- In this video I'm gonna show you
how to get more comments on your YouTube videos
and I'm gonna show you the apps that I use
to manage my comments.
But before I jump into all of that,
I wanna say if you are new to the channel,
drop a #new down in the comments below
and if you want to learn how to make content on your phone
or be a mobile YouTuber,
be sure to hit that subscribe button
followed by the notification bell
so you don't miss out on future videos.
Now if you're wondering why it's important
to drive engagement or get comments on your YouTube videos
it's because it helps your videos rank inside of YouTube.
Let me read what YouTube says
inside the YouTube Creator Academy.
YouTube says that videos are ranked
based on a variety of factors
including how well the title, description,
and video content match the viewers query.
Beyond that we look at which videos
have driven the most engagement for a query.
That means that if you have a video
with a lot of engagement, a lot of likes,
a lot of dislikes or a lot of comments,
YouTube sees that and it helps your video rank higher
so knowing this we need to learn how to drive engagement,
how to drive comments on your videos
and I'm gonna give you some of my tips in just a second.
Another reason you want to drive those comments
is because it helps build your community,
your online family, your online community,
those are the people who are gonna continue
to watch your videos,
they're gonna follow you on Instagram,
they're gonna follow you on Twitter,
you're gonna interact with these people,
you're gonna get to know them,
that's gonna be your online family
and it all starts with comments.
Comments can also be an amazing source
for video ideas and feedback.
They're gonna let you know what they like,
they're gonna let you know what they dislike
and if you go through not only your comments
but other people's comments,
you can get a lot of video ideas
from reading through comments.
There is gold in them and their comments,
Flash In The Pan, I'm talking to you brother.
Now before I go any further,
I wanna talk about the apps that I use to manage my comments
and I wanna give another shout out to Emilio Takas
on Twitter who actually gave me the idea for this video,
he asked how people actually get comments,
he tweeted me on that
and it turned into a really long thread
so Emilio, thank you, Emilio, much appreciated my friend.
Now I normally don't give shout outs
but since I just gave one
I thought it would be fair to let you know
that shout outs are one way to drive engagement,
to drive comments.
If your community knows that you might shout them out
or will shout them out, they are going to leave comments
but be warned it could create a bit of a dumpster fire
in your comment area.
I don't personally do this,
I don't want a dumpster fire for a common area
but if it's something that you wanna do,
knock yourself out, see if it works for you.
No dumpster fires.
Now to manage my own comments, I use two apps.
I use YT Studio made by YouTube and I use TubeBuddy,
I'm gonna put a link to TubeBuddy
in the description below for that.
Now I use both of these apps differently
because they both serve a purpose.
YT Studio is great if I just want to sit down
and knock out a bunch of replies but TubeBuddy is fantastic
because they have a canned response feature
This means that you can preload replies
and if you're wondering why would you want to do that,
let's say that you find yourself
giving the same reply over and over and over
especially if you're in the education space,
you know exactly what I'm talking about,
you can preload your reply and include a link,
you can link out to other videos,
other channels, whatever you want.
So what you do is once you go to reply inside of TubeBuddy,
you can choose a canned response,
you can load up as many as you want
and then you don't have to actually type it out.
You can add additions to it
so you can actually make it more personal
but in terms of typing out the entire comment,
you don't have to do that
and this is really, really helpful
when you find yourself replying
saying the same thing over and over and over again.
For example, I get hundreds of comments
where people are asking me
how to do internal screen recording with Android
using a screen recorder.
Now if I type every one of those out,
I'm gonna work my little thumbs to death
so I use TubeBuddy for that
and I set up several canned responses.
They're a little bit different
because some people might have different types of Androids
that require a slightly different reply
and I just go in and I add a canned response
and Bob's your uncle.
And here's a little known fact,
I actually have an uncle named Bob.
So now all of that is out of the way,
I do wanna thank you for sticking around this long,
I know it took a couple minutes
to get to the meat of this video so let's get into it.
Now the first thing you need to do
is you need to ask them to leave a comment
and I know you're thinking,
yeah, why I do that and it's not working.
You're probably not asking the right way.
How you frame it is everything.
For example, if you just say leave a comment,
they really don't know what to leave a comment about,
you're putting pressure on them
to come up with an idea, something to talk about.
