Category Archives: Audience Engagement

6 Must-Have Audience Engagement Metrics

Posted on by

Attracting an audience to your website is just the beginning. Knowing if people are interacting effectively with your website is vital. When it comes to tracking, we’ll list the most common metrics below, but before we get into that, it’s also useful to have a concept of how a basic marketing funnel works.  Generally speaking, there are three stages to the funnel

Top of Funnel (“ToFu”): behaviors and metrics that happen before, or just at the point of, your first engagement with your audience. Examples include: initial website visits, a request for more information, or signs up for a newsletter

Middle of Funnel (“MoFu”): behavior and metrics that happen after an audience member first engages with your brand, but before they purchase or sign up. Examples include: repeat visits, researching product reviews or case studies. 

Bottom of Funnel (“BoFu”): behavior and metrics that track the final actions leading up to, and including, final purchase or signup. Examples include: signing up for a free trial, going through a personalized product demo, or applying for a discount or coupon.

Why Audience Engagement Metrics Add Value

How do you tell if your marketing efforts attract the right audience for your goals? Audience engagement metrics are a powerful way to see if you are progressing effectively. Find out how to use these metrics to assess your website’s performance.

The Six Essential Audience Engagement Metrics

1) Average Session Duration

Average session duration means how much time users spend on your website and is usually the first metric you start with at the top of the funnel. 

Generally speaking, a longer session time is better because it means your message and content is resonating with your audience.  This metric has limitations, however. If a user leaves a website or switches to another tab in their browser, session duration may continue to increase even though the user is doing something else. As a general rule of thumb, session durations under 30-60 seconds are a warning signal because you are likely to see fewer conversions with so little time.

Balancing this metric with other measures like webpages per session and first-party data generated.

2) Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave your website after viewing a single page on a website. A high bounce rate suggests that users aren’t satisfied with what they find on your website. It’s a useful metric at all stages of the funnel – especially as you’re working to optimize specific landing pages – but it’s especially useful at the top of the funnel and should be one of the first things you optimize for along with session time. 

It’s also one of the oldest metrics tracked by website analytics tools. According to Semrush, the average bounce rate for websites varies from 20-25% at the low end for ecommerce and B2B and up to 90% for landing pages, blogs and portals. 

It’s also helpful to measure bounce rates by page. For example, a blog post targeting a high-value search keyword should aspire to a lower bounce rate if it is well-optimized. However, other pages on your website might have a relatively higher bounce rate if they are less optimized.

3) Returning Visitors vs New Visitors

This metric gives you a broader view of your audience and is one of the first middle of funnel metrics to optimize. If a website has few returning visitors, that is a warning signal. Few returning visitors may imply that users see no value in returning to your website.

One way to improve the number of returning visitors to your website is to provide new engaging content and experiences live a Live Blog that provides continuous updates for breaking news or continued coverage of an ongoing trend. Other successful tactics include hosting a regular event (weekly, monthly, etc) so that your audience becomes accustomed to returning to your site at a regular cadence.

To help your audience remember, you can help direct them back to your website through email & social campaigns or mobile push notifications. 

4) Social Media Shares

‍

‍

Social shares are an interesting engagement metric because it requires user action. However, a social share doesn’t entail the same level of commitment as a conversion or purchase so it may feel more accessible. 

Interestingly, social shares can happen at any point in the funnel as current customers, or audience members in the middle of your funnel, may wind up sharing content to their own audience who’ve never encountered your brand before, which then becomes a top of funnel experience for them.

Tracking social shares over time can tell you which content, themes and pages resonate with your audience. For example, you may find that an online event with Arena live chat prompts increased social shares and traffic. Or you might find that video content prompts the most social share activity. 

While social sharing is helpful, keep the drawbacks in mind. It can be challenging to achieve your growth goals when people engage with your brand on social media rather than on your website. The trick is to encourage social shares that contain teasers or calls to action that invite people back to your domain.

For instance, create a quote image to share a comment from a keynote and include a CTA to experience the full keynote speech on your website, or use social media to promote a coupon or discount that is only redeemable on your website, or ecommerce storefront. 

5) Average Web Pages Per Session

‍

‍

Holding everything else equal, a person who visits multiple web pages is more valuable than someone who only visits a single page. That said, not all pages are created equal. Compare two visitors who visit different pages for a B2B company.

  • Visitor A: visits a blog post and then visits the contact page to request product information.
  • Visitor B: visits multiple blog posts and then leaves without opting in to receive more information.

In the short term, visitor A is more valuable than visitor B. To encourage more contact page conversions, look for ways to weave in more links to your contact page. 

6) First-party Data Generated

Your audience is busy, so it is vital to have a way to get in touch with them after they leave your website. That’s the first reason why you want to have a “first party” connection with your audience, such as having them join your email list. The second reason is that a person who provides information about their interests and preferences through clicks and participation in online events is easier to engage.

The amount of first-party data you can gather from your audience is limited only by your technology and creativity! Here are two specific first-party data metrics you can use to get started.

Email List Signup

Email marketing remains one of the most reliable and effective ways to engage audiences. Therefore, encouraging website visitors to sign up for your list should be a goal. After a person joins your email list, you will have the chance to gather additional first-party insights by observing their email engagement (e.g. link clicks, opens, replies).

Online Event Participation

Track the quantity and quality of engagement with your online events. For instance, a brand that hosts a monthly event with live chat might consider anybody who participates in more than one event in three months highly engaged.

How To Use Audience Engagement Metrics For Growth

Gathering and reviewing all of these engagement metrics is a good starting point. Yet, your audience will not grow simply through data gathering (wouldn’t that make life easy!). Instead, it’s essential to leverage engagement metrics in your workflow.

Use these tactics to make sure you get full value from all of the engagement metrics you’re gathering.

Identify Red Flags 

If multiple metrics (e.g., bounce rate increases and social shares fall) trend in the wrong direction for a prolonged period of time, that may be a red flag. Left unchecked, your audience engagement and growth goals may suffer if such red flags are ignored.

Clarify The Audience/Customer Journey

We all make assumptions about how our audience members and customers engage with us. You might assume that a person needs to visit your website daily for five days to become a regular visitor and then a customer in the next 90 days. The audience engagement metrics above – especially first-party data – can clarify if your assumptions are valid so that you can plan future growth effectively.

Develop And Test New Content and Campaigns

Developing growth ideas and tactics from a blank page is tough! Fortunately, audience engagement metrics save you time and money here. When a given piece of content resonates across multiple engagement metrics, that is a solid signal to create more content on a similar theme to keep your audience coming back for more.

Lifting Audience Engagement Is Easier With These Tools

The art of growing your audience loyalty over time takes significant effort, some risk and creativity. There are ways to make it easier! Install Arena Live Chat and Arena Live Blog on your website. These tools make it simple and easy to create engaging experiences that will draw in your audience. Discover how to build a thriving community right on your website.

Start A Sustainable First Party Data Strategy: 5 Principles

Posted on by

The coming end of third-party cookies means brands and publishers need to evolve. The road forward lies in embracing first-party data. First-party data refers to information your organization has collected from customers and users. As third-party cookies are ending, brands should focus on first-party data.

Got First Party Data Party FOMO?

First-party data is crucial to engaging your audience and customers. It gives you a rich understanding of what your audience wants. Even more powerful, collecting first-party data means you’re building a direct relationship with customers and audience members.

Despite these benefits, many organizations have yet to use first-party data fully. Several reasons for that slow adoption include a need for the right technology. In some cases, first-party data may be viewed as a marketing technology project rather than the lifeblood of growing your audience.

Google’s research shows that investing in personalization offers excellent results. Specifically, the company found “a personalized approach increased the brand’s ROI between 12% and 35%, depending on the marketing channel.” Thriving in the new digital reality defined by first-party data is vital. Use the following strategies to build first-party data into your business.

5 Strategies To Create Sustainable First-Party Data

Charting your path to audience engagement and growth in a first-party world starts with the right approach. 

1. Define your goals for first-party data

‍

‍

Gathering and using first-party data will take time, effort, and resources. Before making those investments, it’s wise to take a few moments to clarify your goals. Ideally, your first-party data objectives should be linked to other organizational goals (e.g., revenue, engagement, etc.).

We recommend creating a mix of quantity and quality goals to inform your approach. For example, you might set a goal of growing your online audience of registered community members by 10,000 people. To ensure your community is growing effectively, add a quality goal, such as at least 20% of registered users making a posting on your website once per month.

For more guidance on using community tactics and technology to grow, see our post: Ways To Use Community Tactics & Tools To Hit Your Goals.

2. Answer the “what’s in it for your audience” question

‍

‍

It’s not 2010 anymore – expectations around user privacy and legal changes have changed the conversation. In other words, the days of relying on sneaky methods to gather data from users are over. Instead, success in a first-party data world means offering a compelling value exchange to your audience in return for their data.

Your approach to earning first-party data from your audience will be more successful by making multiple offers to your audience. For example, a consumer brand might offer a discount code or access to a sale in return for first-party data. Discount offers aren’t suitable for every situation, though.

Another way to answer the “what’s in it for me?” questionis to focus on your community. For instance, you may offer exclusive online events with influencers, company leaders, and others to those who sign up for events. In this way, your audience receives a clear benefit – insights and new connections – in return for providing their data.

3. Build your first-party technology platform

Once you have your goals and value proposition, it’s crucial to have the right technology in place. Arena has a suite of solutions to help you earn and use first-party data.

