What is content moderation? It refers to monitoring and removing from the user-generated content the unwanted parts based on platform-specific rules and criteria. It helps ascertain whether you can use the content on the platform or not. When content such as review or feedback is submitted on a website, it undergoes a review process to ensure that it adheres to the website’s rules. Content moderation is crucial as it helps a website maintain a database of clean data.
Content moderation is common on digital platforms that rely on user-generated content (UGC). They include e-commerce websites, social media, and dating websites. Below are the benefits of content moderation.
Importance of Content Moderation
It improves your site’s search engine ranking and traffic
Content moderation helps improve your website’s search engine ranking organically. Better quality content, including user-generated content (UGC), allows you to rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). By directing more people to your content, your website gets more traffic.
It protects your brand
Users have varying tastes and preferences. Therefore, you cannot always guarantee that all the UGC on your website conforms to your standard and community guidelines. Content moderators help protect your forum, social media account, or website from any undesirable user-generated content. By keeping your customers happy through positive engagements on your content platforms, the content moderators help maintain a good reputation and protect your brand. To ensure it delivers value, user-generated content needs to be moderated along various touchlines.
Gaining user insights
By content moderation, you understand your community better. Content moderators may go through the user-generated content to see how they are responding to your services. Companies can then use data and sentiment analysis to come up with brand-centered offers. A company can use content moderation of user-generated content not only in marketing but also in product design.
Protecting your online community
Your online community needs to feel safe from trolls, spam, and explicit content. They should be free to express their opinions on matters that concern the brand. Content moderation is essential in making your online platform from such offensive content.
Other benefits of content moderation include scaling your marketing campaigns and keeping pre-cleaned data.
There are several types of content moderation. The type of content moderation used by a specific company depends on the nature of services it offers and the volume of user-generated content. Having understood what is content moderation, what are its types?
Types of content moderation
Pre-Moderation
In this method, all the content submitted by registered representatives or users is given to the verification team. The verification team uses various criteria to detect any infringement that the content may contain. Therefore, in pre-moderation, the offensive or inappropriate content is removed before it is visible on the website. Pre-moderation is an ideal choice for the online communities that cater to high-risk users, like children, to prevent bullying and sexual advancements. A good example is Facebook and online gaming platforms.
Post-Moderation
From the user-experience view, in online platforms that require moderation, post-moderation is better than pre-moderation. The content is posted on the site but replicated in a queue to be examined by a moderator later. It allows conversations to take place immediately within users. The platform operator becomes the legal publisher of the content as the community grows. Unfortunately, for some communities like celebrity-based news, this can be a risk.
Reactive moderation
In this type of moderation, a company relies on the users to flag that they deem inappropriate or in contravention of the company’s rules. It acts as a safety net to the unsuitable content that gets past the moderators when used alongside other types of moderation.
Automated moderation
This type of moderation uses technical tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for content processing and moderation. It applies predefined rules and natural language processing to approve or reject user-generated content. A word filter is the most commonly used tool in automated moderation. A dictionary of banned words and the tool either replaces, flags the word for review, or rejects the post entirely. In addition, the captcha system is used to establish if a user is a human or a bot.
Other types of automated moderation
- Block keyword – The system rejects any post containing a specific word
- Image filter – Here, the tool removes all posts having banned images such as violence or nudity.
- Block user – Auto-moderation rejects a specific user’s all incoming content.
- Whitelist User – The system approves all the incoming posts that belong to a specific user. They bypass the moderator’s queue.
No moderation
Though an option, choosing not to moderate content in the current age can prove fatal. With the advent of online stalking, cybercrimes, and hate crimes, businesses and companies have grown serious about content moderation.
The Do’s and Don’ts of content moderation
The Don’ts of content moderation
Wait long before starting to moderate your content
Do not wait for long before starting to moderate your content. As your platform grows, you need to have a scheme for creating user-generated content moderately.
Misinterpret a good content
Quality content is essential in creating user confidence and achieving a robust user experience on your platform. Avoid misinterpreting good content that you end up dismissing user-generated content merely because it is negative.
The Do’s of content moderation
Moderate all content
To see to it that there are fun interactions on your platform, ensure that all the content is moderated correctly, be it photos, text, or videos.
Have clear rules and guidelines
Your content moderation rules and guidelines must be transparent to all those who engage in content moderation on your platform.
Need fitting moderation form
What is the kind of content, and who are the users on your platform? This creates a picture of what criteria for moderation and configuration to use.
Outsourcing Content Moderation
If your company needs professional content moderation, you should outsource it. The benefits of outsourcing rather than hiring in-house include:
It frees you from hiring and training new content moderators
Form a team of professional content moderators takes much time. This involves hiring, training, performance feedback, and monitoring. Instead of going all through this, why not just outsource? This way, you get to concentrate on the core functions of your business.
Expert content moderators
Through Oworkers, you get the help of expert moderators. Outsourcing companies keep a roster of professional moderators who will give you quality moderation support for your platform.
Necessary tool and ready knowledge
Outsourcing companies ensure that all the tools, workforce, and processes are available before offering a business solution. By outsourcing your content moderation, you avoid the costs of setting up new offices, getting resources, hiring and training a new team. Therefore, you do not need to buy tools or hire and train your content creation team.
Bottom Line
To ensure fun and exciting interactions between the users of your platform, content moderation is vital. Additionally, moderating your content using any of the above techniques has many advantages. Outsourcing your content moderation needs saves you time and money while offering you the highest quality services.