Tag: engagement

Attention Publishers: There’s More to Moderation Than Toxicity

Toxic content — like spam, misinformation and posts from trolls — can be damaging to media companies for a host of reasons. As a result, publishers are gradually beginning to recognize the importance of moderating their digital properties. 

Google even has an API that’s now being widely used by moderation providers to assess toxic content. 

But here’s the problem: just assessing a platform for toxicity isn’t enough. Not when over 40% of people claim they’ve directly experienced online harassment.

Detecting incivility in your digital community is undoubtedly a necessary step in the right direction. However, every publisher that hopes to have a civil and profitable online community requires a moderation system that can also accomplish the following tasks:

Reinforce Community Guidelines

Truly effective moderation systems should be trained to support a media company’s community guidelines. There are different kinds of communities, after all. While some are designed to spark heated debates, like in sports or gaming, others are geared toward setting a peaceful environment. 

Be sure to check whether or not your company’s automatic moderation platform can mold itself around the nuances of your community. Because what works for one media company may not work for yours. 

“Rather than moderating the notion of toxicity, you can moderate around the guidelines that the publisher has actually set for their communities,” says Dan Seaman, VP of product at Viafoura. 

At Viafoura, our moderation experts take an existing algorithm that best represents a publisher’s audience and then adapts it to fit their community standards.

Detect All Offensive Words, No Matter Their Form

Trolls are intelligent and will do everything in their power to outsmart a moderation system. While some may write offensive words with spaces between the letters, others may disguise their words with numbers or symbols. 

Like Google’s API, most moderation systems focus on finding common patterns in toxic posts rather than the variations of jumbled words. Google even advises against using its API for automated moderation.

“The problem with using a basic toxicity rating is that it isn’t going to detect specific terminology,” Seaman explains. “If you can obfuscate words efficiently, you can get around toxic ratings.”

And each word can be obfuscated 6.5 million times. So no matter what automatic moderation system you use, make sure it’s capable of understanding the 6.5 million variations of each word. 

Publishers with proper moderation systems in place experience thriving communities, resulting in 62% more likes and 35% more comments from users. 

At the end of the day, analyzing root words in user comments can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful moderation system.

Manage Evolving Language in a Community

Using a general toxicity rating or detection system isn’t effective enough to enforce civil conversation within each unique community. Especially not when the trolls within a community begin developing new ways to spread offensive messages.

This was the case for one publisher when Viafoura’s moderators noticed that trolls were posting a recurring phrase in community social spaces: “BOB crime.” Our moderators quickly realized that this phrase was being used in offensive contexts, and after investigating, found out that it stood for “Black-on-Black crime,” which challenges the Black Lives Matter movement.

The moderation algorithm was quickly adjusted to prevent relevant comments from being posted within that publisher’s community. However, this is just a single example of many where new phrases are created within a community to maneuver around basic moderation systems.

The bottom line is that language evolves. 

Companies can reinforce their community guidelines by ensuring their moderation strategies can detect toxicity as language evolves. To reinforce community standards successfully, it’s also essential that algorithms are updated quickly as new, offensive language is discovered.

Unfortunately, not all moderation companies can provide this service successfully. This is because they focus mainly on disabling patterns or character sets that are toxic — not context or changing language.

To support a publisher’s online environment, moderation must go beyond addressing toxicity.

Although assessing incivility is an essential part of moderation, the nuances of each community and word must be addressed, and guidelines need to be enforced. The overall health and engagement of your digital community depend on it.

Here’s How Sports Broadcasters Can Keep Fans Engaged Amid the Pandemic

Protective measures against COVID-19 are currently in full force around the world, causing all types of events and public areas to shut down. Among the businesses affected by closures, sports media companies now find themselves in an unfamiliar space — trying to earn revenue and engage audiences without in-person competitions to fuel fan excitement. 

Although many sports broadcasters are now relying on reruns and archived video to fill the gap, their ability to excite sports fans seems somewhat limited. But many companies are beginning to learn that there’s more to sports than in-person events.

“We spend half our time watching sports, we then move onto digesting them, discussing them with friends and then preparing for the next game,” sportswriter Mike Wood states in a Forbes article. 

In other words, conversation and human interaction have the power to delight audiences. So in the absence of in-person competitions, here are a few simple ways for sports broadcasters to engage audiences, boost morale and build long-term loyalty virtually. 