‍

Arena Live Chat

‍

‍

Use Live Chat to create engaging community experiences directly on your website. Arena Live Chat is a lightweight application that can be added to any site in minutes. When you use live chat to offer exclusive experiences, you’ll give your audience a reason to keep coming back to your website. Over time, you’ll gather more data to understand your audience’s preferences better so you can connect better with them.

‍

Arena Live Blog

‍

‍

Are you a publisher covering breaking news for your audience? Keep your audience focused on your website as the place to get live updates rather than social media. Arena also makes it easy to pull in social media posts that meet your brand guidelines.

‍

Arena Personas (Beta)

‍

‍

Arena Personas (Beta) make it easy to segment your audience based on their behavior (e.g., clicks on content) and interests. It’s a powerful way to organize all the first-party data you’re gathering through live chat and live blog experiences.

4. Apply “test and learn” thinking to first-party data

‍

‍

Marketers and publishers have relied on third-party cookies for over a decade. Marketing systems, habits, and processes have all been built to leverage those cookies. Making the switch to a first-party data world wouldn’t happen overnight.

Ease the pressure on your time to adopt a test-and-learn philosophy. It may take trying plenty of new ideas to generate and use first-party data. Then review what’s working every 90 days before making additional changes. 

To illustrate this strategy, let’s look at two parts of your audience defined by their first-party data.

Audience Segment 1: Product Interest

For example, you might create a test assuming that people who have clicked on multiple product pages in a short period are ready to buy. You can test that idea by emailing offers to that part of your audience. If they don’t respond, it may be time to test a different marketing message or portion of your audience. 

Audience Segment 2: High Chat Engagement

You may find that people who view product pages don’t fully appreciate the value of your brand yet. In that case, you may want to test a campaign with a different segment – like audience members who have participated in several chat sessions – responding to your messages better.

5. Update your measurement processes

‍

‍

The way your organization measures the value of first-party data will need to evolve. Examine how marketing campaigns and tests using first-party data compare to other efforts. 

While measurement is essential, a word of caution is in order. As mentioned above, first-party data centric marketing may be new to your organization. Keep your expectations reasonable as your team transitions to first-party data. Creating a digital community on your website will take time to pay off.

Equip Your Organization For First-Party Data

Thinking about the role of first-party data will only take you so far. The next step is to get out there and gather data from your audience. Simply asking for permission to gather data can help, but that’s an incomplete solution.

You also need engagement technologies like Arena Live Chat and Arena Live Blog to offer experiences for your audience. 

How publishers can grow engagement and reduce cancellations

Posted on by

As a publisher, you take pride in your content. Your staff and freelancers put countless hours into production. 

Yet, industry studies estimate that 40% of your subscriber base paid for a subscription but do not access your publication. These sleeper subscribers are quietly hurting your publishing business in several ways.

When nearly half of your subscribers fail to engage in your content, you can lose revenue. Sleeping subscribers are at a greater risk of churning out, causing revenue instability. Second, a significant number of sleeper subscribers means you are losing advertising revenue. 

What happens if your publication overlooks sleeper subscribers and continues business as usual? The disengaged subscribers will only cause compounding problems over time.

Getting The Silent Treatment From Your Subscribers

As the months and quarters roll by, sleeper subscribers who fail to engage with your publication cause even more problems. 

Compounding Losses in Advertising Revenue

Advertisers want to connect with a living, breathing audience. When a third or more of your paid subscribers ignore you, it becomes more challenging to fulfill advertiser needs.

Some publishers try to solve this problem by building their audience further, but that’s a brutal way to grow. It can lead to a shallow relationship with your brand. Lower levels of engagement mean less trust in your brand and less engagement with ads.

Lost Opportunities For Organic Growth and Referrals

A trusted recommendation from a friend tends to be trusted far more than any kind of influence. According to BrightLocal, 49% of people trust personal recommendations from friends and family. 

Your disengaged subscribers are unlikely to share links or offers with people they know. Since you have fewer referrals to fuel growth, your publication will depend on other, more costly efforts to sustain growth.

Declining Staff Morale

Your editorial staff thrives on feedback and engagement with the audience. When they see a fall in audience engagement, staying highly motivated at work is tricky. This type of employee disengagement is potentially even more severe when considering why people choose journalism as a career.

Many people join journalism because they want to share a passion, make the world a better place or connect with people. When the audience goes quiet, the inner fire that keeps your staff coming back to work each day starts to dim. 

There are many costs when a large portion of your audience sleeps on their subscription. Growth gets complicated because word-of-mouth marketing stalls. Employee morale falls further because less feedback from the audience. Growing advertising revenue becomes more difficult. 

Fortunately, there are several ways you can wake up your audience and bring them back to full engagement.

Firing Up The Imagination Of Your Subscribers The Right Way

All of your subscribers once saw value in your publication. Then, somehow, life got in the way, and they became distracted. The following strategies can help you to reduce your sleeper audience faster. The best part? These strategies don’t rely on magical thinking or unsustainable tactics. 

Strategy 1: Transform your website with engagement technology

Like it or not, social media has conditioned your audience to seek instant gratification. Catering to those expectations doesn’t mean you have to recreate Facebook. However, offering a sense of connection between your audience members does matter.

Start by adding Arena Live Chat to your website. This technology makes it easy to host interactive social experiences for your audience. Further, Arena has built-in moderation features to keep the discussions brand-safe. Engagement will naturally increase when your audience sees your website as a place to connect with exciting information and friends.

The next opportunity is to leverage Arena Live Blog to fully leverage breaking news stories. Whether you cover elections, sports events, conferences, or trials, your audience is hungry for trustworthy information. With a live blog, you can increase audience engagement by rapidly publishing updates as a story evolves. Arena live blog makes it easy to manage multiple contributors so you can keep workload levels reasonable.

With these two technologies in place, growing audience engagement gets easier. Instead of reading a digital newspaper, your audience will see your website as a social experience revolving around the news. 

Strategy 2: Improve audience engagement with segmentation

The next strategy to lift subscriber engagement starts by looking at your audience with more nuance. Start by looking at the most extreme segments of your audience: the highly engaged and the sleepers. For simplicity, let’s define highly engaged as above-average engagement (e.g., if the above subscribers have ten pageviews per month, anyone with more than ten pageviews would be tagged as highly engaged). Sleeper subscribers would be those with zero pageviews over the last 60 days.

Analyzing your highly engaged subscribers

Highly engaged subscribers are the lifeblood of your business. It’s important to start with these subscribers and understand their behavior. Your goal is to identify patterns and pain points in your subscriber’s life so that you can create even more super fans!

Use the following questions to understand better what your highly engaged subscribers have in common:

  • Referral source. Start by seeing where your top subscribers come from. For example, a business-focused publication might acquire its most engaged subscribers from LinkedIn.
  • Promotions. Many publications run promotions and discount campaigns. The question is this: are those campaigns generating truly engaged subscribers or not? If the answer is no, you may need to rethink your campaigns.
  • Onboarding experience. Examine the types of content that new subscribers tend to spend the most time during their first month on your platform. For example, are they connecting with certain high-profile writers or personalities? If so, consider doubling down on those subscribers.
  • Social engagement. Look at social actions like sharing links to articles, and social reactions (e.g., likes and thumbs up) to see what kind of content resonates with VIP subscribers.
  • Editorial patterns. Analyze the top topics and sections that pull in your best subscribers weekly. For instance, if you find that sports coverage or certain columnists successfully attract high engagement, it may be wise to promote those assets to new subscribers.

With these insights in mind, you’ll be equipped to run new data-driven campaigns to improve onboarding with new subscribers.

Uncover the causes of subscriber discontent

Analyzing your sleeper subscribers may feel a bit uncomfortable. These people don’t see much value in your publication, as shown by their lack of interaction. Despite this fact, it is crucial to understand the cause of subscriber discontent for two reasons.

Churn Risk

Disengaged subscribers are likelier to cancel their subscriptions, especially during economic downturns. 

Improve Future Subscriber Acquisition

There may be certain messages, promotions, and tactics attracting the wrong type of subscribers to your business.

Use a mix of analytical and qualitative methods to understand why these subscribers are not engaging with your content. The prompts below can help you to design your analysis.

Data Questions 

  • Do sleeper subscribers have any common demographics? 
  • Are there any patterns regarding when or how the subscriber disengaged? (For example: you may have offered in-depth coverage of the World Cup, which turned off subscribers uninterested in that event)
  • Did the subscriber submit any tickets to customer service? What were the requests?

Qualification Questions

Use these questions as free-form questions in a survey or add them to a script if you call subscribers:

  • What attracted you to subscribe to the publication? (For example – was the person brought in through a promotion or subsided based on event-based news like an election?)
  • How do you like to access the publication (e.g., desktop, mobile, app, email)?
  • If we could make one change to make the publication more appealing to you, what would that be?
  • Do you subscribe to other publications? If so, which ones?
  • Do you know anyone subscribes to the publication? (This question helps you to understand the quality of community engagement).

Strategy 3: Add digital events and hybrid events to the subscriber experience

In strategy one, you learned about Arena Live Chat. Digital events are one of the most valuable ways for publishers to use chat with their subscribers. Take a look at the following ways to use digital events, and chat, to grow engagement with your subscribers.

