MBA1975 Q&A Wednesday: Do I need to reply to all my comments on social and YouTube?

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So Fabian asks in today's Q and A. Wednesday's question, does he need to reply to every single comment that's on his YouTube page or YouTube videos or his social profiles? Engagement is starting to pick up and it's starting to get overwhelming. Furthermore, it's super hard to take a break and just kind of not have a day off from replying to comments or having it in the back of my mind, oh God, you know, I need to get back to these people or it's not gonna be good for my business. First thing I want to say is that all comments are not created equal. Phoebe, I'm sure you know that on YouTube, on social media, engagement on a post on a video is a great thing to kind of boost the algorithm. It's a great way for you to get more exposure and to be trending and all that kind of stuff. And when somebody comments, it's easy for you to kind of reply to that comment, to kind of add to the comment count and show the actual platform. Hey, this is an eng post and please share it with the rest of other people so they can find it too. So this is actually a good strategy and what you're doing is a good idea, right, to reply to comments. But not all comments are created equal, in my opinion. There are top tier comments you need to reply to and there are bottom tier comments. Top tier comments are comments that are either praise or questions, like honest to God questions, right? Like questions about the materials or the, you know, the video put up the comment you made on social. These are really comments you should be replying to because they're an easy way to kind of get the algorithm going. And it's an easy way for you actually give back to the community and answer questions and give more value and make that whole post or video more valuable. Now, bottom tier comments, in my opinion, don't really require a reply. And these are comments like snarky remarks, trolls, people being rude or just being very disagreeable without actually asking a genuine question. And in my opinion, as you get more popular, as your posts become more widespread and you have different minds, different people being exposed to it, about 50 to 60% of your comments are going to be like this. Then there's other comments that are just not really for you. They're just, you know, people pointing out something interesting in the video, people making a joke about something, people kind of posting a funny line or a meme. These are really low priority comments to reply to. So the comments that are again, questions and praise is really where you want to kind of reply to or prioritize your replies to. Now, regardless of how many comments you have or what you're gonna reply to, you need to time box your time. Uh, what does that mean? That means that you shouldn't be replying to every single comment that comes in when it comes in. This is a surefire way for you to lose your mind, really. It's gonna cause you a lot of stress. So find a time where you are able to kind of go through the comments and answer some comments during your day. It might be after lunch when you're feeling kind of low energy and you don't need a lot of thinking power, creative power, to do any work. So you can literally just block off 30 minutes and just go through all your social posts, all your YouTube video, and do it at one shot and do not visit it again. Close that stuff, don't look at it on your phone, all that kind of stuff. This takes discipline, but trust me, it's going to save you a lot of time and a lot of agony with this strategy. Even if you go away, it only means you spending 30 minutes doing this every day. Now there is the option of outsourcing it where you don't actually do all the replying. This is very common with creators because, you know, it takes so much time and effort to create the content. You know, getting in the comments and answering, it's kind of hard and time consuming and it could really suck a lot of your day out. So what a lot of people do is they get a virtual assistant, they get a copywriter, they get somebody who can reply on their behalf. They understand your voice, they understand your intentions, they understand your business, they understand their content and they can reply to, to those comments. Now there's another strategy that you might want to think about as you start growing. If you go to any YouTube channel that has, you know, 500,000 subscribers, a million subscribers, very rarely will you find that YouTuber in the comments section actually replying, actually, you know, chatting away, because it's just too much. Not only in terms of the work, but the emotional strain of reading all those comments that are not always great. So many, many YouTubers at a certain point just don't go into the comment section. They actually just say, hey, here is my content. This is what I produce for you. Take it or leave it. I'm not interested in engaging in conversation. And it's a form of self protection. It's a form of staying pure, staying positive. So you can continue to put out great work. Because some people, especially when it starts piling on with hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of comments, half of those are not going to be so great. They're not going to be great for you. Your, you know, your ego, your emotions, your self esteem, your confidence. And no matter how tough you are, if you put yourself in a tough environment, it will affect you. So as you grow, you might get to the point where you're like, okay, I just don't engage in comments anymore. You almost see it as like critics writing a review for a movie. You just put the movie out, right, and you're not going to engage with the critics. That's, that's their job, to be critical. The same goes with social media. Sometimes as your profile grows, you know, it's hard to really engage with every single person. Now what some people do with large social media accounts, people like Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart and the Rock, is most of the time they don't reply to the comments under their posts. But Once in a while they do, and that actually motivates people to comment even more. Hey, maybe Kevin will reply to me. Maybe Snoop will like my little funny joke in the comments section. So it could be something in between. But I've spoken to a lot of successful YouTubers, and they've told me that they just stay away from the comment section because it's just too much. And of course, a lot of this will depend on your content. You know, are you bringing up controversial content? Are you doing tutorials? Are you doing political pieces? It all depends on what you're posting about, because you might be opening yourself up to more comments or more controversy, but that's kind of what you're doing, you know, in the first place, right? What you're doing. You're kind of engaging in this conversation, so you should expect people to react. Many of the things I mentioned today may not apply to your content. Like, if you're creating videos on SEO, you might have people hating and say, this is not the right technique. This stinks. But the nature of your content is going to also dictate the nature of your comments.

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To wrap up today's lesson, tread carefully when you're dealing with comments on YouTube, on your social profiles, especially when they start, you know, piling up. We're talking about 10, 15, 20, 30, 100 comments on every post. Prioritize the type of comments. And by the way, you can get some help with a virtual assistant where they can actually send you a daily email and say, hey, here are the comments that are, you know, tier one comments. How would you like to reply? And you can dictate it. You can type it back, back out. You can just do a voice memo and the VA can reply on your behalf. This is a very fast and efficient way for you to, you know, tackle all the important comments without being in the comments. So, like, the VA will actually do all the reading and go through all the comments. And filter out the ones you need to reply to give it to you on a silver platter. You can then record your answers on Voice. If that's faster, I think that's much faster. And then they can post your answers in the comments section on your behalf. Fabian I hope that helps and I hope it helps everybody who's listening who's been thinking about this topic. Comments in the comment section. If you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, just go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net that wraps up today's lesson. Make sure you hit subscribe. Follow whatever it says on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss the next lesson. Tomorrow we're going to be discussing should you have an online community for your customers. Whether it's a Facebook group, a forum, a Slack group, discord, whatever it is, is this something that you should invest in for your business? Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. I'll see you. Take care. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with nyquil Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. Nyquil Intense Flu the Nighttime Sniffling aching aching fever Best sleep with a flu medicine. Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children.