 

Watch Parties

By now, you might have heard of the Netflix Party tool, which allows friends to chat together and watch content on the platform in unison. Not only does this tool allow consumers to socialize safely, but it also boosts their excitement towards the platform. 

Sports broadcasters can use Netflix’s audience engagement solution as inspiration to get their own sports fans chatting over videos. And with so much careful planning being put into which old games and events should run in place of canceled ones, fans will certainly be tuning in.

Just look at ESPN, which is airing old WrestleMania events. 

According to Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive VP of programming, “WrestleMania is one of the most popular global events in sports and entertainment and the spectacular content it provides will be a treat for fans.”

If fans had a live chat to discuss programs like WrestleMania as they air, viewers would be able to do more than just watch: they would work each other up for matches and reignite the spirit of sports culture. 

 

Q&As and AMAs

Another reliable way to engage fans is by hosting live Q&As and AMAs that feature sports leaders and athletes.

For instance, a U.K. sports club known as Barrow AFC is currently keeping fans connected to team members through Q&As.

Since Q&As and AMAs can be conducted remotely and in real time, they’re effective ways for sports broadcasters to maintain healthy connections with consumers. Just imagine how excited sports fans would be to engage directly with famous players like LeBron James, Serena Williams or Lionel Messi.

 

Esports Games

While esports isn’t anything new for gamers, there’s been a surge in players due to the worldwide lockdowns caused by COVID19. With such a large consumer base already existing in the esport world, it’s the perfect place for athletes to compete and attract fans. 

Some sports companies have already started their journey into esports. 

In fact, Spanish soccer league La Liga ran a virtual FIFA tournament with nineteen professional soccer players on March 22 of this year, bringing in over one million viewers. 

NASCAR drivers also turned to a connected gaming platform to race virtually last week and engage audiences, and plan to do so every week until the pandemic ends. 

Will Hershey, the CEO of an esport investment company, explains that he “[expects] traditional athletes, many of whom are gamers, to look to [esport] streaming as a way to engage with fans and build their personal brand while leagues remain suspended.” 

 

Adjusting Podcasts

Many networks already rely on podcasts to connect with their audiences. However, sports broadcasters hoping to keep listeners interested must adjust their strategies in light of recent sports cancellations.

“Ninety-five percent [of sports content] now is about being creative and testing the waters of what the audience wants right now, taking liberties with your creativity,” states the host of TalkSPORT’s show Going Global.

Instead of focusing on sports closures and postponements, some media companies are getting creative by discussing the past sports world, athlete interviews and upcoming virtual events. 

As long as sports broadcasters find new ways to engage consumers remotely, fans will continue to rely on them for information and entertainment.

Gaining your competitive edge for the 2020’s

Right now, media companies everywhere are racing to stay on top of the ever-evolving trends and technologies in the industry. But with the future constantly barrelling towards us, the most effective path to revenue isn’t always straightforward. As a result, many brands aren’t properly equipped to deal with digital challenges on the road ahead.

No one really knows for sure what the best practices in the media industry will look like in five, 10 or 15 years. What we do know, however, is that you are very capable of putting your best foot forward in setting yourself up for ongoing success.

So would you believe us if we told you that a few simple steps could protect your business?

Well, you’d better buckle up — we’re about to walk you through everything you need to do to futureproof your business. Prepare to gain an edge over your competitors.

1. Invest in New Sources of Revenue

For most media organizations, social media is no longer a reliable source of revenue. While social media proved to be a great source of revenue and digital traffic several years ago, constantly changing algorithms and brand-daming toxicity has since diminished the relationship between media and social platforms.

The best lesson we can take away from the history between media and big tech companies is that media organizations need to stop relying on third-parties to generate revenue from consumers. Instead, it’s important to continuously be testing and analyzing direct ways to earn revenue. Long-term stability will require a direct relationship with your audience, and the more ways you

“There is going to be a new crop of players… that accelerate because they understand how to connect content, commerce, and conversation,” the CEO of Barstool Sports tells the Digital Content Next association. “Companies that do that are going to be in a good spot.”

Sustainable revenue models are now shifting away from ad revenue and towards consumer revenue models, where brands have complete access to their digital community and profits. Gain a competitive edge and set your brand up for success by monetising your audience directly.

2. Optimize Your Platform for Engagement

Whether you’re a news publisher or operate a video-streaming platform, building loyalty among your audience members translates into long-term success. That said, social engagement is a powerful building block of trust and loyalty in a digital community.