VIP Guest Ask Me Anything

As a publisher, you’re probably connected with industry leaders, elected officials, sports stars, and other fascinating people. Put those connections to work by creating a virtual event with a star guest. Make it a win for the guest by promoting them, such as an actor’s upcoming movie release.

Arena Live Chat offers a blend of automated and manual moderation features to keep the chat brand safe and comfortable for all participants. That means your audience can focus on engaging in the event rather than dealing with online trolls.

Exclusive Access To Premium Content

Examine your publication’s upcoming coverage and plan a virtual event around your premium coverage. For instance, Forbes could offer a virtual event about trends in wealth in anticipation of their annual “Forbes 400” feature on the richest people in America.

Enrich Offline Events With A Chat Experience

Many publications organize or participate in-person events. One challenge with these events is that they may not be convenient for all subscribers to attend. One way to increase subscriber engagement is to offer your subscribers a complimentary virtual event ticket for your top events.

Building Strong Subscriber Engagement For The Long Term

You don’t have to live with the frustration of disengaged subscribers. Use the three strategies outlined in this guide to understand what’s working and what’s not working for your audience. You can then leverage Arena’s platform to give your audience more ways to meet each other and trust your brand more deeply.

Stop News Avoidance Now: 3 Engagement Principles

Posted on by

Many publishers still offer a standardized news experience that looks the same to everybody. That “one size fits all” experience is there for a reason – it’s inspired by the print experience that offered a uniform page to every subscriber. That’s no longer enough to connect with audience preferences that revolve around data-powered personalization.

The way to win audience engagement and subscribers requires personalization and data. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube present customized experiences based on the user’s connections and preferences. Other online services like Netflix and Amazon have also leveraged personalized experiences to grow engagement. 

There’s a clear ROI to investing in personalization. Industry research suggests that high levels of personalization can lift conversions by 30% or more. That means increased subscriber sign-ups and fewer cancellations, key ways boost revenue and profitability.

Offering personalized experiences helps to lift customer retention and audience engagement. For publishers, personalization is also vital because publishers are facing a crisis of confidence and trust.

Misinformation And Declining Trust: An Existential Crisis For Publishers

Growing audience engagement and subscriptions become difficult when audiences do not trust a publisher on a fundamental level. The Pew Research Center has found that trust in national news organizations fell from 76% in 2017 to 58% in 2021. The same research also found trust is falling for local news from 82% in 2016 to 75% in 2021. Distrust isn’t the only challenge, either.

The Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism found that 72% of news industry leaders found that news avoidance is a challenge. Avoiding the news is driven by, “a response to media coverage related to politics, climate change, inflation or coverage of the war in Ukraine, which leaves people feeling overwhelmed and powerless.” says News Media Canada.

Solving news avoidance will also take a variety of strategies, including editorial changes. The Reuters Institute argues that explanatory journalism, Q&A formats, and inspirational stories are worthwhile solutions to news avoidance. All of these changes have their place in leading to a solution. 

Solving the misinformation crisis will ultimately require collaboration across society, including educators, publishers, and other stakeholders. Publishers have an opportunity to lead the conversation by enhancing trust.

Laying A Foundation For Trust: Integrity, Data, and Personalization

Restoring your audience’s trust in your publication starts with developing three principles: integrity, data, and personalization. These principles can then help to guide you through the tactical steps to follow.

Principle 1: Integrity

Publishers can earn trust by restoring a focus on integrity. Fortunately, many publishers and journalists are committed to practicing good journalism ethics. That said, some of the commitment to integrity is invisible to your audience. With some measure of transparency, it is easier for a skeptical audience to trust you.

Improving your publication’s reputation for integrity will depend on how your audience perceives you. The following methods can help you to enhance your perceived integrity.

Reinforce fact-checking

When a publisher fails to collect and present accurate information, it’s tough to maintain audience trust. For high-profile stories, it’s worth making the extra effort to verify the facts. Investing more effort into accuracy will also help to separate your publication from less professional outlets.

Own your mistakes and follow up

Every publisher makes mistakes now and then – it’s inevitable given the tight timelines and other pressures of publishing. When mistakes happen, whether factual errors or something else, take the time to update your digital stories with corrections. Many publishers already do this, so implementing this best practice is vital to staying  

Invite your audience to occasional behind-the-scenes conversations

Occasionally pulling back the curtain on the publishing process can also help to build trust with your audience. For example, share how you approach high-profile or controversial coverage. By revealing the care and due diligence you use, inspiring audience trust will get easier.

While integrity matters, it will only take you so far. To compete successfully against the largest media outlets, leveraging data and personalization is vital.

Principle 2: Data 

‍

Data is the next element in solving news avoidance and boosting audience engagement. Specifically, publishers need to make gathering and using first-party data a priority. First-party data is gathered directly from your audience without relying on anyone else. Asking consumers to provide more data is more likely to succeed when the audience sees value.

There are several ways to invest more deeply in data to build audience engagement and grow, including the following:

Deepen your audience understanding with first-party data

First-party data means information your audience has directly provided to you. For example, you might track opens and clicks on your email newsletter. That data gives you direct insights into what your audience values.

Upskill your journalists on data literacy

More and more stories and coverage today require data journalism skills. Whether you train staff, recruit people with this expertise, or take a hybrid approach, data skills matter. The capacity to analyze data critically for your audience will become a key way to build trust and counter misinformation.

Principle 3: Personalization

‍

Personalization matters in rebuilding trust because it shows that you are paying attention to what your audience values. For many publications, personalization based on first-party data is the largest opportunity for growth. Therefore, we’ll explore this opportunity in the greatest depth.

Depending on your goals and resources, there are multiple ways to personalize the subscriber experience. Here are some of the most popular ways to personalize the subscriber experience.

Personalize The Homepage Experience

Many publishers, especially those with a background in print, present their home page

like the front page of a newspaper. Some subscribers may like that approach, but it may not work for everyone. Give subscribers the option to customize their homepage experience based on their interests. For example, some of your audience may want in-depth political coverage, while others only want to see breaking business stories.

Tailor The Email Experience

Your email newsletter experience is the next opportunity to leverage personalization. Take inspiration from the Morning Brew, an email-only news publisher. The publication started with a general news publication broadly focused on technology and business stories in the US. More recently, the company has created separate email newsletters based on job roles (e.g., CFO Brew) and industry interests (e.g., Marketing Brew).

Arena Live Blog makes creating this kind of experience easy! For example, a new publisher could set up a live blog feed for local news and  another for sports and create an email newsletter based on the most popular content. In that way, your email newsletter delivers only the most popular content to email subscribers!

Invite Subscribers To Exclusive Events

Welcoming your subscribers with premium events is one of the best ways to offer a personalized experience. From the audience’s perspective, an event is a powerful networking opportunity because you can ask questions and interact with people who share your interests. From the publisher’s viewpoint, digital events are a powerful way to deepen audience engagement and gather data.

Running digital events doesn’t have to be complicated either. You just need the right tools – like Arena Live Chat – to get started. Check out the next section for tips and tricks on how to use live chat in your events!

Let’s take a closer look at how publishers can use digital engagement and events to engage their audience.

Unlocking More First-Party Data With Events: 4 Strategies

Unlike static articles, podcasts, or videos, interactive events offer the chance to connect with others who share similar interests. 

Expand Access To In-Person Events

A growing list of publishers like TechCrunch and WIRED offer in-person events to serve their subscribers. For those subscribers able to attend these events, there’s nothing quite like breaking bread with other people. However, the reality is that many of your subscribers may not find traditional events convenient to attend due to travel costs and other responsibilities.

The solution is to offer a digital pass to your event. Using Arena Live Chat, you can use chat experiences on your website to engage your subscribers in various ways. For those who buy digital tickets, you might offer an intimate small group event to interact with your publication’s top personalities. 

Run Brandsafe Events With VIP Guests

Every industry and interest has celebrities and thought leaders. Building an event around an exciting guest is one of the best ways to create an enticing event experience. One challenge associated with running a live event with a high-profile guest is moderation.

While many celebrities have a large fan base, such personalities inevitably attract their share of detractors and haters. Arena has you covered here! You get customizable AI profanity filters to stop the most common “not safe for work” language from ever making it into your chat. Also, Arena provides moderation features, so your staff can filter questions and comments before posting them.

Enhance Coverage Of Live Events

When a big story breaks, your audience will be hungry for up-to-date coverage and analysis. Major events in sports and politics offer tremendous opportunities to provide in-depth coverage. 

Arena Live Blog is one of the best ways to increase engagement during these high-profile events. Your team can leverage a combination of breaking news and content created in advance (e.g., explainers, Q&A with experts, etc.). A live blog – which some publishers call ‘live updates’ – makes it easy to provide short updates. 

When a major news story breaks, your audience may take to social media to share their thoughts. Arena Live Blog equips you with curating social media content to enrich your coverage. However, unfiltered social media can bring low-quality and inappropriate material. 

Arena Live Blog keeps publishers in control of how they bring in social media content. You can use a combination of automation and manual filtering to ensure that every social media update you feature meets your brand guidelines.

The Path To Bringing Personalization To Your Website

Building trust and engagement with your audience is a journey. Yet the first few steps of lifting engagement don’t have to take a long time. Many companies find they can install and implement Arena Live Chat and Live Blog in less than an hour (some are even faster!). Discover Arena’s solutions for publishers!

