Benefits of Content Moderation Outsourcing

Content moderation is something that any company with an online presence cannot exist without. If not given proper consideration to this endeavor, a business can endure a loss of money, opportunities, and most importantly, reputation.

Supporting your own content moderation team is undeniably challenging. It primarily requires a considerable investment of funds, something that not everyone can afford. An excellent solution in this case is outsourcing. Here we will consider all the advantages of this approach.

Why do Businesses Need Content Moderation?

Essentially, content moderation is about recognizing harmful content in texts, images, or videos on online resources. Human content moderators act as censors to ensure that user-generated content is in line with community guidelines and standards.

Ensuring a safe and secure online environment is becoming increasingly challenging as user-generated content keeps multiplying. This massive amount of data demands the most sophisticated technologies to control and moderate it. Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings innovative solutions to detect malicious or inappropriate content. It makes the moderation process faster and more efficient, but AI cannot yet fully replace humans, so often both AI and human moderation are used together. For instance, a built-in website system is capable of assessing the appropriateness and compliance of a text with a specific topic or the entire online platform. If the user-generated content is deemed inappropriate, it will be manually reviewed, and then a moderator will decide on whether to publish it.

Content moderation serves businesses as a way to ensure that the website meets their standards and safeguards customer experiences and the company's online reputation. Unimaginable amounts of text, images, and videos are shared on a daily basis, making it essential for businesses to track the content that's stored on their platforms.

Through user-generated content moderation, businesses can be sure that their online platforms serve their original function. This is vital for providing a trusted and risk-free experience for clients.

Why does your business need outsourcing content moderation?

Before realizing if outsourcing content moderation is what you need, there are several aspects you have to realize. First and foremost, content moderation as a rule involves an in-house team of hand-picked, extremely qualified moderators. Besides people, content moderation requires top-quality software that employs sophisticated machine learning algorithms. Performing all of this on your own requires a considerable amount of resources. In-house content moderation tends to be a more costly option than outsourcing. In order to recruit a sizable team of content moderators and afford funding for the development and implementation of automated software, your business is required to have a huge budget.

Budget is possibly one of the most essential aspects to consider when hiring an outsourcing partner. Nonetheless, factors such as the diversity and amount of user-generated content that is being posted on your platform also have to be taken into account. Keep in mind that you will need moderators who are aware of local cultural specifics and the languages spoken by your customers.

Before you start looking for content moderation outsourcing partners, the question you need to ask yourself is: Do you possess enough internal expertise regarding upcoming projects and technical solutions to manage an in-house team and achieve the desired result? If the answer is negative, you better entrust your moderation process to the professionals.

By outsourcing content moderation, you don't need to build a content moderation team from scratch and provide training. Outsourcing companies have years of experience, a reliable and secure infrastructure that is constantly being improved. Among other things, outsourcing offers automated workflows that integrate human expertise and machine learning, resource and experience sharing as well as cheaper labor costs.

How do Businesses Benefit from Content Moderation Outsourcing?

Advantages of user-generated content moderation outsourcing

Outsourcing services may help your business with the following:

Save money

Hiring third-party specialists for outsourced moderation is much cheaper than establishing and training your own team. Among other things, you will not need to recruit new staff and pay their salaries. Most probably, when creating your moderation team, you will have to set up a new department in the company, which might require expenditures on furniture and equipment. These expenses are multiplied when you work in multiple countries and time zones. Outsourcing provides a turnkey solution for content moderation, significantly lowering your costs.

Save time

All the steps you have to complete to establish your in-house team are very time-consuming. Your company will have to spend budget on recruitment, such as training, development and other HR-related costs. However, apart from being expensive, it is also very time-consuming.

Stay focused on your work

To achieve desired KPIs your team needs to focus on core business functions. Content moderation, while an integral part of the business, is a low-level task that is not a primary one. Once this part of the work is outsourced, the company has more time for high-priority tasks, improving both operational performance and brand image.

Provide state-of-the-art technology

Outsourced content moderation always involves the latest technology and news tools are constantly introduced. Content moderators often combine automation and manual methods of data processing. Therefore, they work faster and more effectively. Outsourcing companies devote a lot of attention to their automated tools, as the result of their work greatly depends on these systems. In doing so, the outsourcing partner assumes all of the expenses for training the staff to properly utilize these technologies.

Benefit from the expertise

In addition to the latest technology, outsourced content moderation can also offer a more seamless and quicker project implementation, thanks to years of experience and a skilled team of experts. The outsourcing content moderators will follow the moderation guidelines that you establish, and will also assist in ensuring that the content you publish is aligned with your business values and goals.

Scalability

As indicated earlier, user-generated content is getting increasingly abundant. This poses the challenge of scalability. If you outsource content moderation you won't encounter such a challenge, as the outsourcing team is designed to increase or decrease the number of moderators as required.

Ensure the safety of your platform

Outsourcing content moderation helps maintain a safe space and respectful user experience so that users can trust your brand. This leads to increased engagement on social media platforms as customers are more likely to engage with content they deem safe or informative.

How to identify a reliable provider when you outsource content moderation services?

Make sure to define the tasks and functions you want to outsource before you start searching for an outsourcing company. The more specific you are about your needs, the easier it will be to find the perfect company with the required expertise. Be sure to pick a content moderation partner that has an in-depth understanding of your industry and audience. It's imperative that they provide scalable solutions that are consistent with your roadmap.

Make sure to clearly outline the tasks and scope of work you would like to outsource. Also be specific about the type of skills and expertise that you are looking for, project timeframe, QA standards, or other specifications. Check that they utilize cutting-edge technology to guarantee accuracy and ensure efficiency. Besides technical expertise and expertise in the subject matter, verify the outsourcing partner's ability to train and develop their team of content moderators.

Another significant factor when selecting an outsourcing partner is its reputation in the market of content moderation service, its credibility, and customer feedback. Consider the company's data security practices and compliance with regulatory requirements.

The significance of human contribution in automated content moderation

Despite the rapid development of technological advancements, nobody is better than humans at performing content recognition tasks. Therefore, human intervention is required at every stage of AI-assisted content moderation.

As previously mentioned, human content moderators can also employ AI automated systems in their work. Some companies fully rely on automated content moderation on their platforms. However, this may be a risky endeavor, as even though AI systems can process a huge amount of content in a relatively short amount of time, there are some perks of manual moderation that artificial intelligent systems are unable to provide:

• Human moderators can discern the nuances of content usage in different situations;

• Humans recognize cultural differences better;

• Language features and informal registers such as slang or irony are more easily detected by humans.

Yet, with so much user-generated content in the world today, it is unfeasible to put content moderation completely in the hands of humans. This is the reason automated AI systems play such a big role in extracting explicit content.

Conclusion

User-generated content forms an integral part of today's online business. Users put their trust in this content, yet it has to be moderated to maintain the business's reputation and ensure that the platform is secure and compliant with company policies.

Outsourcing provides a ready-to-use user content moderation solution, including infrastructure and state-of-the-art automated software. Hiring third-party expertise is much cheaper than building and training your own team. Among other things, you won't need to recruit new staff. The right outsourcing company will deliver a customized solution to meet all your content moderation needs while significantly reducing your costs.