Tag: news community

Le site d’information français La Provence adopte la solution Conversations de Viafoura pour enrichir son expérience utilisateur

La Provence, le site d’information de presse quotidienne régionale couvrant les Bouches-du-Rhône, le Vaucluse et les Alpes de Haute Provence, s’est associé à Viafoura afin de lancer la solution Conversations sur sa plateforme. Tout en améliorant la modération des commentaires et la collecte de données sur le site du média français, Conversations permet à la communauté de La Provence de suivre les auteurs et sujets qui les interpellent, tout en produisant des notifications de navigateur et des badges personnalisés. De plus, le logiciel s’appuie sur un compteur de commentaires et un carrousel des conversations les plus populaires que les internautes peuvent rejoindre pour commenter les sujets les plus chauds de l’heure.

« L’équipe de La Provence a créé une belle expérience sur son site Web grâce au compteur de commentaires et aux alarmes de notifications situés dans l’en-tête du site Web. Ceux-ci sont attirants et essentiels à l’augmentation de l’engagement des lecteurs », affirme Dalia Vainer, directrice de l’expérience client de Viafoura.

Jusque-là, la modération des commentaires n’était pas satisfaisante, et l’équipe de La Provence souhaitait passer à un système plus performant et présentant plus de fonctionnalités, capable de recueillir davantage de données sur les utilisateurs du site.

« L’objectif était de pouvoir proposer à nouveau un espace de commentaires apaisé, modéré et de qualité », explique Mathieu Cochelin, Directeur des activités numériques, Groupe La Provence. Il ajoute que Viafoura a été choisie pour son équipe très réactive : « L’équipe de Viafoura a su répondre à nos attentes en termes de fonctionnalités. Elle a aussi su comprendre nos différentes contraintes et nous aider à y trouver des solutions. »

M. Cochelin se réjouit que l’expérience communautaire ait été améliorée et enrichie par de nombreuses nouvelles fonctionnalités interactives. Il se félicite également que la solution de Viafoura ait été implantée en mobilisant des ressources de manière hebdomadaire pour cadencer au mieux le lancement du projet.

« À l’avenir, nous prévoyons une augmentation de l’acquisition de nouveaux utilisateurs, une augmentation de l’engagement et du temps passé par page, ainsi qu’une amélioration de la modération », conclut-il.

French news website La Provence launches Viafoura’s Conversations for an enriched user experience

La Provence, the news website covering the latest in politics, lifestyle, and sports for the French regions of Marseille, Aix, Avignon, Vaucluse and Alpes, has partnered with Viafoura to launch the Conversations solution on its platform. While enhancing comment moderation and data-gathering at La Provence, Conversations allows the media brand’s community to follow authors and topics, while enabling browser pushes, custom badges and comment counters, as well as a carousel of trending conversations, so they can jump in on the hottest topics of the moment.

“The team at La Provence have created a beautiful experience on their website,” says Dalia Vainer, Viafoura’s Director of Customer Experience, “using comment counts and notification bells in the header that look sharp and are critical to increasing reader engagement.”

Comments had previously been handled in-house at La Provence, and its team wished to upgrade to an automated system with more functionalities, while gathering more first-party data.

“The goal was to be able to relaunch a quality comment section that’s peaceful and well supervised,” explains Mathieu Cochelin, Digital Director at Groupe La Provence, adding that Viafoura was chosen for its very responsive team. “They were able to meet our expectations in terms of functionality. They were also able to understand our various constraints and help us find solutions.”

Cochelin is excited about the improved community experience, enriched by a wide array of new interactive features, and applauds Viafoura’s implementation at an ideal weekly rhythm.

Looking ahead, Cochelin says, “we anticipate increased user acquisition, increased engagement, and increased time-on-page, as well as improved moderation.”

Readers of Toledo’s The Blade just made first contact with Viafoura’s AI-moderated commenting platform

The Blade, Toledo’s Pulitzer prize-winning source for daily online news, has partnered with Viafoura to launch a full suite of engagement solutions designed to boost readers’ interactions with the website. These solutions include topic and author follows, comments moderated by both AI and Viafoura’s team of human moderators, live blogs to cover breaking events like elections or sports games, chats for community members, and trending conversations.

“We’re very proud to count The Blade as the newest customer to launch Viafoura on its website,” says Dalia Vainer, director of customer experience at Viafoura. “Like so many digital media companies, providing a safer, more engaging user experience is paramount to the folks at The Blade. We’re looking forward to seeing how Viafoura will help create a more civil community and provide actionable data to drive product decisions.”