So instead of trying (and failing) to grow loyal followers via social media, incorporate engagement tools right into the fabric of your brand’s platform. Intertwine tools like live conversations, real-time blogging, ratings and reviews as well as live chats with your content to get people seriously interested in what you offer.

Add additional layers of interaction to your platform by engaging with your audience directly, through digital Q&As, personalized emails and recommended content lists. By having popular journalists or TV personalities chat with your audience, you can generate excitement in your community and prove that your content is worth the subscription fee.

At the end of the day, you don’t want to be a stranger to your audience. Interacting with them shows that they mean more to you than money. And that, folks, is how to generate long-term trust, no matter what kind of curveball the future may throw at you.

3. Set Up Preventative Moderation Measures

Nevermind the future, the present is already volatile.

There are trolls, bots, spammers and misinformation wreaking havoc throughout the internet. So if you can’t protect your brand in the face of existing threats, how can you possibly be prepared to deal with these growing issues in the future?

In both the present and future, moderation across your user-generated content is a must for any brand hoping to draw in active subscribers and retain them.

For a moment, picture sports fans debating over a penalty during a live stream of a game. A real-time chat, where individuals exchange passionate thoughts, is a perfect opportunity for building community engagement around this event. However, a troll can easily ruin the experience by taunting, mocking and harassing your loyal users. This is why it’s essential to put some kind of moderation in place to protect your community.

Explore the different types of moderation here.

4. Implement the Perfect Conversion Strategy

According to a new report by What’s New In Publishing, consumer subscription fatigue is becoming a reality for many publishers and streaming platforms alike. Creating an effective conversion strategy matters now more than ever with so much competition fighting over consumer dollars.

So once you have your paywall and engagement tools in place, it’s time for you to connect all of the moving pieces together. Plant those seeds of engagement to grow your audience. Then ensure your engagement and paywall solutions are working together so that your active, subscription-ready users can be sent a paywall message.

Finding the right strategy for your business may take a bit of trial and error. But testing out different ways to engage, target and monetize your audience members is a surefire way to boost revenue in the long run.

5. Put Your Audience First

In the digital age, your audience is everything. Which is why you should pull every possible piece of information you can about your audience members from your first-party data, and use those insights to your advantage.

Take the time to identify who your most loyal audience members are, and how to best cater to them. For instance, OTT platforms may want to consider personalizing the content-streaming experience, with recommended or related videos.

Your content strategy should be geared towards what subscribers find important and relatable. So: figure out who you’re serving, what content and experience they value, and invest heavily in that.

Condé Nast has also developed a short exercise for publishers that can help your team shift its editorial strategy towards a more audience-oriented approach.

“Anything that distracts a publisher from focusing on their most loyal audiences, is a losing strategy,” reads a report by the Tow Center of Digital Journalism.

Wise words for media organizations everywhere.

You Got a Registered User, Now What?

Conjure up an effective plan to keep your registered users interested and active in your community.

If you’re reading this, odds are yet another user registered to access your on-site engagement tools and content. While that’s wonderful news, don’t celebrate just yet. 

With third-party cookies crumbling due to data privacy regulations and browser limitations, the valuable data you get from a registered user is climbing. But here’s the catch: you need users to do more than just register for your services. You need them to stay active and profitable on your platform. 

Our data scientists  have found that registered users — who are engaged regularly on platforms through social experiences — generate five times the return visits per week compared to non-registered users. 

So what’s the holdup? Conjure up an effective plan to keep your registered users interested and active in your community. If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve crafted a list of the necessary next steps below. 

1. Educate Them

While your registered users may have access to a premium experience, they may not be aware of all the bells and whistles held within your platform. For this reason, it’s important to go out of your way to teach them about all the great features and services that can enhance their experiences, even after registering. 

As part of the Globe and Mail’s user onboarding process, education is a critical piece of the revenue-generating puzzle. More specifically, their five-step onboarding plan includes educating the end user on all features and services available. 

Want to increase awareness around your own platform’s content? Consider using on-site engagement tools to push notifications about new content to your users. Enable email or desktop notifications to encourage return visits, allowing your users to stay up to date with your latest and greatest pieces. 

If knowledge is power, the ability to control your users’ knowledge is a superpower.

2. Continue to Engage Them

Just because someone registers for your on-site engagement tools and content doesn’t mean that they’re loyal to your brand. In order to earn their loyalty, you need to continuously engage them throughout their entire lifetime as a registrant, and even afterwards. 

