Engagement is a huge buzz word in the social media space. Brands are often tasked with spurring this engagement with their audiences on each social network they are active on, but often comments on a brand's YouTube channel are left unanswered. It's just as important to respond to the comments of YouTube users on your channel as it is to respond to a wall post on your Facebook Page or a mention of your brand's Twitter account. Here are three main benefits of responding to comments on your YouTube channel.
1. Authority
Answering comments on your videos, which are typically focused on your products, services, company or industry, helps clearly show your understanding of your specialty. The more questions you answer from your audience, the more likely they'll return for more insights from your channel as the authority on a particular industry. Just as it's important to create quality, informative videos; it's equally important to help spur quality conversations around your videos and the comments your viewers leave on your channel. Your brand knows your industry the best, so answer and respond to comments to make sure your audience knows this as well.
2. Community
Creating a place where your voice, as well as the input of your audience is thriving will help grow your community to be a valuable asset. By building trust with your viewers by answering questions, responding to comments and addressing issues; it will strengthen future and existing relationships with your audience. Use a personal tone when responding to YouTube comments to give your brand an approachable feel. The more quickly you respond with helpful information, the happier your YouTube audience will be and surprised, since many YouTube comments on brand channels go unanswered.
3. Visibility
An additional benefit to answering your YouTube comments is that this continued conversation leads to increased visibility in YouTube and Google search results. The more comments and interaction one of your videos has, the more value YouTube's & Google's search algorithm places on it for certain searches. It's one of the many factors this algorithm takes into account when determining what videos to rank for what key phrases being searched.
For example, if you search for how to build a deck in Google or how to build a deck in YouTube, Home Depot's YouTube video can be found on the first page of results front and center. Many other videos listed in the results have more views, but rank lower then Home Depot's video that has less views. This is partly because this video has 55+ comments and 92 likes. Home Depot answered some of the comments, helping entice users to continue to comment. It can be assumed that the search algorithm takes comments on your videos as an important indication of it's quality and therefore, gives it higher rankings for certain searches. The more you're found in YouTube or Google search, the more visibility your video content will have on the web. Be sure to encourage comments in your videos, as well as taking the time to answer the comments on your videos to start driving greater visibility to your content.
Are you currently answering your YouTube channel's comments? What have you found to be the best way to interact with your audience on YouTube? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Brian Honigman is the Social Media Account Manager at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics certified partner that also specializes in social media, search engine optimization and PPC. You can follow him on Twitter @Brian_Honigman or @LunaMetrics.