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Social media moderation outsourcing
The value and importance of social media as a marketing tool has grown exponentially over the past decade alone. Statista estimates that in 2022, revenue from the social media market hit $129.6 billion. With a projected compound annual growth rate of 7.3 percent, the market volume is expected to reach $189.5 billion in 2027.
Monitoring and moderating that space, which thrives on user-generated content and interactions, is crucial to maintaining its viability and profitability. One survey found that more than 45 percent of users will withdraw from a brand’s community after even just one exposure to toxic or fake content.
But content moderation can be an overwhelmingly complex exercise considering there are billions of users on any given platform. This has fuelled the growth of outsourced social media moderation services – i.e., the process of hiring a third party to manage content on social media sites to ensure that established guidelines are observed at all times and that users have a positive experience engaging on the platform.
Social media services outsourcing market
According to software company Hubspot’s 2024 Global Social Media Trends Report, 54.5 percent of surveyed social media marketers expect their marketing budget to increase, and for good reason. More than 70 percent of both B2B and B2C marketers said their social media marketing was effective for their brand. More and more consumers are turning to social media to search and shop, and businesses are following suit, using different channels to engage customers, shorten issue resolution time, and improve overall customer experience. In industries like retail, telecom, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare, customer relationships are increasingly shaped by social media.
Social media service providers are responding to this new business-customer dynamic by aggressively investing in capabilities and technology that help clients better understand the behavior and sentiments not only of their customers but also influencers on the internet.
According to Everest Group, providers are building their capabilities in social media monitoring, analytics, internal business intelligence, and advisory and consulting to enable their clients to have real-time awareness of changing customer viewpoints. A considerable number of big companies have partnered with social media monitoring and analytics firms to strengthen their social media offerings. Taking the step towards customer analytics is one way to evolve vendor services from mere operational processes to something more strategic.
Outsourced social media services: Success stories
Case Study: Social media solution for a global financial services provider
A global financial services company with offices in over 50 countries and employing more than 65,000 people all over the world had a system to monitor traditional mass media coverage (like newspapers). But, with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, the company realized it did not have the capacity or experience to manage and track the new digital environment. Aiming for a comprehensive, cost-effective social media solution to reduce complexity, the company partnered with a social media services provider for end-to-end social media monitoring services.
The service provider delivered global social media monitoring in English, Spanish, German, and Portuguese languages for all of the company’s markets and business functions, while also supplying analysis of tracked content by native speakers and regular, detailed reporting. First, the social media services provider developed a pilot project to understand the best social media monitoring strategy for the client. When this improved services, the approach was integrated into the company’s internal business processes. Next, the service provider designed an operating model that identified technology, processes, and human resources needed to implement the strategy. The new fully-functioning social media monitoring capability then went live in the Swiss market where the company has since taken over.
Case Study: Improving customer experience through social media
A mobile virtual network operator hired a service provider to improve customer experience through social media. The service provider handled forum management, helping boost the company’s customer satisfaction score to 85 percent and reduce client-customer interaction time (interactions were handled within six minutes). The service provider also delivered multichannel support through Twitter, email, and voice, helping the mobile virtual network company increase its customer base by 400 percent and customer retention from 20 to 30 percent.
Content moderation
Although some communities allow a very open sharing environment, most businesses require all content submitted to their websites to meet the standards of the organization and reflect positively on their brand. Established firms often need sophisticated content moderation tools to ensure that user-generated content (UGC) is legal, age-appropriate, relevant, and improves rather than destroys the bottom line.
Industry analysts say that about 4 million minutes of video are uploaded to YouTube every day and more than 5 billion images are uploaded to Facebook every month. However, over 75 percent of uploaded videos and over 35 percent of images are inappropriate for business — requiring organizations to police their websites more proactively in order to identify malicious content and prevent its distribution.
Online content moderation can be classified into three main strategies: automated moderation (using algorithms and applications), community moderation (moderation from the online community), and human moderation (through crowdsourcing or paid employees). Service providers often use tools and ISO process improvements to enhance the quality of UGC and make the review of text, images, and video more efficient.
Case Study: Speeding up moderation and improving user experience
A social networking website and mobile application company matches like-minded people and helps them connect with friends in their vicinity. The website screens every image that users submit. Initially, two people were assigned to moderate content, but they were quickly overwhelmed by the volume. As a result, turnaround times grew longer. To speed up moderation, improve the user experience, and increase customer retention, the company worked with a content moderation provider.
To address these requirements, the partner company provided 24/7, on-demand staff to handle the volume of content as well as an advanced technology platform. The solution allowed the social networking site to shorten the review process significantly without sacrificing the quality of the content review. The service provider’s review process involved three people reviewing each uploaded image and auto-crosschecking the decision made. This maximized the quality of the data reported.
The service provider was able to reduce image review turnaround time to a maximum of only 10 minutes and also helped the company saved 20 percent on staffing costs, thus enabling them to divert resources to core activities. As the social networking site’s user community expanded and the volume of content further increased, the service provider’s scalable solution continued to deliver high-quality reports and fast turnaround.
Social media moderation outsourcing to the Philippines
Outsourcing social media moderation and other social media support services to the Philippines is a high-quality, cost-effective solution for businesses looking to reduce costs while maintaining a high level of service and user experience. Service providers such as Sourcefit in the Philippines offer scalable solutions for companies of various sizes in a wide range of industries.
Please contact us to find out about Sourcefit’s custom social media support solutions.