Use tools like live conversations, community chats, real-time blogging and ratings and reviews to create a socially immersive experience for your registered users. These social opportunities will spark loyal habits in your community, where they return to your site regularly. Everybody wins. 

“Based on a number of academic and business studies, we know that frequency of visits — one measure of loyalty — is correlated with a propensity to buy or renew a subscription, and it drives your advertising business,” says International News Media Associations researcher, Grzegorz Piechota.

So put the proper engagement tools in place to entice users to return to your platform frequently.

3. Track Them

84% of consumers want to be treated like actual people during their online experiences, not just another number on a dashboard. In other words, users want brands to cater to their individual needs. 

But how can you know how to cater to each user if you don’t have a good understanding of their unique behaviors? 

Here’s a quick tip: study their patterns as they move across your site so you can personalize their experience. 

Dig in to your on-site engagement tool metrics to understand what topics and content your registered users are gravitating towards. Based on your findings, you can customize their experience by serving up highly relevant content.

“It’s clear that the way to win customers is through cohesive and authentic interactions,” states an article on Ad Age. “That means the entire experience has to be fueled by data.”

4. Encourage Paid Subscriptions

For many organizations, a registered user doesn’t necessarily translate to a paid subscriber. You may have users who have registered just to use your on-site engagement tools. Although that may not be your endgame, it is a step in the right direction: towards a paid subscription.

For those of you who are aiming to boost paid subscriptions within your platform, highlight exactly why a paid subscription is valuable. Take it a step further by enhancing your conversion strategy. This involves targeting highly engaged users with personalized subscription offers.

As you track the behavior of your registered users, ensure that your engagement tool vendor is keeping an eye out for drops in engagement. You vendor should be able to notify your paywall provider of disengaged registrants, who can then send them special offers to remain engaged and to subscribe. 

Now go ahead and transform your ordinary registered user into a loyal, profitable community member. The sustainable community you’ve always dreamed of is but a few steps away. 

 

RELATED: You’ve Lost a Subscriber, Now What?

How Engagement Tools Can be Leveraged in the OTT Space

Once you implement the right tools on your platform, you can engage your audience and ultimately grow your revenue.

When it comes to over-the-top (OTT) media services — streaming platforms that rely on internet instead of satellite or cable — an overwhelming amount of organizations are serving up extremely interesting content. But here’s the thing: content isn’t everything. Your audience is. 

In order to build tight-knit, engaged and profitable communities around your content, you need to spark conversations among consumers. So give people a great experience where they can discuss topics, form human connections and interact with one another, all within the context of your content. 

This, of course, all starts with on-site engagement tools. 

Once you implement the right tools on your platform, you can engage your audience and ultimately grow your revenue. In fact, we’ve observed that organizations with engagement and conversion tools can actually triple their ROI. 

That said, here are a few ways to leverage engagement tools in the OTT space: 

Get People Talking

If you thought that conversation tools (like real-time commenting widgets, live blogs and live chats) should be reserved strictly for blogs, you’re in for a bit of a shock. These types of community-building tools can and should be used on OTT platforms as well. 

Conversations matter. By generating conversations around your content, your audience will have access to a premium user experience.

Engagement tools allow OTT providers of all genres to facilitate a socially immersive experience, prompting meaningful connections between viewers based on content they truly care about. 

Take sports-streaming platforms, for instance. Organizations have a massive opportunity to open their content to real-time conversations around what sports fans are watching as they watch it. Live blogs can also be used to provide play-by-play updates on games and major milestones. 

Research has found that “71% of sports fans crave ‘deeper immersion’ when watching live games.” 

However, most consumers, not just sports fans, crave social interaction online. So make the most of their appetite for socialization.

By increasing the opportunities your subscribers have to talk to one another, they’ll begin to form regular habits, where they return to and interact with your platform.

Build That Community

Once you’ve added engagement tools to your platform, you’re ready for the next step: building your community through excitement and trust. 

Use your tools to generate buzz around popular personalities and content through interactive events, like Q&As or AMAs. This is a great way to promote upcoming shows, movies and videos right on your platform. Imagine the impact of having a celebrity engaging directly with your audience around your content.  

The trust between your brand and audience can be strengthened through these types of positive, engaging experiences. Trust is a highly important community-building element as it paves the way for brand loyalty. Compared to the experiences on social media, where trolls and bots run wild and trample over your valuable content, you can protect your audience’s experiences on your own properties through moderation. 