Now that generally doesn't work too well
because you're putting all the pressure on the person
to come up with something to think about,
you're putting pressure on them
to actually be the one to break the ice.
You don't want them to break the ice,
you want to be the ice breaker
so you have to give them a reason to leave a comment.
Let me give you an example.
I make a lot of app lists videos on my channel,
for example, if you're looking for free video editors,
I'm gonna put a link to a video that I made right there.
Now one of the things that I do inside of these list videos
is I say something like if your favorite app
did not make this list, be sure to go down,
leave a comment below,
let me know what your favorite app is so I can check it out
and maybe showcase it in a future video.
People love to give you their opinion,
people love to give you input, they love to give you advice,
they love to talk about the things they're passionate about,
they love to talk about the things
they're knowledgeable about
so if you open up the dialogue
and give them a reason to leave a comment,
they're gonna leave a comment.
What you want to do is frame that question in a way
that they want to go down and leave a comment
without feeling pressure to do so.
Once you relieve that pressure and you ask the question
or ask if they agree with you
or ask if they know a better way
or ask if you did something wrong
or if you like this, if you like that,
ask relevant questions, people are gonna give you answers.
But if you just say leave a comment,
that is so open-ended, the pressure is on them
and they're probably not going to leave a comment, I don't.
Another important thing is make sure you ask the question,
make sure you ask them to leave a comment
at the right places in your video.
Now I know you're familiar with audience retention
and watch time and if you go in and you look at your graph
and you're gonna see where the biggest drop-off is.
What I do is I go in and I ask my questions
before the big drop-offs usually happen.
That's going to front-load my question to comment,
that means more people are gonna hear me ask that question
which is gonna drive more people down to leave a comment.
If you ask people to leave a comment
after the majority of them
are no longer watching your video,
there's not gonna be a lot of people around
to actually leave a comment.
So if you front-load that and you can go back
and put something else on the end, ask a different question,
you've got two chances or even three
if you put one in the middle,
you've got more chances to get people to go down,
engage and leave a comment.
That's like a trifecta.
Now another important thing is engagement momentum,
that's where your community learns
that you're going to reply to them
so they go and they watch your other videos
and they leave their comments.
If they know you're going to acknowledge them,
if they know you're going to reply,
they will continue to leave comments,
so make sure that you build engagement momentum
by replying to every single person if you can
or at the very least give them a heart.
And I know this is going to be really difficult to do
as your channel grows,
as you get thousands and thousands of comments
and that will come but right now
we are trying to get that ball rolling,
it's important to reply to as many as you can,
all of them if you can
or at the very least give them a heart.
If you fail your community,
there's a good chance your community
will eventually turn their back on you.
Now there are other things you can do as well,
for example, on your mobile device or on a desktop,
you can pin a comment.
You can pin the top comment or you can pin your own comment
where you ask another question
again by pinning, by highlighting, by hearting,
you're acknowledging the people in your community
and that's important if you're trying to build a community.
Now here's a bonus one for you,
if you want even more engagement,
when somebody comes and they leave a comment,
you go down and reply with a question, a relevant question
that doesn't result in a yes or no answer.
For example, let's say I have a candy channel
and I'm reviewing a new flavor of M&Ms, not sponsored,
then someone in your community goes down
and they leave a comment that says hey, great video, thanks.
And you reply, thanks for watching.
Well that pretty much killed that conversation,
wouldn't you agree?
But what if when they said hey, great video,
you replied with something like hey, thanks for watching,
I appreciate it, which M&Ms do you like best?
Do you like the mints or do you like the pretzels?
What you're doing is creating conversation
because you asked your question, they're gonna come back,
they're usually gonna come back
and they're gonna give you another answer,
and then you can keep that going,
continuing the conversation,
engagement, engagement, engagement, boom!
And you're gonna get to know them through these engagements,
the back and forth,
all of this builds an online relationship,
it helps in your community building,
you get to know the people who are watching your video,
you get to know them on a personal level
and this helps build your online community.
And who knows?
You might even meet up one day in real life and share M&Ms.
Not sponsored.
If you wanna learn how to make content on your phone
or be a mobile YouTuber, go and hit that Subscribe button
followed by the notification bell
so you don't miss out on future content.
Thank you so much for watching, I do appreciate it
and I'll see you in the next video.