The Blade partners with Viafoura

According to Jen Lyon, digital manager at The Blade, the news site was looking to reduce the amount of time staff spends moderating user content, while also increasing reader engagement in the comments section, and creating more ad revenue opportunities.

“We’re already seeing more civility in the comments, and more engagement,” says Lyon. “Readers can find stories that have active conversations quickly. As more tools roll out, I believe readers will appreciate the changes more.”

Lyon was also keen to implement Viafoura’s digital experience platform because of its full-service moderation, and its highly engaging Community Chat and Live Blogs, which allow readers to interact directly with journalists, subject matter experts or each other. 

“The onboarding team was quick to answer any questions we had in a timely fashion,” Lyon says. “It was great to have developers on the call so issues could be discussed immediately…the launch of Viafoura went smoothly.”

La Nación launches Viafoura’s Conversations on its platform with goal of boosting registrations and civil dialogue

La Nación, Argentina’s preeminent conservative newspaper, has launched Viafoura’s digital experience platform on its website, integrating the latter’s industry-leading Conversations solution. Viafoura’s Conversations will enable automated comment moderation on La Nación’s site, while also capturing data and analytics about the media company’s registered users. The Conversations solution also includes a community feed, the option to follow topics and/or authors, and a trending content carousel.

With 46 million monthly users and 343,000 paid subscribers, La Nación wanted to cultivate and nurture its community, while making it easy for readers to express themselves.

“One of our objectives is to increase our registered users’ interactions,” says Juan Alvarez, product manager at La Nación. “By switching to Viafoura, only our registered users can comment, so we hope it promotes a civil dialogue while helping our users have more mindful interactions.”

Before adopting Viafoura’s digital experience platform, La Nación was using Livefyre. Alvarez notes that his team wanted to improve the newspaper’s community experience beyond commenting, while also increasing engagement, registrations, subscriptions, time on site, and return visits.

La Nacion comments powered by Viafoura Conversations.

Part of what convinced La Nación to choose Viafoura was the scope of what the Conversations solution could offer, as well as recommendations from other trusted media brands.

But once the contract was signed, what impressed Alvarez the most was the high quality of service his team received from Viafoura. Implementing the solution happened in a short amount of time, and regular meetings helped guide La Nación’s team through the queries about the technology. Translation services were also provided during meetings to facilitate communication where needed. Alvarez adds that technical support since launching the solution has been especially efficient.

“We aim to grow our community hand-in-hand with Viafoura,” says Alvarez. “We hope to implement more solutions in the future and to continue to promote our community’s growth.”

Viafoura shares Alvarez’s enthusiasm for what’s ahead.

“We’re so excited to expand our reach in Argentina with the wonderful team at La Nación,” says Dalia Vainer, director of customer experience at Viafoura. “We’re looking forward to growing their engaged community while highlighting civility and creating a seamless end-to-end user engagement series!”

Why taking control of your community on your own platform is a much better alternative to social media

Imagine you’re the owner of a local store. I stroll in one day and tell you to let a group of nameless, faceless people somewhere far away decide how you can market to your clientele and how you can interact with them. They get to decide what the rules are and they can change them whenever they feel like. 

You’d probably take a polite pass on that deal. 

Yet that’s a little bit like what millions of online brands do when they hand over the keys to their community of followers to social media. The reality is that those platforms exert much more influence over communities than one might think. When brands don’t actually own all the access to their community on their own terms, it can hamper their business and their ability to grow. 

There’s only one real solution to this conundrum, and it involves you taking control. 

What’s wrong with having a community on Facebook?

Letting social media call the shots on engagement around your content can be risky for several reasons, says Mark Zohar, president and COO at Viafoura. 

For example, the moderation that happens on Facebook or Twitter is subject to the policies that they create and enforce. But those policies may not be the community guidelines you would support on your owned and operated properties.

If you only engage your audience on social media, you don’t actually own that customer relationship. You also don’t own the data insights and you’re vulnerable to a change in algorithm or a change in a platform’s community policies. 

“And all of a sudden it’s, ‘holy cow, my community disappeared and I can’t control that,’” says Zohar. “We’re not saying social media is going away, but a lot of brands need to start thinking about how they can reclaim their audience.”

How do I take control of my own platform?

When users come to your website, you need to provide an exciting or interesting reason for them to stay. If they can’t engage or participate, they’re probably going to leave and return to social media. 

Simply put, your audience wants to be able to engage in a community, something Zohar calls “the heart of every single product.” Providing a space for that community to thrive will help, but it has to be captivating.