You can also grow your audience by highlighting model community behavior in comment sections. Or, you can leverage a moderated rating and review system. If consumers see helpful, accurate suggestions on what to watch, your platform can become a place where people come to read authentic reviews. 

“Operators that invest in functionality that maximizes fan engagement will see a 24% uplift in subscriber acquisition,” states Deltatre’s 2019 report. 

In other words, engagement tools in the OTT space can accelerate subscription revenue growth if used to their full potential. 

Understand Your Audience

Your audience data is important, but this isn’t new information. What you may not know is that it’s essential to look beyond the general insights you have on your audience demographics and size. Instead, understand the bigger picture by analyzing the complete behavior of your users. This can be accomplished by gathering first-party data from all on-site engagement tools and content.

Identify what anonymous users (your potential customers) and known users are doing all across your properties. As a result, you can get fully-formed ideas of what your consumers like and dislike. Use first-party data from your tools to improve the content and experience you’re providing by serving up more personalized or recommended content. 

While many OTT providers are looking at the customers on their platforms, they aren’t digging deep enough. They need to take their analytical efforts a step further by analyzing what audiences are doing in general and making strategic decisions based on that. 

For example, user data can enhance your conversion and retention strategies. Your engagement tool provider can also keep an eye on your audience’s behavior, and send signals to your paywall provider when they are ready to subscribe or are about to churn. If users are close to churning, which can be identified based on drops in engagement, they can be sent a special discount of content offer.

Whether you’re a sports media organization or host a unique video-streaming solution, engagement tools will allow you to build a community that thrives around your content — in a sustainable way.

You Got New Engagement Tools, Now What?

With the decline of trust in social media advertising, media organizations are exploring new technologies ⁠— specifically on-site engagement tools that build audiences on their own platforms.

With the decline of trust in social media advertising, media organizations are exploring new technologies ⁠— specifically on-site engagement tools that build audiences on their own platforms.

A recent survey by PEW Research Center has revealed that skepticism towards social media continues to grow. In fact, according to the survey, “six-in-ten (62%) [Americans] say social media companies have too much control over the mix of news that people see.”

Media organizations are growing frustrated as big tech companies change their algorithms, fail to moderate toxicity properly and exercise complete control over how often and where their content is appearing. It’s no surprise that media organizations are ready for a change. 

Businesses have, nevertheless, started shifting away from advertising revenue and towards subscription-driven models, where visitors are nurtured and grown into a thriving digital community. 

And what better way to grow a community than with on-site engagement tools? 

If you’ve invested in tools to help build a thriving community on your own platforms, don’t celebrate just yet — this is only the beginning of your engagement solution. You’re probably wondering what your next steps should be. Well, we’re about to give you the low-down on how to make the most of your engagement tools:

1. Define Your Community Engagement Goals

Every good audience engagement solution starts with a plan. So the first step, even before you purchased your tools, is to clearly define your community engagement goals.

Do you want to drive ad loads by maximizing pageviews? Increase depth of visit or visit frequency (a.k.a. loyalty)? Or perhaps you’re aiming to drive registration or subscription conversions and even prevent churn.

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, you need to return to the basics and set some relevant goals. After all, the way you implement and measure audience engagement will be greatly influenced by what you’re aiming to achieve. 

Our industry experts strongly advise against using on-site engagement tools without a clear strategy and goal. Otherwise, the major benefits of these tools may slip away, right between your fingers.

2. Ensure Your Community Guidelines Are in Tip-Top Shape

By opening up your platforms to engagement, you’ll learn more about your users and improve how invested they are in your brand. However, the onus to protect these engaging spaces from trolls and toxic behavior falls on you. 

In order to properly protect your brand and encourage participation, your community needs to know what rules they should be following. And you need to know how strict any moderation should be. For instance, sports news organizations may want weaker moderation to allow for friendly debates, but still prevent offensive discourse and harassment. The choice is ultimately yours and will differ between companies. 

By investing some effort into carefully crafting community guidelines and enforcing comment moderation, you can expect to see more revenue funneling into your company’s pockets as users become hooked. 

Not sure where to begin? You can find community guideline-setting best practices here. 

3. Perfect Your Conversion Strategy

After you’ve set goals for your on-site engagement tools and have your community guidelines in place, it’s time to establish the ultimate conversion strategy for your platform. 

Work with your paywall and engagement tool providers to come up with and implement a conversion strategy that best suits your business model. 