Leveraging the Success of Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok for Your Brand’s Growth

Posted on by

Social media platforms have revolutionized the way brands interact with their audience. Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok, in particular, have emerged as powerful tools for brand marketing and community building, offering unique opportunities for engagement, storytelling, and viral content creation. This article delves into how the success of these platforms can be harnessed to boost your brand strategy.

With recent disruptions at Twitter, including concerns around hate speech, upheavals in their management, and wavering trust from advertisers, many have been left pondering the future and efficacy of social media for branding. While it’s tempting to generalize and deem the era of social media marketing as waning, there are gems in the digital landscape that offer unparalleled opportunities.

The Importance of Social Media to Community Building

Building a community on social media is crucial for fostering strong, meaningful connections between a brand and its audience. Social media platforms provide a dynamic space for real-time interactions, enabling brands to engage directly with their followers, gather instant feedback, and create a sense of belonging. By consistently sharing valuable content, responding to comments, and participating in conversations, brands can nurture loyalty and trust. This continuous engagement not only helps in retaining customers but also attracts new ones through word-of-mouth and increased visibility.

Moreover, by bringing social media content to your website, you can further strengthen your digital marketing strategies. Integrating social media feeds into your site creates a seamless content stream that enhances user experience and keeps your audience engaged across multiple platforms. This holistic approach ensures your brand strategy is consistent and compelling, driving sustained growth and community building.

Understanding the Changing Tides of Social Media

Selecting the right platforms to amplify your brand engagement on social media. Remember, on these platforms, the relationship with your audience isn’t truly yours. They can modify the rules, adjust algorithms, or introduce new features, impacting your audience engagement. Therefore, your overarching strategy should be to drive this audience back to assets you own, such as your website.

Relevant studies to note

  • Business Insider Intelligence: Highlights TikTok as the favorite among Gen Z.
  • Nielsen: Indicates 80% of sports enthusiasts use social media platforms to stay connected with their favorite teams.
  • Social Media Examiner and HubSpot: Respectively found that 85% of marketers leverage YouTube, while 70% are tapping into the potential of Reddit for marketing.

Diving Deeper into the Giants

1. YouTube: Visual Storytelling

Founded in 2005, YouTube is a powerful platform for visual storytelling. Brands can create high-quality videos that showcase their products, share customer testimonials, or provide how-to guides. Engaging video content not only attracts viewers but also keeps them on the platform longer, enhancing brand recall and loyalty.

‍

‍

Key Capabilities

  • Audio and video files upload, allowing users to create content playlists and collections.
  • YouTube Shorts: a new functionality that works similarly to TikTok, within the mobile app and web browser.
  • Community features, enable users to interact with other users through comments, likes, and subscriptions.
  • Live streaming and captioning.
  • Offers advertising via Google and sponsored video collaborations.

YouTube SEO Best Practices

Optimizing video titles, descriptions, and tags with relevant keywords is crucial for YouTube SEO. Creating compelling thumbnails and including call-to-actions within videos can also boost engagement. Regularly updating your channel with fresh content helps maintain viewer interest and attract new subscribers.

Fit for Business Types: Media & Publishing houses, Entertainment, Retail & eCommerce with video showcases.

2. TikTok: Viral Trends and Challenges

TikTok’s algorithm favors content that is engaging and entertaining. Brands can capitalize on this by creating short, catchy videos that align with current trends. Participating in challenges, using popular music, and collaborating with influencers are effective ways to increase visibility and reach on TikTok.

‍

‍

Key Capabilities

  • Limited to 10-minute video durations; shorter videos gain traction.
  • TikTok Stories last only 24 hours, similar to Instagram Stories.
  • TikTok has filters, a sound library, video duet and reply, and a robust editing tool kit.
  • Provides CPM and CPC advertising options.

Best Practices for Creating Viral TikTok Content

To create viral content, brands should focus on creativity and relevance. Keeping videos short and engaging, using trending hashtags, and encouraging user-generated content can enhance the chances of going viral. Brands can capitalize on community challenges and influencer partnerships, monitoring analytics helps in understanding what works and refining strategies accordingly.

Fit for Business Types: Consumer brands, publishers, and Entertainment sectors seeking genuine audience engagement.

3. Reddit: Community-Driven Engagement

Famous as a “community of communities”, Reddit is known for its diverse and highly engaged user base. By participating in relevant subreddits, brands can connect with niche communities and build authentic relationships. Engaging in discussions, sharing valuable content, and responding to user queries can help brands establish trust and authority within these communities.

Key Capabilities

  • Hosts subreddits dedicated to specific interests.
  • Subreddits are managed by moderators, know as “Redditors”, who help keep the discussions safe and relevant.
  • Community features such as submissions, comments, private messages, and more.
  • Offers varied advertising options from sponsored links to Q&As.

Best Practices for Reddit Marketing

To succeed on Reddit, brands should focus on authenticity and value, as well as respecting platforms conventions and community standards. Avoid overly promotional posts and instead, contribute meaningful insights and content. Utilizing Reddit Ads can also help target specific demographics and drive traffic to your website.

Fit for Business Types: Companies focusing on niche audiences, wanting to build or integrate into existing communities.

4. Twitch: Live Streaming and Engagement

Twitch, primarily known for its live streaming capabilities, has evolved into a vital platform for brands looking to engage with their audience in real-time. With millions of daily active users, Twitch offers a unique opportunity to connect with a highly interactive and engaged community. By hosting live streams, brands can showcase their products, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses, and engage in real-time conversations with viewers. This level of interaction fosters a sense of immediacy and authenticity, allowing brands to build strong, loyal communities.

‍

Key Capabilities

  • Offers an immersive viewer experience with live streams.
  • Provides conventional advertising and sponsorships through donations and bits.
  • Gaming features for both streamers and gamers.
  • Category browser.
  • Squad streaming to watch multiple streams.

Best Practices

To succeed on Twitch, brands should focus on creating engaging and interactive content, understanding unique content niches such as gaming, cooking, fitness and music. Brands can collaborate with streamers that resonate with your company’s ethos, hosting live Q&A sessions, product demonstrations, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content can captivate viewers and encourage participation.

Utilizing Twitch’s chat feature to respond to viewers’ comments and questions in real-time enhances the viewer experience and strengthens the community bond. Additionally, collaborating with popular Twitch streamers can help brands tap into established communities and gain credibility.

Fit for Business Types: Brands targeting Gen Z, those in Entertainment, Fitness, and any brand wishing to tap into niche segments with high user engagement.

Discovering Niche Platforms

Many social media networks specialize in a specialized niche. While smaller sites may not have TikTok or YouTube audiences, they have other benefits. Focused audiences are easier to discover. Building ties with influencers may be easier.

  • LinkedIn, the leading business social media platform, now features articles, videos, and groups.
  • Sports Thread is a student-athlete social network. Brands have new potential since the NCAA allowed student-athletes to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness (NIL).
  • Ravelry is a knitting, crocheting, spinning, and related social network. It’s estimated that 45 million Americans crochet and knit. Reaching women, who make up majority of this population, using this medium may be new.
  • Social network Goodreads connects authors and readers. This Amazon-owned platform is essential for publishers seeking enthusiastic readers.

Success stories: How well-known companies have used social media for marketing

1. The Home Depot

The Home Depot is a home improvement retailer that uses YouTube to create product videos, tutorials, and live streams. The company has over 10 million subscribers on YouTube and its videos have been viewed over 1 billion times.

The Home Depot’s YouTube channel has helped the company to:

  • Increase brand awareness: The company’s videos have helped to introduce its products and services to a wider audience.
  • Generate leads and sales: The company’s videos have helped to generate leads and sales by providing information about its products and services.
  • Build relationships with customers: The company’s videos have helped to build relationships with customers by providing them with helpful information and advice.

2. The NBA

The NBA is a professional basketball league that uses TikTok to create short, engaging videos that can be shared with its fans. The league has over 100 million followers on TikTok and its videos have been viewed over 10 billion times.

The NBA’s TikTok channel has helped the league to:

  • Engage with fans: The league’s videos have helped to engage with fans by providing them with short, entertaining content.
  • Promote its games: The league’s videos have helped to promote its games by showcasing highlights and behind-the-scenes content.
  • Build excitement for the league: The league’s videos have helped to build excitement for the league by creating a sense of community among its fans.

3. The International Cricket Council (ICC)

The ICC is the governing body of cricket that uses Reddit to connect with fans and answer their questions. The organization has over 100,000 subscribers on Reddit and its posts have been upvoted over 1 million times.

The ICC’s Reddit channel has helped the organization to:

  • Connect with fans: The organization’s posts have helped to connect with fans by providing them with a platform to ask questions and interact with the organization.
  • Answer questions: The organization’s posts have helped to answer questions from fans about cricket.
  • Build a community: The organization’s posts have helped to build a community among cricket fans.

These are just a few examples of how well-known companies have successfully integrated social media into their marketing strategies. If you are looking for a way to reach your target audience, build relationships with customers, and generate leads and sales, then integrating social media into your marketing strategy is a great option.

How to Integrate your Social Media Content on your Website

Bringing your content from social media to create a social stream with Arena Community allows you to seamlessly integrate dynamic, real-time updates from platforms like Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube directly into your website. This integration not only enriches your site with fresh, engaging content but also enhances user interaction by keeping visitors informed and connected. By showcasing social media highlights, user-generated content, and live updates, you create a vibrant content stream that fosters community engagement, strengthens your digital marketing strategies, and provides a cohesive brand experience across multiple channels.

