While social media has a lot of different channels for interacting with people, comments are the best way to go by a long shot.
You might follow the same people and like the same posts as they do, but comments let you individualize in the masses of faceless online followers.
Sometimes, people even react to your own stuff, and some might post their own thoughts in response. Comments let you talk as you and meet people who talk as themselves – most of the time.
With the absolutely staggering amount and variety of content produced on Instagram, the comments also sort of took off as equally ludicrous in terms of the same. We’ll get on to what makes or breaks them, different kinds of comments, what you want to do, and why you probably shouldn’t use Bots to represent your brand.
How Do Comments Work? Why Are They Important?
As I said before, comments are the best form of online interaction in terms of authenticity. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say comments define users and their influence on people.
Engagement is the metric used to measure genuine interaction for social media sites, and comments are one of the top ways to build that up. Engagement being up is always a good thing, while follower counts – the measurement almost everyone expects to be the most important one– actually work against you in that regard. Comments are among the best ways to reach out and communicate with people online, and some occasionally communicate back. The more people in a (relevant) comment chain, the better it is for the poster.
Businesses and influencers sort Instagram interactions by likes, follows, and comments, with the latter taking priority most of the time. Comments are a lot harder to fake compared to likes and follows, and most attempts to do so tend to be very obvious to everyone involved. Unfortunately, it still happens. We’ll get on to that later.
What Do Comments Mean?
Comments mean people are paying attention, and they like something enough to talk and type about it online publicly. You can’t really fake this level of enthusiasm. You might meet friendly people in the chains of slowly spiralling text. Or you could just start flaming off at that snotty troll who’s been setting everyone off. Either way, I promise it won’t ever get boring.
Comments are basically the extension of an active fanbase, and one that’s in plain view of the rest of the world to boot. Comments on your content mean people care enough to talk about it, and care enough to keep talking about it to random but like-minded people.
Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not allowed. Something like this could easily get you a leg up on starting out. With the very, very saturated Instagram market you kind of need every advantage you can get. You could still make it even without, but it’ll take more work and time, and sometimes you don’t get enough of either to even get that far.
Avoid the crappy spam comments that most bad services peddle. Chances are they’ll be very obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention, and it’ll drag you down. Look for sources with dependable performance and refund policies, such as BuySocialMediaMarketing. Also, make sure the service they offer is a gradual one. It’s kind of a dead giveaway when you go from one comment to a thousand in a handful of minutes. Protip: if you want to see the kind of comments you’ll be getting, just check the sites customer reviews and decide if you like it from there!
Bot Problems and Why You Really Shouldn’t
It goes without saying – but I’ll say it anyways – that most people don’t like having someone else represent them, even for online accounts. So why the heck would they trust bots to run an account with their name and face tied to it? Feel free to use them for customer inquiries and basic services, but if you don’t keep a tied lid on its working parameters you’re bound to piss someone off.
Bots are great in other channels online. A company’s automated caller directory is a bot, and it just makes it more convenient for everyone – no time wasted, busy signal, or dropped calls. When you stick a bot on social media, tell it to interpret the emojis and images, you’re gonna have a bad time.
The woman in this story got very, very upset when bots flocked to her Facebook post to post their generic comments and hashtags. This post was about a miscarriage she experienced, and she rightfully called out the automated, shallow, and blatant network of scripts for ruining social interaction on a social media site.
Great Comments For Content
Interaction is the name of the game. You want a lot of it – the kind of snowball that nabs dozens of people in its cycle. Something like a random greeting or a common interest does wonders for people. From a purely practical perspective, comment chains up engagement. You can see this everywhere, from regular Instagrammers to people will follower counts in the millions. Wanting to talk and having someone listen to you is a pretty human desire, after all.
Most of the time, these crop up in wholesome greetings, humour, or sarcasm. We’ve got Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively trolling each other on Instagram for example, with observers just watching and sometimes putting their own two cents in.
Social media can actually be a pretty nice place to be, sometimes. These are all pretty nice things to experience, and you should feel great about doing or seeing them. As another bonus, most of the time, these’ll come from real people. Unless Siri gets a new snark functionality (Who knows?).
You Won’t Really Be Alone Here
From a human standpoint, bringing a lot of people together, instilling common ground for them to hang out, and giving them the reason to actually get to know one another – strangers over the internet – is a reward of its own. Just enjoy yourself, don’t be afraid of comments, and feel free to find and talk with like-minded people online. You might even find your people there. It wouldn’t be the first time.