Whether you’re looking to convert visitors to registrants, members or subscribers, you need to decide what type of conversion message should pop up and how strict your paywall (if any) should be. You may also want to consider having your engagement tools feed highly engaged visitors as well as churn-ready subscribers to your paywall. 

Creating a conversion strategy can be complex and may require some trial and error on your part; however, if done correctly, it will absolutely pay off in the long run.

Bloomberg Media, for instance, has seen tremendous success with its conversion strategy in the past two years, which has tightened a paywall using 22 criteria. The media organization now credits two-thirds of their subscribers to website visits alone.

4. Watch the Metrics to Keep Visitors Engaged

You’re no stranger to your platform’s analytics, we get it. That said, there are some key metrics you can get from your engagement tools worth keeping an eye on. Media organizations that don’t pay attention to factors like active user engagement and civility trends are missing out on a big opportunity to keep their communities engaged in a valuable way. 

Rather than turning to social media for audience data, dig deeper into the information from your own platforms so that you can give people exactly what they want, when they’re ready for it. 

Your engagement data will help you to identify how well or poorly your content is being perceived by your audience. You can also re-engage inactive subscribers with personalized, special offers based on insights from your first-party data.

Keep in mind that it can cost up to five times the amount of resources to attract new consumers than keep old ones.

As stated by the VP of audience development and analytics at Condé Nast, “it is always much easier to retain somebody than to bring in someone new, because they already value and trust you, and they want to engage with your content and your product, versus trying to convince somebody why they should subscribe or join.” 

5. Highlight Examples of Top Engagement/Community Members

Strengthen relationships directly within your online community by highlighting good behavior on your platform. 

You can try rewarding users with special badges that identify them as trusted community members. Or, showcase top comments on threads to help your users feel valued. This will help you to build trust and interest within your community. 

Once you have your engagement tools, your platform will transform into a place for people to interact with trustworthy content, establish relationships with others and become important community members. 

Yet, the most effective on-site engagement tools can’t be left to run on their own. They need to be backed by strategy, community guidelines and actionable insights. Planning, testing and refining your business’ audience engagement process must be a constant effort. That way, your business can evolve as the industry evolves.

 

RELATED: Your Guide to Building and Engaging an Online Community

Why People Hate Live Commenting, but Will Learn to Love It

A common misconception about online, live commenting tools has taken root within the internet. Want to take a guess as to what that might be? Let us give you a bit of hint:


Thanks to spammers, bots, trolls and toxic behavior, people now believe that commenting tools are destructive to a brand’s reputation. And with 63% of Americans convinced that incivility online results from social media, it’s no surprise that people think of all online social experiences in a negative way.

Here’s just a small taste of why people hate live commenting tools online:

In a Facebook post, one commenter responds to a video titled ‘What if Online Trolls Acted Like Trolls in Real Life:’ “This is why I think most websites should turn off their commenting sections. People say so much online that they never would face to face. And most of the political arguments would evaporate too, which would be great.”

People assume that comments — especially those posted in real time — threaten the health of a community as harassment, profanities and spam can be brought alive instantly, with the push of a button.

But while these concerns are all valid, they encourage the loss of profitable, on-site audience engagement. In reality, there’s actually a way to host real-time commenting tools on your owned and operated properties without damaging your brand.

The Uses and Gratification Theory introduces us to the idea that people actively seek out media to fulfill their needs for information, human connection and socialization. Commenting tools can help to satisfy this innate human need to socialize and connect with others, sparking healthy, social interaction online.

Breaking the Chain of Misinformation Around Commenting

Media organizations that have killed or rejected commenting sections have experienced and will continue to experience a massive loss of opportunity.

Yes, there are trolls running wild online, just itching to frustrate other people. So rather than letting them — along with countless other digital trouble-makers — ruin your engagement tools, all you need to do is put one simple measure in place to tame them: comment moderation.

Comment moderation can completely flip your commenting platform from destructive to profitable in a matter of moments. In fact, communities that had sophisticated moderation in place see significant on-site engagement growth: including 62% more user likes, 35% more comments per user and 34% more replies per user.

By creating a protected and social environment that users can engage with, you can begin building a loyal community that drives revenue.

Civil, live commenting platforms help to form an environment where visitors feel safe enough to participate in conversation. As they create meaningful discussions with others around content, their propensity to subscribe increases.

Comments also provide organizations with valuable audience engagement metrics.