Crafting A Resilient Digital Strategy

It’s evident that while platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok offer unmatched potential, putting all your eggs in their baskets can be precarious. Brands need to prioritize driving traffic back to owned assets. Enhancing your website with community-centric features like live chats or live blogs can be a game-changer. Dive deeper into how integrating solutions like Arena’s Live Blog can redefine your community-building strategy.

Journalism Competition and Preservation Act: 5 Things To Do

Posted on by

Remember when Facebook kicked Australian publishers off the platform in 2021? That could happen to news publishers in the US if the proposed legislation becomes law. Legal experts are still debating the impact of the bill. Some say it may help publishers, while others see it as a threat.

Whether the legislation helps or hurts your business, we can say one thing for certain. Building a direct relationship with your audience with first-party data remains a critically important hedge against uncertainty. We’ll unpack the key developments regarding The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act and then share five strategies you can use to grow no matter what happens with this legislation.

The proposed legislation  – the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2022 (JCPA) – is currently being considered by the U.S. Congress. The legislation is similar in spirit and objectives to the Australian legislation that prompted Facebook’s displeasure in 2021 and is currently in the news after being attached to a “must pass” defense funding bill on Dec 5th. Adding the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to the defense bill would make the bill challenging to a Presidential veto. 

One organization suggesting the JCPA could be a boon is the News Media Alliance, an industry group that includes over 1000 news publishers. In a recent blog post, the Alliance stated that “the Australian law resulted in countless jobs for local journalists and $140 million to news outlets, which translates to billions in the U.S.” That sounds good. But other sources, like The Hill, argue the bill is dangerous to journalism and a gift to extremist media groups who could exploit loopholes to force the promotion of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2022: The Key Points

In spirit, the JCPA is similar to Australia’s proposed legislation in 2021. It seeks to redefine the relationship between news publishers and online platforms. Depending on your interests, the bill is a boon or curse.

The key provisions of the bill include the following:

1,500 Employee Limit To Benefit Creates Winners and Losers

The bill focuses on benefiting “digital journalism providers” with less than 1500 full-time employees. Larger media brands like ABC News (8000+ employees) or FOX News (2800+ employees) are unlikely to be affected.

However, many smaller news organizations like the Miami Herald (700+ employees), Sports Illustrated (600+ employees), and WIRED (500+ employees) will be directly targeted by this new legislation.

Requires Large Digital Platforms To Negotiate With Digital Journalism Platforms

On the other side of the equation, the bill requires “covered platforms” to negotiate with news publishers. This requirement applies to platforms operating at scale with 50 million monthly active US users, 1 billion global platforms, or annual revenue (or market capitalization) of $550 million. 

In brief, these rules apply to companies like Google, Meta Platforms (i.e., Facebook and Instagram), Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo, and many others. This bill would impose potentially significant costs on these companies, even as many are already struggling to maintain advertising revenue.

Publisher Deals May Be Mandatory 

The bill goes beyond requiring publishers and Big Tech to come to the negotiating table. According to Senator Amy Klobuchar, Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, “[the bill empowers] news publishers to demand final-offer arbitration if their joint negotiation with a covered platform fails to result in an agreement after six months.”

Journalism Competition and Preservation Act Expiration

As a safeguard, the bill is set to expire within six years. If it becomes law and news publishers start to count on this revenue, there is likely significant pressure to renew the bill. 

Don’t Wait For The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act Get Your First Party Audience Strategy Moving Now

While potentially game changing, it’s too early to tell for sure if the bill will help or hurt individual publishers. Even if the bill becomes law tomorrow, negotiations (or arbitration) is likely to take months. That gives you time to develop and execute your first party audience growth strategy now. 

First party data comes from a direct connection with your audience. Instead of anonymous website browsers – or borrowing audiences from social media platforms – rich first party data means publishers can truly understand what their audience wants and market to them accordingly.

Strategy 1: Convert Free Users To Paying Subscribers With A Metered Stop Rate

Many publishers allow website users to view a certain number of articles or media for free. The meter stop rate measures what percentage of website users exhaust their quota of free content. Once you know this metric, track how many users convert to paying subscriptions (i.e. the paid stop conversion rate).

Continuing to offer some of your content for free remains a meaningful way to generate interest in your publication. Keep experimenting to see which content attracts public attention vs which to keep behind the paywall. 

For example, look at using user-generated content to grow your audience. Working with influencers, or hosting exclusive Ask Me Anything (AMA) with affiliated personalities, is a powerful way to bring in clicks. As your audience sees value in your content, they’ll be more likely to pay for ongoing access to your premium content.

Strategy 2: Get A Mobile App

Building a mobile app experience for your content is critical. As of Q2 2022, 59% of all Internet traffic came from mobile devices. With a robust mobile experience, you’re missing out on a considerable portion of your potential audience.

Now, you might be thinking that creating a mobile app is expensive. Hiring a full time developer may not make sense if economic uncertainty is already weighing on you. 

A new generation of low code and no code solutions are making it easier than ever to create mobile apps. Consider trying  GoNative.io or Strapi.io. By removing (most) coding from the equation, these services mean you can create a mobile app quickly with minimal, to no engineering resources.

Strategy 3: Offer Exclusive Events For Your Audience

What if your audience was eager and excited to visit your website daily? That’s far better than relying on a tense negotiation with a Big Tech company. Organizing virtual events is one of the best ways to bring in your audience. 

Planning your a virtual event doesn’t have to be overwhelming either. Use our virtual events checklist to plan your online event.

Strategy 4: Add Community Chat To Your Website

What if you had a way to encourage your users to spend 20 minutes, 30 or even an hour on your website? You can achieve high levels of engagement with a single platform: live chat. If you haven’t considered live chat before, here’s one good reason why you should: it’s the most popular engagement experience across all social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram: they all use Live Chat – with reactions, gifs, etc – to keep their audience engaged for an average of 30 min / day / platform. 

By adding Arena Live Chat to your website, you’ll empower your audience to ask questions, and engage with each other. Are you worried about inappropriate content? Arena has you covered with a full suite of moderation tools so you can offer brand safe experiences to advertisers.

Strategy 5: Add A Live Blog To Your Website

When a breaking news story hits, it’s a significant opportunity to build audience engagement. Consider election news. There are exit polls, administrative developments, and other developments to cover. Publishing a full feature story on these micro-developments may not make sense. You need a way to publish quick updates.

By adding Arena Live Blog to your website, you can quickly publish breaking news style updates as often as you want filtered by accounts, hashtags, and audience size, and more to ensure only relevant content is pulled in. You can also use two filtering criteria (e.g. tweets using a certain hashtag from accounts with over 1 million followers). We’ve found that follower size filter, combined with a hashtag for relevance, helps to surface interesting brand safe content.

Like a social media content feed, Live Blog includes comments & reactions to keep your audience engaged. To ease the workload on your team, you can invite a few influencers to contribute posts to your live blog.

Discover Arena’s Solutions For Publishers

The jury is still out on whether The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act will enhance or damage publishers. Even in the best-case scenario, additional revenue from the act may well be years away. In any case, the value of building a direct connection with your audience remains vital.

Use the strategies outlined here to build your audience. Discover more about Arena solutions for publishers and start growing your digital audience today. 

Check Out Live Commentary Covering the JCPA

5 Ways News Media Can Grow Using Social Media Strategies

Posted on by

For years, news organizations have struggled in the cold war with social media. Initally, classified revenue plummeted thanks to the rise of Craigslist, then, Google, Facebook, and Amazon stepped in, pulling billions of dollars in advertising revenue that used to be owned by traditional publishing. Today, a handful of mega-companies have successfully built global audiences around content: social media platforms.

To survive and thrive in the 2020s, news organizations need to study and model the specific tactics and strategies of the social media giants. Given that many social media platforms have been knocked down from their high-ground recently, the timing has never been better to take action.

Lesson 1: Offer A Highly Personalized Content Experience To Grow Engagement

Customized news feeds and streams lie at the heart of successful social media. Facebook gives you news updates on friends and family. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms offer a curated experience focused on individual users’ interests. Developing this highly curated experience requires the contribution of many engineers, algorithms, and countless experiments.

‍

Applying this lesson to the news organization starts by offering filters. Some of your audience might only want business news, while others simply want coverage of their favorite sports team. Rather than forcing all users to flip through all of your news content, let them choose their interests. In addition, offering subject-specific email newsletters focused on different news interests (e.g., sports, business, local news) will help to deepen audience engagement.

Building detailed profiles of your audience’s likes and dislikes is vital for boosting engagement. Another benefit to offering a customized experience is that you will have better first-party data on your audience. Consequently, you will be able to market your subscriptions more effectively. Also, you will have the opportunity to offer more targeted advertising options to your advertisers.

Lesson 2: Adapt To Changing Media Consumption Habits

Consuming social media content and updates is addictive for a reason. These platforms offer the potential for social validation and a constant stream of novelty. That’s not all – many users are turning to social media to access news content. 

Consumption of news is a primary driver of social media.

According to Deloitte’s 2022 digital media trends research, the top five reasons US consumers use social media include reading or watching the news (27%), listening to music (28%, watching TV shows and movies (23%), shopping (17%), play video games (22%) and watch sports (13%). These findings tell us that there is considerable appetite for news. Deloitte points out that the popularity of news consumption on social media is driven by algorithmic customization and cost (i.e., no paid subscription needed). 

