How To Engineer A Comment Section That Grows Your Social Media Following

Are you having trouble getting engagements on your videos, particularly comments?

Comments might not seem as exciting as likes and follows, but they’re actually a big indicator that your content struck a chord with a member of your target audience.

This means they’ll be more likely to share your content and follow you. They may even follow you on other platforms if they enjoy your content enough.

In this post, we share tips on how to get more comments on social media and use your comment section as a tool to grow your audience.

Publish to the right platforms

Not all social media platforms are created equal.

A lot of creators who cross-post their content to multiple platforms often find out that videos posted to TikTok receive more engagements than they do anywhere else.

This includes comments.

At the same time, receiving more comments might not be as simple as cross-posting your content to TikTok.

Note: Check out our post comparing different social media scheduling apps if you need a tool that lets you cross-post content to different social media platforms from a single draft.

The best thing you can do for your brand is find out which social media platforms your audience uses the most.

You’ll discover this eventually the more you upload to different platforms, but if you want to know right now, find the biggest creators in your niche, and see how many engagements they get on each platform.

Whichever platform they receive the highest number of engagements from is likely the platform your target audience uses the most.

Be real

In a world of carefully-edited videos and AI-generated content, social media users crave and cling onto authenticity.

Not only will you receive more views and likes on your content the more authentic you are in it, you’ll receive more comments as well.

Basically, your personality in real life should shine through in your content.

This means you should be more relatable by sharing your struggles, your accomplishments and opinions you have about topics related to your niche.

If you have stories to tell, share them, especially if you can prove them with photos and videos.

Have conversations with your followers

When you do receive comments, be sure to respond to them as soon as possible.

This helps you grow your community as social media users favor creators who interact with their followers.

When you do respond to comments, don’t use simple, generic phrases like “Thanks!” and “Glad you liked it!”

Have conversations in your comment section. If a commenter says they liked something from your video, give more details on it.

Ask follow-up questions whenever possible to keep conversations going.

Use a tool that offers social media inbox features. This kind of tool allows you to monitor and respond to comments and direct messages from multiple platforms, all from a single dashboard.

Sendible is great for this purpose.

Include prompts in your content

A simple way to encourage viewers to leave comments is by including prompts in your content.

And, no, I’m not talking about AI prompts.

Here’s what I mean:

I’m talking about prompts like “leave a comment on what you want to see next.” 

That’s a little basic but it’ll be enough to get things started.

Although, I’d recommend getting a bit more creative.

Ask for your audience’s opinion on something. If you’re showing a paint color you picked out for something, show them other colors you had in mind, and ask them which one you liked best.

The more you ask for their input, the more they’ll give it.

Reply to comments with more content

When commenters do give their opinion on something or make requests for what else they’d like to see, include that in your content.

If the majority of your audience picked out a particular paint color, use that color! This shows them that you’re willing to listen to their input and even incorporate it in your videos.

TikTok even has a cool feature that allows you to respond to comments with videos.

The comment will appear as an overlay in your video so your viewers know what you’re responding to.

Mention comments in your content

Another way you can incorporate audience feedback into your content is by mentioning comments in your content.

Sometimes your content will get a lot of different responses.

Some viewers will comment on one thing while others will comment on another. Opinions will be varied, and some will have quite a few questions.

You should definitely reply to these commenters directly, but you can also fill the rest of your audience in by responding to them in follow-up videos.

Create follow-up videos

Speaking of follow-up videos, you should definitely create more videos and expand on a topic when you receive a lot of responses on your original video.

This is one of the best ways to engineer your comment section so that it grows your following, not just your engagements.

You’ll know what type of videos to follow up with based on the responses your original video received.

Use the comment countdown method

The comment countdown method works like this: you show part of something, ask a question or make a vague statement, then ask your audience to guess the rest or why they’re seeing/hearing what they’re seeing/hearing.

You then ask them to leave their guesses in the comments and tell them you’ll “leave the answer in the comments” or “explain in the comments.”

