With the ever-demanding usage and proliferation of various social networking sites, users are now freely allowed to publish any type of content they wish to post on those platforms. People sometimes post adult, hateful, violent, or spam content that does not abide by the community guidelines. 

Here arises the need for content moderation to maintain the engagement of people on a large number of forums, communities, or different social networking sites to modify those undesirable pieces of content. The need for the latest content moderation techniques and guidelines has surpassed the usage of popular social networking platforms. 

Therefore, it becomes necessary for a company to hire a content moderation company to stay updated with the best practices and latest trends. The high amount of undesirable content is growing rapidly at an alarming rate which is the main reason why companies want to establish a spam-free online platform through content moderation.

What Is Content Moderation?

Content moderation is the screening and monitoring of user-generated content which were inappropriately posted on various online platforms. The process involves the application of using pre-set guidelines that are used for monitoring and screening content.  If it is found to be inappropriate, illegal, or harassing, it is immediately flagged and removed by the content moderators as they follow all the rules and re-follow your website. 

Some of the main reasons why content is removed from sites are due to extremism, violence, hate speech, nudity, offensiveness, copyright, and many more. The primary objective of a content moderator is to maintain credibility and brand reputation by monitoring content on videos, websites, social media platforms, ads, online communities, and text-based content on forums. 
Online reputation management is highly important for companies that are mainly dependent on online users. There are different types of content moderation services provided by content moderation outsourcing companies that can modify your site and keep a check on your users.

Why Content Moderation is important?

With a large amount of content produced every second, online platform that is based on user-generated content struggle to stay on top due to offensive and inappropriate images, videos, or texts. 

Here comes the role of content moderation services by which you can maintain the standard of your brand’s website, protect your clients and business reputation and grow your customer base. Content moderation company protects your platform from spam, explicit, and violent content and makes sure that it serves the purpose of your business. 

Some of the reasons why content moderation services are important for your company is:

1. User-generated content can impact the traffic on your website and its ranking on search engines as users are inclined to engage with your content and other users on your social media sites.
   
   
2. Content moderation services can protect your company from explicit and spam content that is being posted by users and thus improves your brand’s reputation.
   
   
3. Potential buyers are generally influenced by digital ads from T.V, radio, or print media. They generally collect product reviews from them which influences their buying behavior. Thus, a content moderation outsourcing company will always follow community guidelines and will save your brand from any negative impact.
   
   
4. Content moderation also plays a vital role in running successful online campaigns. Companies can scale up their ad campaigns by launching new products into the market where the content moderators will keep a check on all the new updates and features of the products.

How does Content Moderation work?

Firstly, a company needs to provide clear guidelines or a set of rules that constitute all the list of inappropriate content to a content moderation company. With this, content moderators will have a clear idea of what to mark for removal. You will need to provide clear thresholds for moderation so that content moderators stick to them while reviewing your content. 

They will read the content, flag them as inappropriate, and will remove them from the platform. Your threshold will determine your user’s expectations, their demographics, and your business type. Various companies choose to review their content once it’s live on their platform so that it can be immediately placed in the moderation queue.

10 Promising Content Moderation trends you should never ignore

To meet all the content requirements, companies need to leverage the correct content moderation services. If you are planning to enhance the current system, then here’s a list of 10 content moderation trends that can lead you in the right direction.

1. Improve your content quality management

Quality management is the main domain and a crucial aspect of safety and trust by monitoring whether the content that is being posted online follows the rules of the platform or not. 

Content moderation company performs content filtration process to improve and enhance the current content quality by detecting errors based on the content policy. Content quality managers come up with the appropriate action plan to have excellent content programs that uplifts your brand’s reputation.

2. Be transparent and follow your legal factors

While creating your community guidelines and content policies for any platform, companies should be transparent with their legal policies so that they are clear and effective. 

Users should not misuse your platform by posting inappropriate content. A transparent content moderator should make a fair judgment by following legal factors such as insight of copyright, handling appropriate information, trademark, and intellectual property rights.

3. Deal carefully with spam content

With a rapid change in customer behavior, users come up with new ideas every day by posting spam content on your platforms and a large number of users reply to them in bulk lowering your brand’s reputation. 

A content moderator handles these comments by coming up with creative solutions and making a proper decision so that it does not interfere user’s experience. Content moderators boost the security of your site and find unique solutions so that your site contains the best content at all times.

4. Implement a hybrid approach by including both humans and technologies

Popular content moderation trends include the adoption of a hybrid approach which includes the decision-making and judgment by both machine automation and humans.

If the flow of content by users on your site is huge, then human moderators won’t be able to perform the tasks quickly, and here comes the need for an automation process to avoid any negative impact on your content while humans can work on more innovative tasks.

5. Prioritize the privacy and safety of your online audience

Cyber security threats and crimes such as data breaches, malware, and identity theft are some of the increasing concerns among online users. As a result, it becomes necessary for you to ensure that your content doesn’t compromise the privacy and safety of your online users. 
Your content moderation outsourcing company should eliminate those people who attack other users by spreading false news, becoming false identities, spreading spam and threatening comments so that users feel safe when they visit your social media platforms or your website by which you can also improve your customer experience.

6. Use high-skilled content moderators for improving your content

Due to the rise of hateful and violent content, businesses are trying to modify the content of their platforms through content moderation services. A large number of platform owners are hiring multi-skilled content moderators so that they can simplify the moderation process. 

This can be done by respecting your company rules, following the global standards, knowing different regional languages, replacing ineffective content with valuable pieces of content, and coming up with new ideas and sharing opinions on various activities.

7. Strictly adhere to real-world content policies

Whenever you decide to moderate your content by hiring a content moderation company, you should strictly abide by the real-world content policies and community guidelines. 

Your content policy should always be flexible so that it helps in quickly eliminating grey areas and gaps that are based on sensitive issues such as politics and religion. Content moderators should come up with specific marketing trends and make recommendations for new policies to avoid any controversies in the content.

8. Develop a location-based approach

Every country has its own social, cultural, and regional issues. If your website is serving an international audience, then you need to fulfill their content needs which can be done by outsourcing your content moderation services so that moderators can easily handle different regional content and come up with an effective localized approach and strategies.

9. Avoid misguidance or misinformation in your content

Both digital automation tools and human content moderators should use the current content trends and latest information to make the entire process smooth and efficient. 

With this, they can identify and report the spam content to avoid any misguidance or misinformation. Content moderators can also cross-check the information as even the smallest mistake can reduce your brand’s value and reputation and can lead to trolls.

10. Eliminate the user-generated objectionable and offensive content

A responsive and experienced content moderator should understand the provisions and laws of hate speech and violent content. Content should not contain hateful comments on different communities or any defensive language that can harm the sentiments of your audience. All the objectionable and offensive content should be immediately removed by the content moderator.

Conclusion

Content moderation service can make your platform or community a better place, boost your user engagement and brand loyalty and protect your online audience. To make your platform safe for your audience, companies should maintain consistency, integrity, and authenticity in their set of rules. 

Keeping up with the latest content moderation trends requires a bit of investment but once it’s done, you will grow your website and social media networks by monitoring and screening content effectively. With content moderation, you can grow and build your brand by keeping a check on user-generated content.