User-Generated Content Is Gaining In Popularity

Above and beyond news consumption, many social media users are interested in user-generated content. It’s important to note that user-generated content is a broad term that covers professional-grade content creators with high production values, hobbyists, and much more. Deloitte’s research found that 70% of Gen Z now regularly consume user-generated content – a figure that has rapidly increased over the past year.

Short-Form Video Content Is Booming

Short video content, typically less than a minute long, is thriving. The most popular content creators on TikTok, like Khabane Lame, Charli d’amelio, and Addison, have uploaded over 1,000 videos to build their audience. Many successful short videos feature videos, dancing, and humor. 

Adapting To New Media Consumption Habits

Adapting to these habits as a news organization is challenging. Traditionally, news organizations focus on high production values and professionalism, which isn’t always found in user-generated content. Despite that challenge, there are opportunities to respond to this challenge. Take video content as an example. Your organization likely has significant strengths in video production and editing. Use those capabilities to create content like TikTok videos and YouTube shorts like the Washington Post.

Lesson 3: Emphasize Individuals In Addition To Your Corporate Brand

Many, if not most, social media success stories involve individuals. Take MrBeast (i.e., Jimmy Donaldson) on YouTube. With more than 100 million subscribers, he has built one of the most successful channels on the platform. Many other top channels on the platform are built around individuals like Eminem, Justin Bieber, and Swedish YouTube star PewDiePie. 

Applying this lesson in a new organization is relatively easy. For the past decade, many successful journalists like Maggie Haverman (New York Times), Rachel Maddow (MSNBC), and Anderson Cooper (CNN) have built a large following on Twitter. The opportunity to interact directly with your journalists is crucial. Fundamentally, engaging with a specific person is easier than with a brand.

Building an audience around a personal brand is easier for several reasons. Forming a parasocial relationship where an audience member feels connected to the content creator is easier. Social media personalities sometimes deepen these relationships by adding exclusive experiences to paying customers using platforms like Patreon.

There are a few ways to apply this social media lesson to your news organization. Look at all of your public-facing journalists and personalities and their online profiles. Find out who successfully engages with their followers by looking at replies, likes, and comments. Invite your most successful journalists to present their best practices to others in the organization.

Lesson 4: Encourage Niche Communities

Social media platforms are excellent at bringing together small groups of people with shared interests. For example, there are online groups for people interested in obvious things like real estate investing, auto repair & fashion and each of these larger audience can be further cut into niche segments.

Let’s take sports as an example. Spending five or ten minutes searching through Facebook you can easily find groups like:

  • Obsessed with NCAA Wrestling Updates (9,000+ members)
  • NBA Fantasy Basketball Discussion (11,000+ members)
  • Mets Fans For Life (18,000 members)
  • Yankees Fans (100,000+ fans)

These examples show an audience like “sports fans” has multiple significant segments. News organizations with deep connections in local sports teams have an opportunity to shine by creating dedicated niche communities. Getting started is easier than you might imagine because news organizations already have high-quality content to build their communities on. 

Lesson 5: Embrace Technical Innovation

Move fast and break things is a well-known saying in the technology industry. Social media platforms often launch new features as they observe their users and advertisers. For example, Instagram has recently focused on video content to compete more effectively against TikTok. 

News organizations may not have the same kind of product development, engineering, and technical bench strength as social media companies. Fortunately, this is less of a disadvantage than you might think. The rise of no-code and low-code platforms and integrations means adding new technologies to your website is easier than ever.

Want to improve your coverage and engagement of rapidly developing news stories like international conflicts and elections? You can install Arena Live Blog on your website in a few minutes. Want to build online events like the Wall St Journal’s Live Q&A Events? Add Arena Live Chat to your website to supplement the video streaming experience so your audience can share their feedback and questions.

Don’t Ignore Your Greatest Strength As You Innovate

There’s no doubt that news publishers can draw lessons from social media platforms. Yet, there’s a danger in drawing too much inspiration from these platforms. You don’t want to lose the soul of your organization as you chase growth. 

The most trusted news organizations have built audiences for decades. Social media companies don’t invest in investigative journalism. News organizations hold elected officials accountable for their actions and words. The best news organizations focus on fact-checking and admitting mistakes. In contrast, social media platforms have a much less impressive track record of quality and accountability.

Investigation, fact-checking, and taking on powerful interests carry a cost. Yet, those commitments are ultimately critical for maintaining your reputation and keeping engaged subscribers. If your audience loses trust in your organization, selling subscriptions and advertising space will become more difficult.

The good news is that you can innovate without selling your soul as a news organization. The first step is to add the right technology to your website. These technologies don’t require weeks or months of customization and implementation either. You can be up and running in a matter of hours when you choose Arena.

Transform The News Into An Interactive Community Experience

Publishing high-quality news, analysis, and information are no longer enough to sustain news organizations. Your website needs to offer an online community to win attention and engagement from social media platforms. Your audience wants to ask questions, meet people who share their interests, and more. Right now, social media offers these community experiences. Yet social media lacks the commitment to investigation, reporting, and truth that leading news organizations have.

Give your audience a chance to interact with each other, and engagement will go up. Page views and time on site will also increase. Book a demo with Arena today to discover how to engage your audience more.

How To Use Chat Polls and Q&A To Grow Engagement

Posted on by

Using chat polls and Q&A in an online chat are some of the best ways to boost engagement. Despite this fact, there’s a good chance that you’re not yet fully utilizing these tools. Overlooking these engagement tactics is To understand why let’s look at why engagement is so critical.

Why Chat Polls and Q&A Capabilities Are Critical 

In the past, digital marketers and publishers tend to focus on metrics like pageviews and cost per click. While helpful, those metrics scratch the surface. Focusing too much on these numbers can lead us away from more important goals like building an audience of fans eager to hear you.

Your entire marketing strategy will benefit from developing an engaged audience on your website. The pressure to convert cold traffic will ease. You will have a growing group of people who look forward to your website. Your audience will spread the word as you become more skilled in virtual event ideas. When your audience views your website as a place to engage socially, lead generation and higher advertising revenue.

The benefits of growing an engaged, loyal audience on your website are clear. With that in mind, it’s time to explore specific tactics to lift engagement further.

Audience Engagement Tactic 1: Chat Polls

Let me tell you a story about a webinar to understand why chat polls are helpful. Years ago, I was presenting a series of webinars to a group of professionals interested in project management. As I planned the presentation, I made assumptions about the audience’s interests. Yet, I wasn’t entirely sure about those guesses, so I used two quick audience polls in the first five minutes of the webinar. The result was a far better presentation for two reasons. First, I could better tailor the event to attendees’ level of knowledge. Second, the poll questions sparked a brief discussion in the chat app. 

Afterward, I made it a rule to constantly check for opportunities to use poll questions. It usually takes a few minutes of preparation to create good poll questions to lift engagement significantly.

How To Use Chat Polls To Grow Your Audience

Arena makes it simple to use polls to spark engagement with your audience. Use the following steps to create your chat polls.

Step 1: Log in to your Arena account

Step 2: Set up your Live Chat (optional)

You can skip this step if you have already created a live chat.

Step 3: Click on the Polls tab at the top.

Step 4: Write your poll questions and answers

Polls are typically structured as multiple choice questions. For example, you might ask online event attendees how many online conferences they have attended. In that case, the poll answers might be 0, 1, or more than 2.

As a rule of thumb, keep your poll question simple (i.e., a single sentence). The poll answers should also be simple with a maximum of 5 options, but you can add options if you wish. When polls get complicated, your audience may not want to make an effort to figure them out.

Step 5: Choose your schedule

The schedule option determines how long your poll is visible to participants. In shorter events like a one-hour presentation, we recommend keeping polls visible for 15 minutes. In more extended events like 1 or 2 day virtual or hybrid conferences, you might decide to leave polls open for longer (e.g., let participants see the poll and respond when the event takes a lunch break)

Step 6: Decide whether to show the number of votes.

This optional feature can help lift engagement further. The downside is that attendee responses might be influenced by seeing which answer is the most popular. Usually, that bias is not a problem.

Step 7: Save the poll as a draft or post it

After setting up your poll, you have two options: post or save it as a draft. Both of these options can be useful in different situations.

Post: When you click post, the poll immediately becomes available in the live chat session. If you just had an excellent idea for a poll during an event, use the post option to get that poll in front of your audience immediately.

Save as Draft: If your live chat event is in the future and you are simply getting everything ready, use the save as draft option. Your saved poll will be waiting for you whenever you decide to launch it. You can publish, edit or delete a saved poll at any time, so don’t worry about getting everything perfect.

Three Ideas To Use Chat Polls 

Now you know how to create, save and publish polls in Arena. That leaves just one question: what kind of polls should you create? The answer ultimately depends on the needs of your audience, your goals (e.g., a focus on lead generation vs. a different goal), and your business model. Use the following prompts to brainstorm additional ideas with your team.

1) Gather Audience Demographics

Thanks to your customer data platform, you may already have a good understanding of the demographics of your customer base. However, the specific individuals who show up to any given online event may be different. You may want to ask a few quick poll questions to understand your audience better. 

For example:

  • Customer Vs. Potential Customer: Create a poll to ask attendees if they have ever bought one of your products
  • Geography: Online events are potentially open to a global audience. Consider setting up a quick poll to see where attendees are located. This question is crucial because it can help you understand if your online events are reaching your audience at an appropriate time of day.

