Increasing YouTube Video Engagement (Comment Edition), Contributed by @TangerineTravels
If you saw our post What is YouTube Engagement, and Why Engagement On Your YouTube Videos is Important?, we talked about the things that YouTube considers "Engagement" and what makes engagement so important.
There are a handful of things that constitute engagement on a YouTube video:
- How many people are subscribing to your channel after watching - See post here
- How many viewers share your content - See post here
- Number of likes and dislikes (who is liking it is also important) - See post here
- Number and quality of comments
- Viewer retention
To sum up the importance of engagement on your YouTube videos, it's one of the key factors that determine how high YouTube's algorithms will rank your video. I'm not just talking about ranking in search either. Even more important is how often your videos are being recommended to users after they finish watching a different video.
How to increase YouTube engagement
Above, we listed five things that you need to focus on when it comes to increasing your video engagement. In our previous and upcoming posts, we're going to address those things one at a time, so you can learn how to increase all five factors of engagement. This post is focusing on making your comment section come alive.
How to get comments
Ask your viewers questions
A few times throughout your videos, find places where you can ask your viewers questions. When you ask them a question, tell them to comment below. You can see examples of that in this video.
Also, when you ask for the comments, have an animation pop up on the screen that says "COMMENT." You can also see an example of this animation in the above video.
Pin a comment asking a question
This tactic is newly-discovered and has quickly turned into one of our favorite ways to create a huge amount of engagement in our comment section. We like to pin a comment, but not just any comment. We've found it creates a ton of engagement if we ask the question "Which video should we do next?" We provide them with three options to choose from, and these are videos that we want to do.
Pinning this comment at the top of your comment section will do a few things for you:
- It will tell you what your audience is most interested in.
- It will allow your viewers to feel like they got to choose your next video topic. Well, they sort of did, but all three of the options were videos that you wanted to make anyway.
- It gets you a bunch of comments that you wouldn't have otherwise received. YouTube will then boost your video's visibility due to all of the engagement!
If you're pinning this comment asking them to vote, be sure to also ask them in the video itself. You can see an example of our pinned comment in this video.
Say things that your viewers will want to correct you on
People feel a strong need to correct you when they think you're wrong and they'll leave a comment telling you that you're wrong. Learn to love these comments because they are making your videos more visible. In fact, you should even seek out these kinds of comments.
For example, in the video below, we went to an average Mexican movie theater. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice theater, but relative to other Mexican theaters it was nothing special. In part of the title of our video, we said "Upscale Mexican Movie Theater" knowing that it's no better than any other theater. This made people want to correct us and we received a whole lot of comments saying exactly that - it's not an upscale theater.
Interact with your commenters
If people are taking the time to comment, be sure to take the time to respond. At least do this until the point at which your channel is getting so many comments that you can no longer keep up with responding to all of them.
The more you interact with your commenters, the more they'll respond back to you. YouTube will view that as a positive sign that your video contains great content and rank you higher.
Nothing is a waste, you might be running from controversial life in the the real life, but it is a means of getting noticed on YouTube.... Lol
I've seen most of those questions, that one would be wondering what was wrong with the owner of the channel, I don't know it's a business tactics.... Hahaha
Thanks, it's getting more and more interesting.
Reply to my comment is one of the best way to catch my attention, I just love conversation... Lol
But I think something of the youtuber are still missing that part of replying to comment, that's why I lost interest in it. Everyone deserve a feedback....lol
If you currently own a YouTube channel, then you might have found that the path to higher engagement with your target audience isn’t that linear. Views are pretty much a vanity metric that give immediate gratification.
The YouTube algorithm also doesn’t appear to give special preference to online videos with a high number of views which goes against what we know as a common media strategy. Rather, it takes the “session time” of a user into account (not available to the users). So, you need to hook the visitor, get him to spend more time on your online video and to interact with you in the comments.
I don't know why but I feel like thanking you for this comment edition :-)
Some fantastic points on the importance of comments and a great analysis of them in terms of generating engagement. I really like that you always keep the posts concise and sweet.
BTW great video on 'Why Mexico doesn't make sense'
I would definitely say this is one adorable thing I know you always do and it is really commendable; engaging your commenters. You always reply every single one of them.
I recently found out about the pinned questions. It was a new thing for me as I didn't notice at first but started noticing it. I think that is a great idea as it gives people direction on what to even comment on, IF they don't initially want to comment.
I like the reiterating aspect of it.
Anything that gets the viewers to have a day or give a comment should be employed, either the pinned question or having something to be corrected about.
Gracias amigos hahaha
Engagement in the form of commenting is just one of the many factors that YouTube uses to rank a video in their search engine . You must be creative and also try to produce high quality long videos to keep you followers and fans glue to your video this has show that longer video has more commenters than shorter video. Another good way of having alot of commenters is to Ask questions in your video this create alot of engagement with your video
@TangerineTravels is one of YouTube account you should follow for the one who love traveling and adventure. I've already subscribed this account. Thanks for providing us this tricks and tips in increasing our YouTube engagement @communitycoin and tangerinetravels
They should come to South America, go to Colombia or Peru, know machupicchu, it would be great guys
Wow, I'm really learning a lot from this series. New day new things to learn about YouTube.
Thank you for helping you tube video marketer's , i am also you tube video marketers.
These are the very good strategy to get more comment on a youtube video.I hope using the strategies we will get more comments.