Why You Should Reply To Everything

This week, I am going to be talking about how you can strengthen your community and create a lasting relationship with your audience by replying to all of the comments and messages that you get on your videos and channel. Now, as someone who gets over 500 comments a day, this is not perfectly scaleable, and there are ways to still reply to comments and create engagement with your audience even as a bigger channel, so we will talk about that as well.

What does reply to everything mean?

What I mean by reply to everything is that you should respond to every comment, tweet, personal message, and even email assuming you have a business email available, which you should. This is because you need to create a relationship with your viewers. When watching YouTube videos, people want to connect with the creators that they watch. Thus, you need to connect with them. You can do this very easily by simply replying to comments and messages on your channel.

What are somethings you should know?

• You must be professional: This is a business, and you need to act like a business owner when talking to people. Don’t get in arguments in the comment section, don’t use profanity, and be as professional as you possibly can. Again, this is your business, and you need to be professional about it.
• You’re building a community: Make sure you truly respond to everyone who leaves a comment that isn’t negative. If someone posts “FIRST!!” on your video, you need to respond. If someone posts, “Great video!”, you need to respond to that comment. Make sure you reply to everyone and make everyone feel included.
• Don’t respond to negative comments: While you should respond to all comments that you get, don’t respond to negative comments or comments that you don’t agree. This is because you can end up getting into an argument in the comment section of your video, and that is never good. You want your channel to be a positive place and arguing isn’t positive.
• Engage outside of YouTube: Don’t just limit your community to YouTube. Start a Twitter or a Facebook page or both for your channel and encourage your audience to engage with you there. This will give you a way to talk to people in your community in a quicker more stable manor, and it will also give you legs to stand on outside of YouTube. Thus, if for some reason you can no longer access your YouTube channel, you can still talk to your community on these other networks.
• Give your audience a reason to comment: In my videos, I use a question of the day to give my audience a reason to comment. You need to do something similar to get comments on your videos. Give them a reason to comment by asking what they think about certain issues, or by asking for feedback on your videos. If people don’t have a reason to comment, they won’t.

How does this scale up?

As some of you may be wondering, how does this scale up as your audience grows? Well, this is what I recommend you do as your audience grows and as you get more comments, tweets, messages, ect. Instead of replying to everything, start replying to comments that only require a response. For example, if someone ask you a question, respond to it. Don’t respond to just comments that say “Great video!” or “FIRST!!”. Those don’t add any meaning, and if you are getting 500 comments per day, there is no way you can reply to them all.