Not only does the guessing aspect of this method encourage your followers to leave comments, it encourages them to come back to your comment section to discover the answer.

Create quotable content

While you shouldn’t fake your emotions or reactions to things, don’t be afraid to slightly exaggerate your reactions in ways that create more quotable content.

The idea isn’t to fake a reaction. It’s to open up more of your personality and to break away from any shyness you might be experiencing from putting yourself out there.

At the same time, “quotable content” can refer to the way you articulate your thoughts.

When you share opinions and ideas, try to word them in ways that’s captivating yet also simple and concise.

Include pattern interrupts

Start your videos with hooks that use the pattern interrupt method.

Pattern interrupts are deliberate breakaways from form that catch viewers off guard and get them to pay attention.

You can include them anywhere in a video, but if you want to prevent your viewer from scrolling, include them at the beginning.

Use phrases like “here’s something everyone gets wrong about [topic]” or “can I take 20 seconds away from your day to show you something cool?”

These are phrases social media users don’t expect to hear while they’re scrolling through their timelines.

Include Easter eggs

Easter eggs typically refer to a message or image that appears hidden in a video game or in the background of a film or TV show.

Stan Lee’s cameos in Marvel movies are great examples of easter eggs.

They can be related to the media they appear in or they can be seemingly random.

If you want more viewers to comment on your content, include easter eggs in it. They can appear in every post you create or you can switch things up every few posts. The choice is yours.

They could be something related to your niche you keep in the background of your videos or something related to other content you’ve made.

Whatever they are, they should be cool, funny or exciting.

Use hashtags that summon your target audience

One reason why you may not be receiving as many comments as you’d like is because you’re not using hashtags that relate to your target audience.

Social media algorithms are designed to show more content from a particular hashtag when a user likes content that includes that hashtag.

Use each platform’s search bar and view your competitors’ videos to see which hashtags are most popular in your niche.

Chime in on trends

One of the best ways to summon more of your target audience is to give your opinions on trends and current events that relate to your niche.

Create content that focuses on these topics, or stitch/duet content related to them.

Post when your audience is most active

Sometimes summoning your audience is as simple as posting when they’re active on the platforms you publish to.

According to our research, these are the best times to post on different social media platforms:

• TikTok – Weekday mornings
• Instagram – Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 10 AM and 2 PM
• Facebook – Early morning to early afternoon on weekdays
• Twitter (X) – Early morning on weekdays
• LinkedIn – Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9 AM

Check your analytics within each platform as well. You should be able to see when your audience is most active there.

Sendible has a feature that allows you to publish posts at “optimal times.” It collects behavioral data on your audience over time to learn when they’re most active, then uses that data to determine when the best time to publish posts should be.

Have a gameplan for comment moderation

Social media users prefer to follow creators that have the same values as them. They like knowing that they’re safe in your comment section.

While it’s wonderful if you haven’t received your first negative comment, yet, have a gameplan in mind for when you do.

Remember, if you share a lot about yourself in your videos and consider yourself to be pretty relatable, negative comments don’t just hurt you. They also hurt followers who are just like you.

Here are some ways you can handle negative comments in a way that uplift your community:

• Kill ’em with kindness. Thank the commenter for watching and taking the time to express their opinion, but explain why it’s not helpful.
• Encourage empathy. Similar to the first method, only this one focuses on encouraging the commenter to have empathy and see things from a different perspective.
• Defend and protect. If a commenter makes negative remarks about vulnerable individuals in your audience, let them know plain and simple that remarks like those will not be tolerated and have no place in your community.

Most social media platforms have comment moderation tools that allow you to block individual users, delete comments and set up comment filters to prevent certain comments from being posted at all.

Final thoughts

Social media algorithms reward content that gets engagement.

A big part of that is comments. 

The more comments you get, the more it will help you to get your content seen by more people.

So, use the ideas that I’ve talked about above. Put them into practice and soon, you’ll start to get more comments on your social media posts.

But don’t just settle with the examples I’ve used. Get creative.