“Brands need to learn from social media to create social experiences,” says Zohar. “They need to really understand that their audiences are inherently social and not to just say ‘okay, go do that somewhere else and come back for a passive consumption experience.’”

Tech platforms like Facebook are experts at providing “value-exchange moments,” or instances in which a user feels willing to reveal personal information, usually in the form of registration, in return for an incentive. But that’s just the beginning.

Create contact and connections

Zohar suggests several ways you can connect with your audience on your own platform once they’ve logged in. 

One of them is to build a community feed where users can like, comment and interact with people they follow. Viafoura gathered data from various clients and found that with user generated content, you’re going to get 10% creators and 90% consumers, but a significant portion of your overall users, about 20-25%, spend a huge amount of time engaging with and consuming content. They need a space to do that and you can provide that space. 

“Publishers can inject their own content and other interesting content in the feed so it becomes this great place where users spend a lot of time engaging with content and interacting related to their community interests,” said Zohar.

With tools crafted by Viafoura, publishing brands can allow their users to comment, like and generate discussion. They can even engage directly with brands who can participate in the conversation through things like live Q&As or AMAs, where reporters or experts can take questions from readers and answer in real time.

The payback? Community loyalty

All of these engagement and user retention capabilities add up to loyalty over the long run. 

Viafoura’s research shows that these users “pay you back” through time spent on your site, generating more page views, increasing propensity to subscribe to premium products and ideally, spending money on your site. With the right solutions, they also give you the data insights into their preferences, interests and sentiments that you can use to tailor content offers and advertising strategies. 

“All that happens only if you have access to those users on your own site where you can do all that,” added Zohar.

Why turning off the comments is a threat, not a solution, for media companies

Trolls, spam and misinformation have given commenting spaces a bad reputation.

Websites that are flooded with offensive and untrustworthy comments can lose the respect of advertisers and users. Publishers often think that the only solution is to give up and close down their commenting tools.

But shutting off the comments isn’t a solution; it’s a catalyst for serious business problems.

The issue with dropping commenting from your website

The reality is that media companies suffer the second they get rid of their website’s social tools.

“(Without comments, companies) lose a direct connection with their audience (and just provide) passive content for readers, as opposed to creating active opportunities for feedback and opinions,” says Mark Zohar, Viafoura’s president and COO. “That feedback loop between content, publisher and author is critical for high-performing content and re-engaging audiences.”

In a nutshell, media organizations need commenting tools to get closer to their communities and create better experiences for audience members and staff.

Companies that drop their comments aren’t solving anything; they’re just allowing their worst audience members to damage their brands. 

Throw in the fact that 50% of new user registrations happen on web pages with commenting tools, and it’s easy to see why social spaces are must-have website features for all publishers hoping to grow closer to their audiences.

Cupped human hands on a table with speech bubbles in the middle.

How to run safe and successful commenting spaces

Comment moderation is a publisher’s greatest weapon against offensive user behaviour. The importance of supporting any online social tools with advanced comment moderation services cannot be overstated — it’s what separates the safe, lucrative social spaces from those that are doomed to fail.

Media companies that pair their online commenting spaces with effective moderation give themselves the greatest chance to grow their audiences, customer loyalty and revenue without damaging their reputations.  

“People want to participate in communities where they feel safe,” Zohar explains. “We know from our data that communities and sites with active, positive moderation that’s civil generate engagement on-site.” 

When protected by Viafoura’s automated moderation services, our data shows that customers have seen engaged users spend 168 times more time on-site, gain up to 2,000 new monthly registrations, and view 3.6 times more pages than media companies without commenting tools. 

“Where (commenting) doesn’t happen, we see a drop-off in engagement,” adds Zohar.

Instead of ditching comments, media companies can draw on moderation to create safe environments that invite journalists, readers and commenters to communicate and connect with each other. 

Nervous that moderation might be too expensive to invest in? 

There are plenty of cost-effective AI-based and human moderation options available. You can also look for an engagement tool provider that includes moderation services directly in their commenting solution for an affordable, hassle-free experience.

Get rewarded with user data

Newsrooms don’t get much value from sending content into a void, where they never hear about it again. Moderated commenting tools give journalists the chance to have positive conversations about their content, get feedback about it from their registered readers, and use that information to make content even more compelling in the future. 

This means that as registered users leave comments on your site, you can expand your user data beyond their general profiles to include information on audience behaviours, interests, sentiments, propensity and purchase intent. 

Once you have that declarative data, you can feed it into your business model. 

