Tag: conversations

Fighting for time and attention: A glimpse into The Independent’s successful audience engagement strategy

The Independent has recently experienced quite a lot of success in growing its registered user base and engaging its audience with appealing digital experiences. 

At WAN-IFRA’s Virtual World News Media Congress 2021, The Independent’s head of registered audience, Philippa Jenkins, and Viafoura’s president and COO, Mark Zohar, gave attendees a snapshot of the media company’s audience engagement strategy. Here are some highlights.

Why users spent 15x more time on-site after registering to The Independent

As Jenkins mentioned during the conference, audience engagement sparks greater economic value. The Independent, for example, found that its registered website users spent about 15 times more time on-site than anonymous visitors. This additional time that registered users spend exploring and interacting around the brand offers in-depth information about their preferences, opinions and habits. 

As a result, The Independent has been able to identify where users are engaging the most to target them with more relevant experiences, content and offers. 

But this build-up of engagement and first-party data didn’t happen on its own. To keep registered users from losing interest and encourage them to subscribe, The Independent implemented several Viafoura solutions, including a personalized news feed, browser notifications and a moderated conversations space. 

The personalized feed and notifications showcase where the most active users are on the company’s site and point users to the latest interactions with their comments. Both of these tools established a sense of community for The Independent’s users and produced opportunities for re-engagement. In addition, Viafoura’s digital experience tools offered the media company a way to gather critical first-party data as users interact with one another and consume content. 

“Without engagement on your site, you have a passive audience that’s just reading your content — and passive experiences no longer meet the needs of today’s audiences,” says Zohar. “Passive visitors can’t connect with your journalists, they won’t leave their opinions and you can’t get their sentiments or useful engagement data.”

Ultimately, Viafoura’s digital experience solutions allowed The Independent to identify and elevate the most relevant spaces on the site to keep users hooked on its brand.

How 'The Independent' is making the most of its engagement tools

Even with effective personalization and social tools, media organizations must put time and energy into experimenting with ways to draw more attention toward on-site engagement opportunities. After all, there are countless other publishers all battling for your audience’s attention. 

In The Independent’s case, Jenkins outlines how the organization has achieved positive results hosting Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions through Viafoura’s moderated Conversations solution. 

The AMAs give registered users the chance to voice their questions to an expert or journalist around a particular topic, further connecting them to the brand. In fact, there’s a direct correlation between The Independent’s AMAs and the time users spend on-site. These sessions alone earned the publisher one million views on content related to these events.

Zohar also highlights that registered comment readers and writers generate 46 times more page views and spend 168 times more time on-site per month compared to anonymous visitors.

Jenkins explains that the commenting experience can become much richer during an AMA event because users get direct attention from the community host in return for their engagement. 

“For journalists, AMAs are a great way to establish a following that will engage directly with them,” Zohar says. 

In today’s highly competitive media industry, audience attention, revenue and loyalty all start with engagement. And it’s up to publishers to develop an effective strategy with the right tools and user experiences to consistently earn their audience’s attention.

Lessons from The Independent on the relationship between commenting tools and user registrations

While every media company’s journey toward growth and profitability is unique, a single success story has the power to inspire and educate organizations across the industry. Those kinds of stories are partly why media professionals worldwide gathered at WAN-IFRA’s 2021 Virtual World News Media Congress from November 29 to December 2.

One particular case study stood out at the conference, detailing how an engagement strategy overhaul increased The Independent’s registrations by 100% in 12 months.

The speakers were Philippa Jenkins, head of registered audience at The Independent, and Mark Zohar, Viafoura’s president and COO. Here are a couple of takeaways from their session.

The Independent drove 2,000+ website registrations with comments

For any media company, the user registration process is very much transactional. After all, audience members need a good reason to take the time to register and give up their personal information. This give-and-take process is known as a “value exchange.”

However, a paywall, registration wall or newsletter sign-up form isn’t interesting or valuable enough on its own. Jenkins explains that The Independent eventually adopted Viafoura’s digital experience platform as a way to build up its value exchange by offering users a safe space to have quality conversations.

