What happens when you build a really tight community
around your YouTube channel because you're responding
to every single comment that you get across all your videos,
but at some point like you're getting
too many comments to keep up with now, what do you do?
That's what we're going to talk about today.
Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer.
And it's Thursday, which means it's time
to do some YouTube Q&A with you guys.
One of you wrote and asked this.
I have a question.
You could be having a lot of comments coming each day, maybe
100 to 1,000 comments.
How could you manage them all?
This is something that I want to talk about
because it's something I'm currently struggling with here
on the Video Creators channel because it used to be I could
keep up with every single comment
that I got across all my videos here.
But now, as I keep adding more videos
and my library keeps growing and other videos are still
very active, it's just impossible for me to keep up.
And I feel bad because I want to respond to every single one.
What can I do?
Well the solution that I've come up with
is to give myself the freedom not
to respond to every single comment,
but instead just set aside like a half hour or an hour
or whatever my time permits for that day
to say, OK, the next half hour I'm going to do nothing
but respond to comments.
And I will just start responding to as many as I can.
And when a half hour hits, that's when I stop responding.
I always start with my most recent comments
because the people who comment there
are more likely to be the active subscribers, the people who
are really engaging in this community.
Whereas the people who are commenting
on videos from like months ago, probably
just found it through search and I
want to respond to them if I can,
but I really want to foster the community of the people who
are active here on a daily basis first.
Something I've seen a few other creators do
that I think could work well also
is they'll put an annotation at the very front
of their video saying, hey, I will respond to the first 500
comments on this video.
And they do.
So right when that video goes live,
they're usually sitting there for the first hour or two
hours-- I don't even know how long it takes
to respond to that many comments--
and they're just responding to all of them.
Then once they've hit 500, they stop, and then
move on with their day.
A bigger problem, though, might be
knowing how to keep up with these comments.
They're some tools out there like VidIQ
that do a great job with organizing all your comments,
helping you efficiently work through all of them,
showing you who you probably need to respond to,
and kind of filtering out people that you might not
need to respond to as much.
But if you don't have access to a tool like that, a great way
to do it is to make sure you set your channel
to get an email notification for each comment.
And then so your inbox doesn't gets flooded with messages
from YouTube with every new comment,
filter all those messages into a new label or new folder
in your email.
And just let them sit there and accumulate until you have time.
And then you say, OK, for the next hour,
I'm going to sit down and respond to all these comments
and then just simply work your way through the emails
until you've used up your hour.
And that system doesn't work too bad
because Gmail will automatically group together conversations
all the same comments from the same video.
So you can just open up one and boom, boom, boom, boom,
like respond to all the comments on that video.
And then go to email and kind of go through the rest
and you can pick out which videos are more recent,
respond to those emails first.
So it works, not the best, but it works.
I would really love to hear from you guys for my own sake.
In the comments below, share with me
how you guys keep up with all the comments
across your channel.
If you are at that point where you're getting them
all day long, all day, share with us
your system for how you continue to engage and interact.
That'd be awesome and very helpful
for me and for many other people who are watching this video.
So thank you for sharing your experience and advice with us.
If you have a question you would like
me to answer in an upcoming Thursday,
there's a link in the description text
below this video where you can submit your video to me.
And I would love to put your video here and feature you
and kind of have more of like a face to face conversation.
Or you could also comment below or post it
on our Video Creators Facebook page or tweet to me
or whatever works best for you.
And if this is your first time here,
I've love to have you subscribe.
Every week I do some Q&A with you guys
just to help you guys out because I really
believe that a lot of you guys have messages that could really
change the world if you just grew your audience
and your message is spread.
It could really make this world a better place.
So that's why I do what I do.
On Tuesdays we take a look at online video news
and talk about the implications it has for us as creators.
And then on Wednesdays I give you guys some YouTube tips
and advice and ideas.
And then on Thursdays we go YouTube Q&A just like this.
So subscribe.
And I will see you guys again next week.
Bye.