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Dealing with Sensitive Topics, Controversial Discussions, and Ensuring Inclusivity and Diversity in Content Moderation

content moderation

Content Marketing Strategy with Inclusivity and Diversity in Content Moderation: Reviewing Words Through the Lens of Your Audience

Virtual socialization is changing dimensions daily and is scaling rapidly as time progresses. UGC platforms are the new hub for news broadcasting, communication, entertainment, and more. Unfortunately, the plethora of miscommunication is also piling up in this myriad of information. The internet fosters a ‘viral culture’ of online trolling and harassing business entities, even for unintended misrepresentations or exclusions. 

Managing content marketing strategies while establishing your brand’s goodwill in the digital arena is the key to meeting today’s consumers’ expectations, who are progressively getting more well-informed.   

Content Inclusion to Elevate Diverse Voices and Decrease Bias 

Content inclusion is an untold commitment surrounding users from all sections of society. Such varied exposure to your content engages different audiences and increases the likelihood of it getting adapted. Well-knit content creation represents the true expression of the various customer communities and elevates your brand’s market position curtailing any existing bias. A positive societal transformation that generates respect for users irrespective of their background, social stature, parental status, or sexual orientation is something to consider.  

Inclusivity and Diversity to Improve User Experience on Social Media and Web 

  • Attracts, retains, and onboards new customers:

    The universal thumb rule to expand your brand reach is content creation and broadcasting which is easy to assimilate and comprehend. People come first, and everything should circumscribe their likes and preferences. Marketing specialists believe that ads targeting consumers, irrespective of stereotypes, perform better.  

  • Relativity:

    Drive customer interest in your business offerings and build long-lasting relationships where customers feel connected.  

  • Creates a sense of belongingness:

    As per a report by The Wall Street Journal and content by Deloitte, communities feel a sense of belonging with creators who celebrate shared values or identities, not only through content but also via the brands they partner with and promote. 

  • Improves rankings:

    A comprehensive piece of content created exclusively for your target audience enhances website traffic and builds brand authority. 

According to UNESCO, adopting an inclusive marketing approach for your brand without hurting the sentiments of any marginalized group and yet serving the purpose is the need of the hour.  

Challenges Faced by Content Moderators while Dealing with Sensitive Topics and Discussions  

  • Enormous volumes of UGC (User Generated Content):

    With the tremendous volume of daily online content generation, monitoring everything virtually is difficult. Users hail from diverse backgrounds with different cultural, social, and political beliefs. Content moderators struggle to balance between removing inappropriate content and justifying users’ rights to freedom of speech.  

  • Lack of uniformity in laying the ground rules:

    A lack of standardized community guidelines with transparency of acceptable content, behavior, tone, and language is critical. The challenge is to increase awareness about the rules and consequences of breaking the guidelines to the users. After establishing the guidelines, it is equally essential to ensure user visibility. The navigation menu or the website footer serve as crucial spots for such purposes. Also, placing such guideline links in multiple languages is necessary for maximum user coverage. 

  • Action Protocols:

    There is a scarcity of precise actionable sanctions for breaking moderation rules for content moderators. Moderation tasks like content editing, removal, and temporary/permanent access suspension require clarity not to digress the fine line between them. Besides, the timelines for such suspensions could be more explicit. As there is no defined mechanism to quantify the severity of content, reporting to authorities in extreme cases remains a subjective challenge. 

Must-have Strategies for Content Moderators to Engage with Wider Audiences 

  • Legal obligations:

  • Ensuring the online community guidelines are met by adhering to the applicable laws and regulations of the given nation or geography.  
  • Context and educating audience for the greater good:

  • As responsible marketers, it is a social obligation to inform the community about their rights by creating content, most relevant to them. 
  • Monitor and respond to user feedback:

  • Do not overdo it by filtering every negative comment on the forefront.  
  • Encourage civil discourse:

    An administrative monitoring-and-compliance regime to ensure that content moderation policies are regulated as cited by Georgetown University 

  • Create safe spaces for constructive discussions:

  • Create opportunities for constructive dialogue within the community, ensuring all vulnerable groups are included and represented. 