“Allowing for users to communicate directly with you and (other readers) around content creates insights, (leading) to rich user profiles that evolve over time as they participate actively in the community,” says Zohar. “By understanding user behaviour on-site as well as user interest and propensity… publishers can improve things like newsletter curation, sign-ups and target users for subscriptions.”

The more first-party data you can get from commenters, the better you can group like-minded users together to personalize their experiences, send them subscription messages and show them relevant ads.  

In other words, your commenting solution has the potential to give you an edge over your competitors. So whatever you do, don’t turn off the comments!

Want to know more about our commenting and engagement solutions? Click here to check out our product suite.

How to grow your audience: 5 ways to stimulate subscriptions and registrations

While it’s easy to gauge the growth of your audience, it can be difficult to develop a clear portrait of who they are unless you have the right tools. Building a user community on your site with a community engagement tool is critical for getting to know your audience and what makes them tick.

With more users discussing news and content on and off social media, audience development on your site is now critical for attracting a wider range of readers, accelerating your engaged user strategy, and increasing subscriptions. 

Taking simple steps like creating a comments section, using registration as a gateway to participate in the comments, and providing interactive content like live blogs or AMAs can be the push your audience needs to subscribe to your site. These should be a key part of an audience growth strategy for publishers and digital media organizations alike.

So let’s look at five simple ways building a user community can help accelerate your subscription and registration strategy. 

Offer users a two-way dialogue

The days of readers passively consuming news are long gone. Today’s users not only want to read the author’s opinions, but they also want to contribute to the conversation in real-time. 

You can grow your audience by implementing a comments section that provides them with a space to engage in a two-way dialogue with journalists and other readers, so they can share their perspectives on current events. 

This enhanced dialogue can actively attract new users and drive subscriptions among those who want to leave their thoughts or opinions on content. In fact, research shows that 60.9% of commenters or comment readers would like it if journalists clarified factual questions in news comment sections. 

Gate your user community and comments

A discussion space can be used to further your audience development strategy. Once you’ve set up a comments section that allows users in the community to have a live two-way dialogue, you can gate it to incentivize people to sign up so they can participate in the conversation.

Gating the comments section can help boost subscriptions and registrations by encouraging your audience to create an account so they can leave feedback on published content.

The signup process should be effortless, with users able to quickly enter their name and email address so they can start engaging with your community about the topics that are related to their interests.

Building a relationship between commenters and journalists

When building an audience, the relationship between the reporter and reader is often overlooked. Building a user community with an active comments section not only provides users with a place to communicate, it also gives journalists and writers a resource they can use to build a closer relationship with their readers, and better understand them. 

Journalists can use community feedback to learn what their readers’ interests are, what content readers prefer, and then use that information to inform their future content strategy. 

For example, if a journalist produces an article on the Olympics Games, the audience can ask questions about related subtopics and sporting events that might make good subjects for future articles.  

As journalists engage with the community to better understand their interests, they can enhance their coverage so that their content becomes more pertinent to readers and more compelling for both subscribed and unsubscribed users. And compelling content leads to higher reader interest and drives audience growth.

Using first-party data to provide more relevant content

Building a user community on your site also provides you with direct access to valuable first-party data that you can use to analyze your audience’s profiles and break down the topics they’re most interested in. Like the comments, this also provides you with valuable insights you can use to produce more relevant content. Leveraging this information should be a priority to build and retain your audience.

For instance, if a user is interested in sports like football or boxing, you can use an AI-driven community engagement solution to recommend articles written by experts on these topics to encourage them to spend more time consuming content on your site. 

Using a community engagement solution to offer registered users personalized feeds and content recommendations is the perfect way to entice them to subscribe, so they automatically keep up-to-date with the content they find most compelling.

Live Q&As

Having an active user community provides you with a resource you can use to participate in engaging real-time content like live Q&As, where a journalist or expert in a particular field can host live Q&A sessions with the community, allowing users to ask questions and actively influence the conversation taking place.

One example of this approach is highlighted by The Independent, who recently started running live Q&As and Ask Me Anything sessions (AMAs) to give users an opportunity to ask questions to experts, journalists, and public figures. In one Q&A with a travel correspondent, users could ask questions about Omicron travel restrictions.

It’s also important to note that live Q&As also function as a connection-builder, giving your audience a chance to have a deeper connection with experts and journalists who tend to be guarded from the audience. This opportunity to connect can help you grow your audience naturally while encouraging many users to subscribe.

Building an active user community pays dividends

Giving your audience a place to come together to share their thoughts pays dividends, not just because it helps attract users to register to your site, but also because it helps you create more high-quality audience segments, which you can share with advertisers to encourage them to place ads on your site.

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