This can be a double edged sword for YouTube channel owners. On the one hand, it’s great to engage with your audience, but on the other hand, it takes up time doing so, and YouTube comments sections can become toxic. So how do you approach this issue? Should you always respond to comments on videos you publish on your YouTube channel? Or is there a balance to strike here?

This is a really tricky thing to get right, and there isn’t one single simple answer, and channel sizes and audiences vary between channels.

In general, it is a good idea to respond to as many comments as possible in the early days of your channel as it is growing. But if your channel becomes very large and successful, with lots of views on your videos, it will become harder and harder to respond to all comments.

In other words, it depends on the size of your channel, plus your tolerance for toxic troll comments that always unfortunately start to appear as your channel grows larger. After a certain point, some channel owners do largely disengage from commenting on their channels, and it’s OK to do this.

Let’s look at the issue in more detail.

Arguments For Replying To Comments

There are some really good arguments for channel owners to reply to comments posted on their videos that should be pretty obvious.

Audience engagement – Ideally, YouTube is not meant to be a “passive” platform, where creators just post videos without engaging with their viewers. It’s meant to be an interactive platform, so it’s just a good idea to engage with your viewers as much as possible when you can. It helps to build trust and credibility, and it’s more fun for the audience in general when they know they can interact with the creator. Lots of your viewers will spend time crafting comments in the hope you’ll see and respond to them, so it’s good to reward this with your engagement,

Algorithm – The YouTube algorithm also likes and rewards video publishers engaging with their audience by replying to comments, which can help to grow your channel in the early days at least. It sends good signals to YouTube to demonstrate that you’re interacting with your viewers.

Value added – In the early days of a channel, this is also when you can add the most value to your audience, especially if you’re a real expert on a subject and can answer viewer questions with in depth knowledge and detail. This can generate loyal followers and really help grow your channel

Bottom line – I would argue it’s always recommended to engage with your audience by replying to comments when trying to grow a new channel. When video views are still low, the number of comments isn’t usually large, so I would respond to every single one where there’s a valid question, or just thank viewers for compliments. It doesn’t take a lot of time on smaller channels. Show that you appreciate the views and be as helpful as you can in the early days.

Arguments For Not Replying To Comments (“Post & Ghost”)

However, YouTube is not always plain sailing and there’s a lot of toxicity on there, just like on all social media platforms. Plus, user engagement can take a lot of time if your channel grows. Here are some negatives to replying to comments:

Time Drain – If your channel does grow and your videos start getting serious views in the tens of thousands or more, you will start getting a lot of comments on your videos, and to respond to every single one of them would take up too much time realistically. If your channel gets to this stage, it’s OK to pull back and only respond to what you can in a certain timeframe you set yourself, like the first hour after publishing. Videos on really large channels can have hundreds, and even several thousand comments, so you can’t reply to all of them.

Toxic Comments & Trolls – This is another huge negative – comments sections in general online are full of toxic trolls who love to hide behind the anonymity of usernames and constantly take “digs” and “shots” at video creators, and try and provoke arguments. It’s worse on some channels than others, but if you’re covering topics which can be really divisive, expect trolls and negative, confrontational comments to increase, and pull back if you don’t like dealing with this. The online world is fully of envious, immature and provocative people, and it’s OK to not have the patience to deal with this if you’re tired of seeing it in your comments section.

Mental Health – Honestly, I see some YouTube channel owners getting really wound up by idiot trolls commenting on their videos, to the point where they really need to consider ignoring comments altogether. They get dragged into the negativity and “back and forth” toxicity that comments sections can sometimes descend into, to the point where they don’t seem to be having fun anymore and lose sight of why they set up the channel in the first place. They let the troll commenters get to them too much. If you’re a channel owner and “check in” with yourself and realize something similar about yourself, it’s OK to pull back from reading and replying to comments if you’re just finding it too negative and confrontational.

Bottom line – Whilst you should respond to comments in the early days, if your channel really grows and become successful, it’s OK to shut replies down, or scale way back, at some point. Lots of channel owners do it once they’re successful. If your videos get lots of views, scale way down and perhaps only respond in the first hour or so after publishing.

Best Practices For Responding To Comments On Your Channel

If you do decide to engage with viewers on your YouTube videos, and respond to comments, here are some best practice suggestions for doing so in an effective way:

• Try to respond to comments soon after they’re published, preferably within the first hour.
• On new channels, try to respond to ALL comments, especially ones where questions are being asked where your knowledge is being sought. Be as helpful as you can.
• Always thank people for kind/generous comments.
• Don’t get drawn into “back and forth” arguments with toxic people in comments threads – that’s what provocative trolls want. They want you to respond and lose your cool. Stay calm and now when to ignore/block
• Address respectful criticism/objections/disagreements with a reciprocal respect. Send the message that viewers can disagree and offer different views as long as respectful and polite.
• Just ignore silly childish trolls altogether, or block repeat offenders from your channel (you can do this – see below).
• Don’t over-promote or try to sell stuff in YouTube comments; it’s not the platform to do this.
• On really large channels, some creators barely respond to comments anymore and just limit themselves to occasional likes. It’s OK to pull back and be more selective once a channel gets really big.

See this guide for some more suggestions for responding to comments as a YouTube channel owner/creator.

Getting Rid Of Toxic Commenters

If you’re getting really sick of a repeat troll commenter on your channel, or you just have a zero tolerance approach to this and delete even first time offenders, there is an easy way to do this on YouTube.

Here’s the quick steps:

1. Load up one of your videos and find a troll comment.
2. Click on the 3 dots burger icon next to their comment.
3. Click on “Hide user from channel”
4. That user’s comments will now not appear on any of your videos.

The Remove option just trashes that one comment so no one sees it. The Hide user from channel option gets rid of all of their comments going forward, so that troll is now talking to themselves on that channel from now on – any comments they post won’t appear at all. Easy! If the comment is really offensive, use the Report option.

Concluding Thoughts

Let’s pull together everything written so far into a simple bottom line summary of how you should engage with your audience’s comments on YouTube, depending on channel size:

New channel – Aim to respond to ALL relevant comments and add as much value and build as much trust and rapport as possible with your audience. Show appreciation as it’s your early audience that helps grow your channel.

Mid sized channel – Still aim to like and respond to as many comments as possible, though it may not be possible to reply to them all as it takes too much time. Respond to intelligent questions, but DON’T waste time responding to trolls and idiots as they’re not even the important part of your audience.

Large channels – May have to pull back somewhat as there’s far too many comments to reply to all of them. Just spend the first hour after a video goes live checking and replying to relevant comments. Again you might have to learn to be more selective and only respond to really intelligent, well thought out questions, or comments that otherwise stand out in a good way. Or just limit yourself to likes without engaging so much anymore, as you can’t please everyone on large channels. Block trolls as you don’t need them at this point, and pull back altogether from comments if you’re starting to get annoyed at snide remarks.