2) Check Interest In Future Events

Building an engaged online community takes effort over time. Market research will only take you far in developing winning events and chat experiences. Use a live chat poll to determine which event ideas to prioritize.

For example:

A college or university might ask the following poll question to deepen engagement with potential students.

Question: Which of the following event ideas are most interesting to you:

  • A) Meet successful alums from the college
  • B) Discover your financial aid options to pay for college
  • C) Take a virtual tour of the campus

3) Make Fast “In Flight” Changes

Maintaining engagement with your audience takes ongoing effort. You might sense that your audience is losing interest part of the way through your event. Setting up and running a quick poll can help to get your event back on track.

For example:

A company has set up a virtual conference to support the sales team. Fifteen minutes into the event, you notice that the live chat is starting to go quiet. Putting a poll question might help to reignite your audience’s engagement.

Question: What sales goals are you most excited about this year?

  • A) Getting promoted!
  • B) Getting into President’s Club
  • C) Closing my largest deal ever

Keep these live chat poll ideas in mind as you plan your next live chat event.

Audience Engagement Tactic 2: Question And Answer (Q&A) Experiences

Question and answer (Q&As) sessions are proven to connect with audiences. They have been used for years in traditional events. Executives, authors, lecturers, and others use Q&A time to connect. Find out how to use Arena’s Q&A capability to deepen connections with your audience.

How To Use Q&A To Boost Online Audience Engagement

Use this step-by-step guide to add a Q&A to your Arena Live Chat experience. The whole process just takes a few minutes.

1) Log in to your Arena account

2) In the Arena dashboard, click Live Chat and then choose the Live Chat you want to add a Q&A to

3) Click on the Q&A tab at the top of the screen

4) Click the “Enable Q&A” button

5) Turn on “pre-moderation” for Q&A (optional)

The pre-moderation feature means you get to control which of the submitted questions appear in the live chat. This optional feature is helpful in larger live chat experiences when you are hosting a VIP guest (e.g., the company CEO) or simply want to provide a curated experience for your attendees. 

To use Q&A moderation effectively, we recommend assigning this responsibility to a dedicated person. Let your main speaker or event MC stay focused on engaging the audience.

Four Ideas To Use Q&A In Live Chat

With the above steps, you’ve just learned how to add Q&A capabilities to your live chat. Like any tool, it’s helpful to know when and how to use this capability for the best results. Use the following prompts to devise thoughtful ways to use Q&A with your team.

1) Encourage Effective Audience Participation

When you host a live chat experience, you welcome an audience into your digital space. As the host, it’s up to you to set the ground rules. Setting those expectations includes guiding your audience on how to ask questions in a chat session effectively. For example, your audience might post dozens of questions, and you may only have time to answer a handful of questions. When your audience sees which questions get answered, they’ll engage even more effectively next time.

2) Leverage Moderated Q&A For A Safer Experience

In recent years, phishing, scams, bullying, and other harmful behaviors have become more common in the digital world. Despite those facts, there are practical steps you can take to make YOUR live chat safer for attendees. Specifically, turn on the Q&A moderation feature when it is vital to offer a safer experience, such as a live chat session with families. 

There’s another aspect to offering a safe experience – just think of hosting a virtual event with an important guest. For example, your CEO might join an event celebrating a significant company milestone like funding or launching a new product. In this setting, it’s essential to make your leaders look good! Use your judgment to decide which questions are approved. After the event ends, ask your guest if they want to see all of the questions to review privately.

3) Keep Large Live Chat Experiences Organized

Running a large-scale live chat experience is quite challenging. When you have hundreds or thousands of participants, simply keeping up with all the messages posted in the chat window can feel overwhelming. Using the Q&A capability is critically important in an event with many participants. The Q&A lets you separate questions from the general chat discussions. That means you can host a more focused Q&A session.

4) Review Q&A Content For Sales, Marketing, and Support

The first few benefits of running a Q&A in your live chat focus on immediate benefits. This benefit is focused on the long term. Arena’s event log history feature automatically captures all chat transcripts – including Q&As – so you can easily export the questions to review them later. 

The next day, invite a few sales, marketing, and customer support colleagues to review the questions with you. Some of the questions might be helpful to the sales team (e.g., “Is the product compatible with ABC technology?”). Other questions may help the marketing team craft an even better event in the future (e.g., several people suggested several social media influencers as guests for future online events). Still, other questions may indicate that potential customers are unclear about your shipping or return policies. Remember – just because a product feature or company policy seems obvious to your employees, it might feel confusing to your customers. Take the time to come up with detailed answers to these questions, and your next online event will be even more successful. 

Enhance Your Live Chat With Polls and Q&A Today

Adding live chat to your website makes your website more engaging. Unlocking the next level of audience engagement requires more engagement techniques. Arena Live Chat gives tools like polls, Q&A, and profanity filters to protect your brand. Learn more about Live Chat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81ShIt6QuZ8

Discover how Arena Live Chat directly increases website revenue.

Posted on by

What if you could bring new revenue to your business by engaging your audience more deeply? With Arena Live Chat, there are advertising and non-advertising methods to get more revenue from your website with Live Chat. Depending on your business model, you can use both methods to add new revenue streams to your company.

The Two Ways To Unlock New Revenue Streams Today 

There are two primary business models to earn revenue from an online property today: selling access to your audience to advertisers and using the audience to directly sell your products. 

Advertising Revenue Generation

The direct method is to sell advertising – a popular strategy used by major media brands, bloggers, and many others. There are multiple ways to generate advertising revenues. You can earn a fee for displaying ads (i.e., display advertising). Alternatively, you may earn a fee for recommending products (i.e., affiliate marketing). Some businesses generate revenue by creating sponsored content like reviews. These revenue streams require a creative approach, relevant advertising, and an engaged audience. Live chat can help you develop and grow your audience.

A key advantage of advertising revenue is that you do not need to create, manage or offer products or services of your own. Instead, you simply use an advertising platform (or make direct deals with advertisers) and start generating revenue! However, advertising revenue generation has its limitations. Advertising revenue tends to fluctuate throughout the year – the fall is often more active than the summer. In addition, your content and audience need to meet the needs of advertisers. If advertisers don’t like your website, they can go elsewhere.

Non-Advertising Revenue Generation

The other way to unlock revenue streams with live chat is to sell your products and services. The specific model you use will depend on how your business works. For example, an enterprise software company will likely be focused on lead generation for the sales team. On the other hand, a website with an online store may leverage live chat to sell its products directly.

Generating revenue directly from your audience is different from advertising. Generally speaking, you can earn much more revenue by selling your products. The downside is that you must invest in a sales and marketing process. For example, your audience may not be interested in buying an expensive product when they first hear about it. Instead, your sales team will probably need to reach out and engage leads. If you sell lower-priced products, following up with email marketing may be all you need.

The Core Ingredient Every Online Business Requires

An engaged and growing audience is the fuel that powers every online business. Without an audience interested in your content and online experiences, your growth possibilities become constrained. Without an audience, you will unlikely be able to generate meaningful advertising revenue. After all, why should an advertiser pay you if they don’t get access to a large audience?

A non-advertising business model can still operate without an audience. Yet, growth becomes far more complex. In essence, you will need to rely on other methods like an outbound sales program, advertising, and events. While all these methods work, they are more challenging to scale. In contrast, global brands like IBM, Accenture, and Goldman Sachs invest in building an engaged online audience. 

Whether your goal is to generate advertising revenue or sell your products, an engaged and growing audience is vital. Adding Arena Live Chat to your website is one of the best ways to nurture an engaged audience.

How Live Chat Chat Helps You To Grow Revenue

Using a live chat session to generate additional revenue (i.e., live chat monetization) is easy when you use the right tools. Arena Live Chat is a no-code tool you can install on most websites in a matter of minutes. You can use two approaches to live chat monetization: directly using Arena Live Chat monetization features or using live chat to grow an audience and monetize them differently.

Arena Live Chat helps you to grow audience engagement with a few key features:

  • Q&A: Hosting your CEO or a VIP at your live chat? Use the Q&A feature to gather questions and then ask your guest to answer the most significant questions. 
  • Direct messages: Your audience may not want to share everything directly in a public chat room – that’s why we offer direct messages so individuals can send messages to each other.
  • Reactions: Inspired by social media, reactions are a way for other users to express themselves without having to type.
  • GIFs. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It might be worth even more when you have the right GIF. Arena Live Chat has access to a library of GIFs. 
  • Channels. A chat experience can become disorganized if there are many unrelated discussions happening in the same place. By creating separate channels, your audience can easily find people who share the same interests.

Live Chat Monetization With Arena: 3 Features To Generate Immediate Revenue

Arena Live Chat. Today, Arena Live Chat offers three different monetization capabilities: Donation, Gifts, and Tip Jar. There are a few different ways to use these options, so let’s take a closer look at how to use these features.

Donation

With a donation, a user directly gives money to you. Before accepting donations, it’s essential to set clear expectations with your audience. Some people, they associate the word donation with a charitable organization. If you are running a fundraising event for a nonprofit, using the donation monetization option makes sense. For-profit companies should generally avoid using the donation feature because it may confuse their audience.