Just as the previous post stated, these metrics can help organizations identify community behavior and content preferences, which can be used to improve editorial and subscription strategies. Take it a step further by making sure you’re getting first-party audience data from your commenting tools so you can gather actionable insights to help grow your community.

Setting Rules in Your Community

If you’re going to bring a commenting tool into your platform, you need to decide how strict your comment moderation should be.

A recent post on The Verge outlines the value of moderation in online communities. In the article, Twitch’s CEO, Emmett Shear, addresses the difference between allowing free speech and building a civil community online:

“I hope people can express themselves. I hope they can share their ideas, share their thoughts. But we’re not a platform for free speech. We are not upholding the First Amendment. That’s the government’s job. We’re a community. And communities have standards for how you have to behave inside that community. And so we think that it’s not anything goes.”

Free speech is important to society as a whole, but online, speech that disrupts a community’s overall health is toxic to a brand’s success. Which is why it’s so important to set community guidelines and enforce them throughout your engagement tools.

“[A community] with good, strong moderation, in many ways, is actually the place with freer speech,” says Shear. “Because it was actually the place where people could express themselves and not just get destroyed by trolls and abuse and harassment.”

Preventing toxicity on your platform actually forms an ideal environment for users to interact with one another in.

So here’s the bottom line: moderated commenting tools are absolute necessities to engage visitors, build communities and grow revenue.

Can’t afford to spare any resources to do the moderation in-house? You may want to look into a tool that offers automatic moderation services. You can review the different types of moderation here.

Week of Oct. 12th-18th: Your Media News Update

The past seven days have seen a lot of chatter within the media and publishing industry. The many news stories and reports that have been revealed will have a significant impact on the industry moving forward, including:

  • The many creative ways publishers are using first-party data to better understand subscription behaviors, and implement initiatives to reduce churn
  • How publishers continue to compete with social media players
  • The major successes email publishers are experiencing by allocating more resources towards building and growing subscription referral programs

To learn more and stay up to date with the latest and greatest industry news from the past week, read the details below.

Media Companies Experiment to Decrease Subscription Churn

Schibsted Media Group has decreased the amount of customers who cancel subscriptions by pioneering a seemingly counterintuitive sales model. This model makes it easy for consumers to cancel subscriptions, but at the same time, convinces them why it’s worth keeping. Emphasizing the utility of the product and giving users the power to make their own choices has dramatically increased Schibsted Media Group’s subscriber engagement. In addition, the company has turned the cancellation process into an educational experience by providing users with more information on how they benefit from their subscription.

Apple is another company that recently recognized a missed opportunity to improve subscriber retention. After looking at their data to understand where subscribers were most likely to drop off, they implemented a new billing feature for subscription apps. Referred to as a billing grace period, users are given more time to address auto-payment issues before they are cut off from paid content.

Many publishers are also increasing their ad spend as a way to reach more potential subscribers. The goal is to lead users to content that requires registering through a paywall. Publishers are trying to make the best use of their subscription data by creating digital marketing campaigns that focus on targeting audiences with similar characteristics as their current subscriber base. That way, they can attract and keep new audiences.

The Battle Between Publishers and Social Media Continues

With Facebook preparing to launch a human-curated “news tab” this month, publishers are becoming increasingly threatened by social media.

The industry has long argued against not getting a cut of the revenue that social platforms make from sharing their content. Additionally, a report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook will only be paying a small handful of the publishers for content that’s shared in its human-curated news tab.

This week, Publicis’ Zenith Media published Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, revealing that social media has overtaken print in ad spend for the first time ever. That growth will expand social media’s share of global ad spend to 13%, making social media the third-biggest ad channel behind TV (29%) and paid search (17%) in 2019.

Although publishers face major challenges with the increasing popularity of social media amongst their target audiences, consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical and distrusting of the quality of news they receive through these platforms. This declining trust in social media poses a huge opportunity for publishers to focus on building civil social experiences on their own platforms. There’s still a demand for meaningful news, information and entertainment that publishers can provide as a counterbalance to the “fake news” on social media.

A new survey asked 1,200 adults about their thoughts on media, privacy and trust. The results found that 86% of people believe there’s a “fake news” problem that continues to grow in the market. Additionally, 66% of people said data-privacy concerns affected their trust in social media.

Leveraging the Power of Email Referral Programs

Since people love free stuff, some email publishers have started giving their readers free perks as a way to grow their subscription lists. Morning Brew, The Hustle and TheSkimm are prime examples of email-based publishers who have established referral programs that encourage subscribers to get their friends to sign-up to newsletters.

