In this post, we are going to dive deep and analyze the YouTube comments section and how to get the most out of the YouTube comment section to grow your YouTube channel.
Table of Contents
What is YouTube comment?
YouTube comment is a chat-based textbox on YouTube right below the video screen, which allows viewers to add text comments for the video.
Viewers can use the YouTube comment section to express their thoughts, opinions, ask questions and provide feedback about the video in the text format.
Still, the YouTube comment section is a plain text-box and you can’t upload images or any fancy stuff.
How YouTube comments Drive Traffic To Videos ?
Getting a lot of YouTube comments on a video doesn’t directly drive traffic to that video. But YouTube comment is a crucial factor in the YouTube ranking system.
When you get a lot of positive comments, YouTube automatically recommends your video on the recommendation feed and ranks higher on the YouTube search results for the target keywords.
You can see the impact on the analytics section of the video.
How To Get More Comments on YouTube ?
Getting YouTube comments subtly increases the overall growth of YouTube channel.
So, here are the few tips to get more comments on YouTube
At the end of the video, always ask your viewers to leave a comment
Finish your video with a simple open-ended question
Tell viewers to post their questions on the comment section
Go ahead and Initiate a discussion on the Youtube comment section
Respond to every comment that you get
Ask viewers to enter the topic of your next video in the comment
Show the best YouTube comment of the previous video as end screen to engage viewers to leave a comment
Run giveaway or promotion for the best comment
What is Highligted Comment on YouTube ?
When you get email notification stating that if someone commented on your video and you click on the notification then it’ll take you to the video page.
To show you the email notification comment, that particular comment gets highlighted with a tag “Highlighted comment“
Technically in the email notification it attach and automated ID along with the video URL to highlight that particular comment.
So, what does it mean when your comment is highlighted on youtube?
You can just leave a reply to that comment or you can thank them as shown in the above image. That’s all you can do.
How to Timestamp YouTube Comment ?
YouTube offers the timestamp features on both the description and YouTube comment section.
Let’s see how to link time in the YouTube comment.
YouTube timestamp format is HH:MM:SS. Here HH denotes hour, MM denoted minutes and SS denotes seconds where HH is optional.
In a 10 minutes video, if you want viewers to watch your video from 3 minutes 45 seconds, then your timestamp should be 03:45.
When you hit the publish button, YouTube automatically converts the timestamp into a hyperlink and when viewers click on it, YouTube starts playing video from 3 minutes 45 seconds.
Let’s say you have a long tutorial video of 1.5 hours. When viewers come to watch the specific topic of your video, they have a hard time finding out the part.
You can add a timestamp against the topic you covered.
Here’s the perfect example of timestamp and have a look at the likes count which clearly conveys how helpful it is for viewers.
Now you learned how to timestamp YouTube comments.
But I recommend adding timestamps on both descriptions and YouTube comments.
Because viewers often scroll down to the comment section rather than the description.
You may ask why should I add timestamps in the description? It’s purely for an SEO purpose and let me show you how:
Google recently rolled out major changes to the mobile search results and one of the changes is video search results appearance.
When a search query matches with your timestamp topic, it displays the timestamp and text against it below the video search results to enhance the search experience.
When the user clicks on the timestamp, Google starts playing video from that timestamp.
Here’s a search result from mobile
What is Pinned YouTube Comment?
Pinned comment on YouTube is a comment which stays at the top of the comment section with a tag “Pinned by ”. YouTube channel owner can mark any one of the comments in a video as a pinned comment.
How to Pin YouTube Comment?
Sign in to YouTube
Go to YouTube dashboard and click on the video
Select the comment section and scroll down to the comment
Click on the action menu contain 3 dots below the comment
Select the Pin option to pin the comment
Why Should You Pin YouTube Comment?
As a YouTuber, you should have the habit of pinning the comment on all videos to achieve the goal of the video.
When I analyze 100s of videos from different YouTube niches, here are the few items YouTubers pinned.
⇒ Affiliate link that they’re promoting in a video
⇒ Subscription link to their YouTube channel
⇒ To collect leads for their blog
⇒ Send traffic to their blog/online course
⇒ Comment contains the detailed timestamp of the video
⇒ Comment which clarifies most commonly asked viewers question
⇒ Positive comment about the channel/YouTuber
⇒ To initiate conversation/break the ice
How To Pick Random YouTube Comments for Giveaways?
Giveaways now become a part of YouTuber culture. To grow your channel, you must run some promotions like giveaways or free gifts to engage the audience.
When you run giveaways you should be fair and unbiased with random Youtube comment picker. It would be good if you pick the winner in front of viewers or capture the recordings.
YouTube doesn’t have such a feature but this plugin helps you to pick a random comment from a video.
Just go to the YouTube dashboard and scroll down to the video to pick a winner.
You should see the TB icon against the video if you installed the plugin, click on it.
You can see plenty of options. Under the “Misc”, you can find an option “Pick a Winner”. Click on it.
You’ll get a pop-up asking whether you want to pick a random comment or comment that contains a particular word(s).
Once you select the option, click on “Pick a Winner”. Winner will be picked in a few seconds as shown below
If you want to pick another winner, you can select the option “Pick Another Winner” and pick one more winner for giveaways.
How to Format YouTube Comments with Bold, Italic or Strike Through
YouTube comment text formatting helps you to stand out from the crowd. You can use the formatting if you want to emphasize any sentences on your comment.
You can do format with special characters like *,_ and – but you need to remember the characters and formatting option associated with that.
Let me show you an easy peasy way of formatting as you format the word document. Just install TubeBuddy on your chrome browser.