Content Moderators Can Improve Inclusivity with Thought-provoking Steps 

  1. Practice better than preach:

    Let your organization be the perfect picture where employees are hired from diverse backgrounds, and you are an equal-opportunity employer. Get together with the community more often to understand what content is sensitive.

  2. Understand your target audience:

    The backbone of crafting successful content marketing strategy lies in understanding your target audience and making them the focal point of your marketing efforts. For example, brands that promote feminine hygiene products must understand the pain points of females and promote products or services by identifying their practical difficulties. All this without tarnishing the sentiments of any age group, social standing, or income. Moreover, demeaning the biological aspects of the other gender in such promotional activities is also unacceptable.

  3. Explore the audience persona:

    After understanding the target audience, it is imperative to further dive deeper into the psychographics and step into your audience’s shoes. Dealing with sensitive topics like lifestyle choices, political opinions, beliefs, and value systems with compassion should be on the daily platter of an intelligent marketer.

  4. Go beyond breaking the taboos with a simple and well-constructed message:

    Once a highly trolled subject of body shaming has now constructively reformed to the concept of body positivity. Apparel brands, fashion bloggers/vloggers, and media houses are upscaling the importance of treating every type of physique as unique. Design your promotions or any social messages such that every buyer takes pride in their choice of outfits or accessories so that they take pride in their selection without restricting or stigmatizing themselves with the so-called socially accepted norms.

  5. Emphasis on the unsaid:

    Websites or social posts must adhere to image accessibility standards. Alt tags description should be concise enough so that people with visual impairments and learning disability can hear the message clearly by screen-reading tools. Every form field or button must be labeled with plain text descriptions to address inclusivity and accessibility.

  6. Responsive visuals:

    Digital or print media advertisements only highlighting tall, handsome, white men for an SUV automobile ad campaign must give it a second thought. Generate ideas where your target customers can connect with models who look like regular men, and you can grow as a brand.

  7. Descriptions:

    If your content still identifies gender-oriented pronouns like he/she, his/her rather than unisexual descriptions like ‘they’ where applicable contextually, it is time to change the practice. Though traditional titles like ‘chairman’ were supposed to be gender-neutral once, today’s politically correct audience has modern preferences and is more comfortable with words like ‘chairperson.’

  8. Skip the business language:

    Go for a more conversational tone that resonates with your audience and makes them feel connected.

Outsourcing Content Moderation to Keep the Uniqueness of Your Brand Intact 

  • Outsourcing content moderation to companies in different countries can provide broader perspectives. It allows onboarding moderators with varied language skills, thus moderating content in other regions and languages.  
  • As moderators come from diverse cultures and have different viewpoints, it ensures that content moderation is not biased toward a particular ethnicity or group.  
  • Working with outsourcing partners prioritizing diversity and inclusion can create a more inclusive moderation process.  
  •  Outsourcing blends specialized expertise and gives access to technologies unavailable in-house, leading to more effective and efficient moderation.  

At ExpertCallers, We Embed Inclusivity in All We Do! 

We call ourselves your live social wellness platform as we detect the nuances in the initial stage. As for borderline posts, our team reviews them for brand-specific criteria. We can be the right partner if you want to outsource content moderation services for a host of your business offerings. Our multilingual analysts and subject matter experts hail from diverse backgrounds and thus display higher abilities to analyze posts, images, videos, and texts from a geographic point of view. In the global village of digitization, we hire the services of agents who are natives or inhabitants as they understand the required grievances with a more peaceful and reconciliatory approach. We continuously raise the bar to ensure inclusivity and diversity in our endeavors with our expert content advocates.

Wrapping it off: Inclusivity and Diversity in Content Moderation is a Continuous Journey 

Assuming everyone equally perceives sensitive content is a myth. It is beyond human interpretation to understand the deeds of the interlocutors though they might be unjust.  

As a business aiming for multifaceted growth, stay calm irrespective of the circumstances. Always protect your online presence with the best online content marketing strategies planned and the necessary backups to ensure a safe future of content creation at your organization. 

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