The programs now account for a significant chunk of year-over-year email list growth. The Morning Brew, which launched its referral program in 2017, now has 1.6 million subscribers to its daily newsletter. The publisher attributes 35% of its newsletter audience growth to the referral program.

The Hustle, which used referral programs to promote both its free daily newsletter and paid products, created its first version of the program in 2015 to sell event tickets. Because the referral program grew their email list so significantly, they launched a newsletter business the following year to capitalize on the growing audience. The referral program now accounts for about 10% of growth towards the The Hustle’s newsletter list and has over 10,000 subscribers, who have each referred at least four other sign-ups.

TheSkimm, which introduced email referrals through word-of-mouth call-to-actions in 2012, now credits 20% of its newsletter growth to the publisher’s referral program. The program is so strong that the newsletter publisher has more than 30,000 Skimm’bassadors, which are community members that have referred 10 or more people to sign up for the daily newsletter.

Results have shown that subscribers are willing to refer a publisher when offered anything from branded T-shirts and stickers, to exclusive content or contests. Although these programs can require quite a bit of budget allocation for gifts or prizes, the cost of retaining a customer or increasing loyalty significantly outweighs the short-term expenditure.

Audience Engagement Data is About to Amp up Sports Media

Just last week, Adam Hodgkins, the senior business development manager at Genius Sports Media, published an insightful article that dug into why audience engagement data on-site is the key to growing revenue in sports. And we couldn’t agree more.

“There’s an awareness in the OTT space that sports companies have lost control of their audiences to social media,” says Michael Shewchenko, Head of Business Development for Sports and Media at Viafoura. “But they now have an opportunity to engage their audiences on their properties in a positive and highly valuable way, and use their own data to put a name and a face to their users.”

Audience engagement data is the money-making factor that many sports companies are missing out on. Any sports company that wants to significantly boost revenue would, therefore, benefit greatly from connecting with their audiences, learning who their community members are, and then using that information to create and send highly relevant content and ads.

Unlocking a Premium Experience for Sports Fans

To connect with audiences on a more direct level, sports companies need to turn their digital properties into engaging communities — through super-exclusive spaces that capture valuable insights on users. This can be accomplished through ‘premium experiences’ that can be offered to encourage users to register or subscribe.

“Engagement tools can open up the premium experience,” says Shewchenko. “Tools that encourage on-site interaction increase the likelihood of passive sports consumers becoming active and highly engaged users. It’s all about building the two-way communication between users and brands.”

A premium experience can include anything from participating in live chats, real-time commenting and blogging to following favorite teams, players, authors, topics or getting regular updates.

In his article, Hodgkins explains that “unique behind the scenes footage, exclusive interviews and easy access to detailed statistics have handed sports leagues and teams a golden opportunity to turn their websites and social channels into valuable destinations for information-hungry fans.”

Techcrunch even conducted a recent survey, which found that 78% of industry experts believe that fan engagement tech will have the largest impact on live streaming and esports in the next year.

Sports fans are already excited about players and upcoming events — they’re practically itching to interact with one another and around related content. The more opportunities you give them to engage on your platform, the more data you’ll be able to gather on who they are and what kinds of content and experiences they like.

Not only can sports companies sell this consumer data to advertisers, but “by knowing that their audience are, say, mostly men aged between 18 and 25 who read about basketball on a daily basis, advertisers have a huge strategic advantage when choosing where to spend their budget,” says Hodgkins.

Targeting Content to Known Users

As sports companies learn who their audience members are and how they react to different types of content, they can create content and experiences that delight their communities. For instance, knowing which player is your community’s favorite can help you generate extremely high-performing, related content that your audience will devour and generate conversations around. Plus, the more engaging and relevant your platform is, the more likely your community is to grow.

By serving up a premium experience to fans, sports media is able to capture meaningful data, which can significantly improve conversion strategies, grow revenue and increase consumer loyalty.

Stop relying on third-party news aggregators and social media platforms to run your ads off of, and instead, become the primary destination for consumers.

Get to know your fans on your own properties. Give them the content and experiences they love. Then use their data to inform business strategies and grow revenue. It really is as simple as that.

 

Related: What We Can Learn From Pirate Sites
RELATED: Build Your Community of Sports Fans Now
RELATED: 13 Questions Every Publisher Should Ask a Potential Tech Partner

Exit mobile version