Viafoura’s moderated commenting platform delivered immediate value to The Independent’s users, prompting them to register in return for a positive and interactive online experience. According to Zohar, users respond to moderated commenting tools like Viafoura’s because audiences are social by nature.

“We live in a dialogue society, where we expect to have conversations with each other, and increasingly, people want to have a dialogue with publishers they’re loyal to,” Zohar explains. “They’re really looking for an easy way to leave their opinions on editorial content.”

Generating over 2,000 registrations with Viafoura Conversations, The Independent has proven that publishers can incentivize users to hand over their data.

The Independent's community feed.

Comment-led registrations create a chain reaction of engagement

Commenting spaces, along with other conversation-based experiences, play a critical role in converting anonymous online audiences into known, active consumers who read and interact with comments.

Plus, a small portion of registered users produce user-generated content (UGC), which is essentially free content that publishers can use to propel more audience participation, more UGC and, in turn, more registrations.

“Asking why we should have commenting if only a small part of our audience comment is a lot like saying why have YouTube if only 1% of the population will upload a video,” outlines Zohar. “Commenting creates a cascading effect of engagement to an audience segment that wouldn’t spend as much time on your company’s sites without it.”

By reserving its moderated commenting tools for registered users, Jenkins says that The Independent experienced this explosion of engagement and registrations from users who were interested in becoming part of its community. 

These registered users are also much more likely to become subscribers than anonymous users, since they’re already engaged community members. 

So by embracing moderated comments, The Independent was able to create a healthier value exchange and develop a more profitable business strategy. 

Dig deeper into this success story and find out how The Independent kept its registered users engaged and active here.

Are You Prepared for the End of Gigya Comments?

Gigya Comments Deprecate on January 31st, 2021

In case you haven’t heard yet, Gigya — an identity management software company acquired by SAP — is currently in the process of shutting down several of its engagement tools, including its commenting services.

Customers that rely on Gigya Comments to build an engaged community of loyal visitors now have until the end of January 31st, 2021 to transition away from Gigya’s social engagement tools.

The full list of tools and features that will be inaccessible come January 31st include: 

If you’re currently a customer at Gigya and are struggling to make sense of the upcoming changes, we’ve broken down the main takeaways based on Gigya’s announcement for you below.

The Impact on Gigya Customers

Starting December 2020, Gigya Comments along with the other social tools mentioned above will begin to shut off, leaving customers without their engagement tools. 

To continue building highly engaged and loyal communities, organizations will need to move to a new community-building service provider. 

This means that existing Gigya customers hoping to keep their online social spaces active must begin preparing now for the migration. User data and comment history will need to be exported and backed up over the next few weeks while access to this information lasts.

Accessing Your Data

All back-end access and support for Gigya Comments and other social engagement features will stop as of January 31st, 2020. Any user data, comment history and existing moderation information stored by Gigya must be manually extracted and saved by customers before that date.

Your user engagement data is full of precious, actionable information, so be sure to collect it while it’s still possible to do so.

You can access a complete checklist that will help prepare your organization for a smooth transition away from Gigya Comments here.

Embracing These Changes

Although the loss of Gigya Comments may seem like a setback to your business, you can use this challenge as an opportunity to select a reliable audience engagement platform.

By continuing to invest in community engagement, you can elevate your visitor’s online experience, strengthen relationships with your users and increase the amount of time they spend on your website or app. 

That’s why it’s vital for you to choose the right engagement tool provider as you transition away from Gigya Comments. 

At Viafoura, customers can rely on our real-time conversations and discussion-based tools to collect first-party audience data, keep their brands safe and better build and monetize their communities. Our automatic moderation system also handles up to 95% of comments without human intervention and makes decisions according to your community guidelines — all to ensure that your online communities flourish.

Get in touch with us here to find out how Viafoura can help you transition away from Gigya with ease.

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