand advocates.

That was the case for Zetland, a Danish publishing company that established strong relationships with its visitors and encouraged them to become loyal brand ambassadors.

Through an ambassador campaign, digital community members were asked to support the brand by finding new members to join Zetland’s community. Zetland brought in thousands of new paying members by the end of the campaign, with 346 consumers participating as active ambassadors.

In this scenario, Zetland formed an effective business strategy by highlighting the value its organization offered to digital visitors before asking for support.

You can deliver additional value to your own visitors through on-site, engaging experiences and trusted content. As a result, ordinary visitors can become so much more than paying community members: They’ll become fans of your brand who actively want to help grow your company’s digital community.

Erin O’Mara, president of The Nation, explains that “an engaged community is really meaningful, not just the way they interact… but also how they can be ambassadors.”

Extracting Actionable Data From a Connected, Engaged Audience

No growth strategy is complete in the media industry without a plan to collect audience data and draw useful insights to inform business decisions. These data insights can personalize on-site experiences to attract and captivate visitors continuously.

With two-thirds of consumers willing to give up their private details for personalized, convenient services, media organizations can tap into a wealth of knowledge about potential and existing community members.

You can also use your visitor data to run targeted, high-performing advertisements right on your digital properties.

At the end of the day, there’s no need to guess what kinds of content and experiences will win over your audience. Not when you can find out directly from their data.

Your audience has the power to help your business thrive, regardless of anything that may be disrupting the industry. You simply need a data-informed, audience-first business strategy to transform visitors into engaged community members loyal to your brand.

How Media Companies Around the World Are Succeeding

Over the past few months, media organizations have had to endure one challenge after another. Some companies are now struggling to compensate for declining print and ad revenues sparked by these challenges. Meanwhile, others have exceeded their revenue targets and continue to position themselves for growth by adapting to the evolving markets.

After surveying 25 industry executives, an advisory firm exposed how media professionals are persevering by embracing change and innovation.

“All [survey respondents] are innovating with new business lines and new served markets,” says Tony Silber, president of a content and marketing company. “From digital products to virtual events, from research and data to lead generation and subscription boxes, there’s a lot going on.”

Many players across the media landscape are succeeding. So why not learn from what others have already done right and apply those best practices to your business?

We’ve laid out some profitable strategies below that have helped organizations all over the world grow and succeed.

Spain — El Pais and Building Audience Relationships

For many industry professionals, the paywall is an art form that must be tested, tweaked and mastered over time. However, El Pais, a Spanish news media company, quickly earned over 90,000 digital subscribers not even a year after launching its paywall.

The organization was able to spark rapid subscriber growth by strengthening its relationship with each website visitor before sending out paywall messages.

By leveraging a metered paywall, El Pais gave users access to 10 articles each month so they could sample content and understand why it would be worth paying for.

Forming a relationship with digital visitors before asking them to pay helped El Pais prove the value of its subscription program to visitors.

The U.K. — Future PLC and First-Party Data

In 2020 alone, Future boosted its revenue by 65% compared to the previous year. One of the reasons the company has flourished to such an extent is because it has tailored its business strategies based on its audience’s behaviors and interests using first-party data.

According to the chief executive of Future, Zillah Byng-Thorne, “Future has continued to thrive by knowing what our audiences value most, enabling us to take advantage of the changing market landscape to continue to deliver incredible content to our communities in whatever way meets their needs.”

By personalizing user experiences around its brand and its advertisers, Future is at an advantage against competitors and is well-prepared for the loss of third-party cookies.

Bangladesh — The Daily Star and Audience Engagement

When COVID-19 initially forced people into isolation back in 2020, The Daily Star, a Bangladesh media company, launched a campaign that earned itself a medal for engaging its audience. The digital campaign aimed to thoroughly engage people and connect isolated individuals through a microsite, where they could share stories and interact together.

While this campaign was temporary, media companies that have integrated audience engagement into their sites have seen tremendous growth across user registrations and retention.

Viafoura data scientists have even found that engagement tools drive 30% to 50% of user registrations. They’ve also discovered how engaged users spend three times longer on-site than unengaged users.

In a world where in-person human interaction is limited, digital social tools help companies build meaningful connections to visitors and positive experiences worth sticking around for.

The U.S. — The New York Times and Diversifying Revenue Streams

The New York Times made headlines earlier this year after it announced that its digital revenue has finally surpassed its print revenue. The media company has thrived amid the pandemic by investing in several different revenue streams, producing over 7.5 million paying subscribers.

“Consumer revenue streams, including digital subscriptions and ticketed live events, are increasingly important to news organizations as reliance on traditional advertising revenues continues to decrease,” states Angelica Irizarry, who directs live events at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

For The New York Times, it was necessary to go beyond advertising to become self-sustaining. That meant pivoting to prioritize subscription-based revenue, powered by a variety of revenue-generating products, including its digital news content, online events as well as cooking and game apps.

New Zealand — Stuff and Audience Ownership

Stuff, a New Zealand-based news company, completely abandoned Facebook in 2020. You may be questioning why Stuff would leave Facebook when it could interact with followers and reach new audiences on the platform. But there was a method to Stuff’s madness.

From the ban on news in Australia and data leaks to hoards of trolls, misinformation and bots, social media doesn’t have the greatest track record with publishers or the public. Stuff’s mission became to build direct relationships with its audience, away from the negative and unpredictable influences on Facebook.

Not only did the New Zealand company maintain its traffic after abandoning Facebook, but it’s also established a reputation for itself as a resource for trusted content.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism highlights how Stuff has “benefited from huge public support, growth in trust, and happier newsroom staff who are no longer being trolled.”

Organizations around the world all have to deal with different policies, economies and events. However, surviving as a self-sustaining business and continuing to grow are universal goals that media companies have in common.

Understanding what other organizations have done successfully to achieve these goals can help to refine and perfect your own business’ growth strategies.