Go to the comment section. Insert the plain text inside the YouTube comment box.
Here’s a detailed guide on YouTube comment formatting.
Below the comment box, you can see the special formatting option(circled). Select the text that you want to format and select the appropriate formatting option.
B- Mark the sentence as bold
I – Mark the sentence as italicize
T – Mark the sentence as Strike-Through
And the last one removes the formatting.
Also, you can see the comment preview right below the comment box.
How to Download YouTube Comments?
When you want to do keyword research, find the most influential video, most influential viewers, next video topic research, understand the pulse of viewers, get feedback about the videos you must download the YouTube comments.
Doing quick comment research on the most viewed video might unlock the door for plenty of related topics that you never thought about.
YouTube doesn’t have the inbuilt features to download YouTube comments but you can do it with TubeBuddy.
Let me show you how to download YouTube comments for a video in a few seconds.
Go to YouTube Dashboard
Scroll down to the video that you want to export comments
Click on the TB icon near the video title.
Go to the Tool section.
Under the MISC menu select “Export comments” option as shown below
You’ll get a pop up for the confirmation. Click on Ok.
All YouTube comments in the video will be downloaded in CSV format.
Here’s the snippet of downloaded YouTube comments.
YouTube Comments Cloud
All comments are broken into a word and display them in the form to cloud to help you understand the audience’s sentiment, get the overall sense of video performance, and the most commonly used words in YouTube comments.
It’s an exclusive feature of TubeBuddy.
To see the YouTube comment cloud, go to the YouTube dashboard and click on the comment section on the left panel.
You can see the YouTube comment cloud as shown below
How To Filter YouTube Comments?
Reply to YouTube comments is the only medium that you can connect with your viewers and subscribers on 1:1.
When your channel becomes popular, the number of comments increases day by day. So, YouTube has the option to filter the comment by “I haven’t responded to”.
When you select the tag, it lists the comment that needs replies.
Let’s see how to filter YouTube comments.
1. Go to the comment section on the YouTube dashboard.
2. Click on the filter icon and select “Response status”.
3. In the pop-up, select “I haven’t responded to”, it’ll list the comment that needs replies.
TubeBuddy offers more advanced filtering such as filter YouTube comments
contain URLs
contain questions and you not replied
Contain particular words
Contain comment from your Patreon supporters
Contain replies that you need to follow up
You can see these features in the comment section.
You can also filter comments by questions, profanity, positive sentiment, negative sentiment, contain words, and hearted comment on the advanced option.
How to Block YouTube Comments Containing Links & URLs?
When your channel starts growing, it’s very common to get comments containing links.
Most of the comments containing links should be either spam or sending
traffic to their own websites without giving any info on the comment
section.
Let me show you how to block YouTube comments containing links and hashtags.
Go to the YouTube dashboard
Select the “Settings” tab on the left panel.
On the setting tab pop up, click on the “Community” tab.
Check “Block links” option
Click the save button as shown below
Now all the comments contain links and a hashtag will be held for your review in the comment section.
How to Disable Inappropriate Comments For a YouTube Video?
Every YouTuber might come across hurting and inappropriate comments in their YouTube career. I would say it’s a part of your YouTuber journey.
When you get those inappropriate comments, you can report it. But prevention is better than cure. Let’s see how to disable inappropriate comments before getting published in your video.
Let’s see how to disable inappropriate comments for a YouTube video.
1. Go to YouTube dashboard
2. Select the “Settings” tab.
3. On the setting pop up, go to the community panel
4. Click on the “Defaults” tab
5. In the dropdown, select “Hold potentially inappropriate comment” and click on the Save button.
6.Check the “Hold potentially inappropriate chat message for review” to hold inappropriate comments on YouTube live.
Here’s the additional tips to manage spam in comments
How to Disable Comments On a YouTube Video?
When you create a controversial video, you’ll get a bunch of comments and threads. Sometimes viewers start fighting in the comment thread. As a responsible YouTuber, you can stop those infinite comment threads by disabling the comments for that video.
To disable comments on a YouTube video, just follow the below steps
Go to YouTube dashboard
Click on the Videos tab on the left panel
Click on the video that you want to disable comments
YouTube takes you to the video info and settings page
Switch to the “More options” tab.
Under the “Comments and Ratings” section, select “Disable comment”
Click on the Save button.
How to Insert or Type Emoji in YouTube Comments?
YouTube officially supports emojis in YouTube comments but it doesn’t have a fancy feature like Whatsapp to insert emoji on YouTube comments but you can do that with the help of TubeBuddy.
Using Emoji in YouTube comments make you stand out of the crowd.
Let’s see how to insert emoji in YouTube comments
- Go to the YouTube comment box.
- On the top right you can see the smiley icon.
- Click on that and it lists the Emojis like Whatsapp.
- Pick the emoji that you want to insert in the YouTube comment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Just click on the Action menu contain three dots below the comment and select the “Delete” option to delete your comment.
Once you published, you still can edit your comment. Just follow the above steps and select “Edit” option instead of delete to edit YouTube comment.
Mentioning or tagging people in YouTube comment featured was removed after the shut down of Google plus but when you reply to anyone’s comment, YouTube automatically tags that person.
When you leave a comment on someone else channel and it might not show the comment. Because they would hold all the comments for review. You can see once they approve your comments.
You might get search results when you search for someone’s comment in the search engine. But Google search engine started showing comments in the SERP.
Now you learned the important YouTube comments feature that every YouTuber should know.
Let me know if I miss any YouTube comments features on the list.
If you are very serious about your YouTube channel growth then I highly recommend installing the below complete YouTube channel Management plugin for SEO
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