Gift and Tip Jar

Both of these live chat monetization features are useful in a few circumstances. For example, an ecommerce business might invite an influencer to a product launch event. The primary focus of the virtual event is to promote the product being launched. That said, you may want to give your audience the chance to send a gift or tip to the influencer participating in the event. Also, the gift and tip car monetization features are relevant if you are hosting a concert. As with the donation option, requesting tips may not be appropriate for companies to use.

How Does Arena Process The Revenue? 

Let’s say you generate significant revenue from your live chat session. Your finance team will want to know if these funds will be tracked and managed. Arena makes this process easy through the payment integrations available through the Enterprise plan. Other Arena users can use PayPal to receive revenue. 

Don’t use PayPal? Don’t worry – Arena is also working on developing an integration with Stripe. Stay tuned for more news on that front!

After you receive funds, take some time to analyze the results. For example, are there any users who sent unusually large amounts? If so, it’s wise to reach out to thank them. This extra effort goes a long way to keep the most passionate members of your audience engaged.

Live Chat Monetization: Optimizing For Conversions

The most powerful way for a company to leverage live chat monetization is to view it as a marketing platform. Start by using live chat as a way to build awareness and trust with your audience. By hosting a series of live chat events over time, your audience will become more familiar with your brand. As a result, they will be more likely to positively respond to marketing messages such as an invitation to join your email list, buy a product or meet with your sales team.

Many Arena users use live chat experiences as a way to generate conversions. For example, you can use Arena conversion cards to focus your audience on a conversion goal. Conversion cards can be used for several objectives like getting a prospect to sign up for your list, following you on social media, visiting a landing page or making a purchase.

Today, there are a few popular you can leverage Arena conversion cards in Live Chat and Live Blog to grow your business.

  • Lead Generation: Capture emails, Ebook download, Visit a webpage (e.g. a landing page)
  • Sales: Sell a product, sell a subscription to streaming services

Of course, you’re not limited to these options. Want to invite people to sign up for a paid, exclusive live chat experience? You can do that! Want to grow your following on TikTok instead? You can use conversion cards to advance that goal. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaCyOtk3838

For the best results, it is smart to augment your conversion cards in the event itself. Let’s say you are running a virtual conference event with Arena Live Chat. Ask your presenters to verbally reinforce the call to action mentioned on the conversion card (e.g. “And now, please click the link in the live chat to get updates about our next virtual event!”). This approach is especially effective if your audience is new to use Arena Live Chat and conversion cards.

As you start to become more familiar with running live chat experiences, you’ll gradually collect more and more data on your customers. Use the Arena customer data platform to put your customer data to good use. Without a CDP in place, you’re missing out on a significant portion of your live chat monetization opportunity. 

Get More Revenue From Your Website With Live Chat Today

You’ve discovered all of the ways that a live chat app can help you monetize your website audience. A more engaged audience means more pageviews and time on site which directly impacts potential advertising revenue. That’s not all. When your audience engages with you and others in a live chat, they are more likely to like and trust your brand. When you add live chat to your website, you’ll start to find that lead generation and sales become much easier. Learn more about Live Chat here.

don’t leave ad revenue on the table

Posted on by

Live blog monetization is a new, reliable way to add a revenue stream to your news website. Pay attention if increasing advertising revenue is a priority for your business model. We’ll show why and how live blogging is powerful.

Who Is Live Blogging For?

The first live blogs were run by major news organizations like newspapers and TV networks. Today, blog owners, video content creators, and others can use a live blog. This monetization feature on your website makes growing fan engagement much easier.

Live blogging has an advantage over relying on third-party platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, or YouTube. When you publish original content on your website with a live blog, your audience will have a compelling reason to keep coming back. When your audience spends time on your website instead of your Facebook page, you’ll see several benefits.

Live Blog Monetization: Why Use Arena?

There are multiple ways to add a live blog to your digital publishing platform. With all your choices, there are several good reasons to use Arena.

  • Simple, Fast Installation

Do you have a breaking news style opportunity right now? You can install Arena Live Blog and be up and running in minutes. Arena is fast and easy to use, so you can start generating advertising revenue quickly.

  • Google AdSense Integration

Google AdSense is one of the most popular methods to generate advertising revenue. Arena has a built-in integration so that you can earn more AdSense revenue from your live blog. If you rely on AdSense today, Arena Live Blog will help you earn even more from Google.

  • Conversion Cards Expands Revenue Beyond Ads

Earning revenue from ads is powerful. What if your business model includes more than ads? For example, media brands often want to get more paid subscribers. Other companies are interested in lead generation and driving purchases. 

We know companies want advertising revenue, leads, and sales. That’s why we build Conversion Cards. Adding a Conversion Card to your live blog makes it easy to generate leads, get more subscribers, and sell more products. You can pick and choose when to use Conversion Cards on your publishing platform.

  • Attract More Organic Traffic From Search Engines

Unlike a conventional blog post, a live blog makes it easy to create and post new updates. Some of the most successful live blogs are updated every 5-10 minutes where there is breaking news or exciting developments. Those frequent updates send a positive signal to search engines like Google that your website has up-to-date content. You are likely to get more traffic if you are posting quality content that helps people. As your traffic grows, you’ll get more advertising revenue and opportunities to grow your conversions.

Advertising Revenue Vs. Other Revenue Streams

Adding an additional revenue stream is important because it is simple and easy. Your website displays the ad, and you get paid. In contrast, selling digital products, managing affiliate programs, or shipping physical products is much more difficult. Without live blog monetization, your live stream content might excite people, but what if your audience isn’t in the mood to buy? When you have advertising in place, the online event will still bring in revenue.

No rule says you have to choose between advertising revenue and selling products. Many media brands sell physical products, and subscriptions and generate advertising revenue. For example, the New York Times and the BBC.

Running A Live Blog On Your Website Vs. Relying On Social Media

Adding a live blog to your website adds tremendous value to your business. While installing Arena only takes a matter of minutes, there is a learning curve if you are used to social media platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Shops, and Facebook Gaming. It’s natural for business owners, publishers and marketers to use their business profiles on social platforms especially when you have a large following.

Relying on a third-party platform exclusively to grow your audience engagement has significant challenges. For example, when you run an event on a social media website you will not get the same depth of information for your customer data platform. That lack of data means it is much more difficult to build a relationship with your audience, follow up or get conversions. 

When you have live blog monetization in place, you have more options. For example, your live blog can augment a virtual event with a video streaming platform. This means you could run a virtual conference with a live stream video presentation. However, search engines (and people!) don’t always like to use video exclusively. By augmenting your virtual events with a live blog, you can pull in more organic traffic. 

Three Ways To Boost Live Blog Monetization This Month

Once you have your live blog installed and configured, how exactly do you use it to drive more advertising revenue? Start with these five ideas to grow your advertising revenue in the next 30 days.

1) Celebrate Company News With A Live Blog

Company news – especially product releases – is prime material for a live blog. Just think about the excitement that comes with Google and Apple’s annual conferences. While new products are great to highlight, that is not your only option. Other types of company news such as an expansion to a new country or new integrations can also work well for a live blog.

2) Augment A Virtual Event or Conference With A Live Blog

Look through your events and marketing calendar for the next few weeks. Is your company offering any digital events, virtual conferences or other experiences for your audience? If the answer is yes, add a live blog to drive engagement up further.

Imagine you are running a one-day virtual event for your customers. Some attendees might attend the morning sessions while others may only show up for the keynote. By adding a live blog to the experience, you can provide key quotes, summaries and commentary on each part of the virtual event. That means your audience can learn and engage with the event content if they prefer to read over viewing video. After the event ends, the live blog will continue to help you attract organic search traffic to your website.

By the way, your live blog can help to increase live event engagement if you offer access replays to your audience. The excitement of seeing a live blog updated continuously during an event wouldn’t be available when viewing a recording. If there are other incentives to attend live (e.g. a promo code), you may be able to lift live engagement further.

3) Offer “Piggy Back” Live Blog Coverage

What if your company has no company news or virtual events coming up in the next month or so? In that case, there are still opportunities to run a compelling live blog but it does require a bit more creativity.

Take a few minutes to brainstorm with your team about what your audience is currently interested in, excited by or worried about. For example, a live blog experience in August or September might connect to the “back to school” season or the start of the football season. If there are breaking news stories that excite your audience, consider running a live blog about those events on your website.

This approach isn’t limited to consumer audiences either. Let’s say your goal is to connect with investors interested in up-to-the-minute coverage. In that case, look for economic announcements like the monthly jobs report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every month, there is significant coverage of this announcement. Your organization might decide to offer a short live blog session when the jobs report comes out. Help investors explore the implications such as which industries are growing and which parts of the country are struggling. If this live blog is a hit with your audience, you could transform it into an ongoing series and build a highly engaged audience.

Unlike the first two ways of using a live blog, providing commentary and coverage of an event may not be suitable for every company. It’s a natural fit for media companies, especially those with a specialized focus (e.g. banking news or tech news). It can also work with other types of companies. Keep in mind that it may be more difficult to get conversions or sales. When you have a live blog about company news like new product announcements, customers will have their credit cards to buy to some degree. In contrast, a person looking for general news coverage might not be in a spending mindset so generating direct revenue might be more difficult. 

Live Blog Monetization: Where To Go From Here?

Live blog monetization is one of the best ways to engage your audience, grow advertising revenue and build your brand. Unlike running an event on a social media platform, you have the opportunity to collect rich customer data. That’s critically important as we move into the cookieless future. Learn more about live blog here. 

 

‍