If your business has a presence on social media (which it should, unless you’ve just arrived in a time machine from the 18th century), you undoubtedly receive comments from followers and potential customers.

Done right, your replies and the customer service you provide through them will go a long way toward cementing lifelong customers.

Let’s get started…

Why is it important to reply to comments on social media?

Replying to social media comments should be a key element of your social media strategy. 

Interacting with your audience through social comments is an effective way to connect with your target market. By providing great customer service through social comments, you retain existing customers and win new ones.

So, let’s look at some of the top tips for successfully replying to comments on social media.

Aim to create rapport

When replying to comments on social media, you should always sound personable and approachable. You want to use comments as an opportunity to build a rapport with your customers. By portraying your brand as friendly and helpful, people will immediately feel connected to you and your products.

When replying to customers, always use their names and answer their questions precisely, and if you’re following pre-written guidelines, customize them for each situation. Adding emojis, GIFs, and other fun social media extras can also help build a relationship with each commenter.

Small wins with big payoffs: a 1:1 moment with an appreciative customer can have a ripple effect on social media.

Present a professional front

Your social comments must always maintain a professional front. This doesn’t mean that your comments need to lose their personal touch, but they should be consistent and maintain your brand’s voice across all social networks.

Create a social media comment strategy so that everyone in your company is clear about responding to customers. Make sure to outline what style and tone of customer service is expected. Draft official responses and templates for different situations or scenarios, so whatever the social comment, the reply will always reflect your business’s personality.

The key caveat here is to ensure a human touch and follow common-sense guidelines around pre-drafted responses. The last thing you want is your social help desk to be perceived as robotic.

Reply quickly

Appear interested in your contacts’ thoughts and concerns by responding quickly to comments. Real-time replies aren’t just appreciated but expected of SMMs.

Rapid replies also help make your customers feel valued. Pre-written responses can be useful here, but always remember to personalize them, so they don’t read like replies from a robot. 

In some cases, you may not be sure how to answer more specific questions. This doesn’t mean you can’t still offer a timely response. Acknowledge the comment and let the person know you are working on it. The reply itself isn’t as important as ensuring the customer knows they’ve been heard. 

No problem is too small

No one likes to be ignored, and a lack of response tells customers they aren’t important. 

This can cause frustration that, in turn, can bubble over into customer discontent and cause trouble down the line. 

Unanswered comments will also give your business a reputation for bad customer service, and potentially harm your business. Whatever the comment, however small, always acknowledge it with a reply.

Damage control

Be proactive and responsive to all comments, especially the bad ones. Negative comments are inevitable, but you can stop most problems from escalating by quickly engaging with each comment.

Again, it’s good to have a clear strategy to deal with negative comments. Depending on the situation, you may want to send a link so people can access further customer support, move to private messaging, or try to directly help with the issue with a quick and comprehensive reply.

Every quick, personalized reply is a potential crisis averted.

Stand out from the competition

Brands should use social media as a two-way channel of communication. However, this often isn’t the case, as many organizations do not take the trouble to interact with their social followers. By being constantly present and engaged with your audience via social comments, you will quickly help your brand stand out from the crowd. 

So now that we know just how important it is to reply to social media comments, let’s next look at how to respond on each major social network.

How to reply to comments on Facebook

To reply to comments on your company’s Facebook page, you need to be the page’s Admin, Editor, or Moderator. If you have been assigned one of these roles, you can respond to any comments on the page publicly, as well as by private message. 

To get started, open the Facebook page and select Reply underneath the comment you would like to respond to.

Type your reply and then click Enter. Your reply will now be displayed in the comments section for all to see.

If you would rather respond via private message, underneath the comment, select Message. Then enter your message and click Send. Although no one apart from the individual you have messaged will be able to read the comment, everyone reading the comments thread will be able to see you have responded privately to the message. This can be a useful tool for sorting out any negative feedback.

It is not usually advisable to delete negative comments—inviting the commenter to a private channel is preferable. But, if your page is being ‘trolled’, you can simply click Delete under a comment to erase the message. Trolls can also be banned from your Facebook page if necessary.

How to reply to comments on Instagram ads

If you want to reply to comments on Instagram ads, open Business Manager business suite. Select Edit Campaign next to the ad campaign you want to manage, and then click on the specific Ad you want to reply to comments on. 

Next, select the Links drop-down menu and click on Manage Instagram Comments. You will now see your Instagram ad and comments displayed. 

Simply type into the Add Comment field and press Enter to publish it to add a comment. 

Instagram provides many advertising possibilities, from photo and carousel ads to video and story ads. To engage with your target audience and make the most of comment opportunities, consider using a variety of ad options.

How to reply to comments on LinkedIn

To reply to comments on LinkedIn, you will again need to be a page administrator for your company’s LinkedIn page.

Find the comment you want to respond to and click Reply, located underneath the comment.

Type a message into the Add Reply field and select Reply to publish your answer.

LinkedIn allows you to add photos to your replies. To do so, select the Photo icon in the Add Reply field. This may help personalize your comment or add that extra visual touch to the reply. 

By clicking on Send a Message you can also send a private message to those who have commented.

How to reply to comments on Twitter

Twitter comments are quick and easy to reply to. Click on the Reply icon underneath a tweet and type your comment. 

Replies will always be sent as notifications, so the person you are writing to will always be informed of your comment. However, your reply will only display on their timeline if they are following you, and vice versa.

You can also send a direct message to a commenter by selecting the Message icon underneath the tweet. Again, this can be useful for controlling chat that may damage your company's reputation.

How to reply to all comments the simpler, faster way

Social comments come thick and fast, as you already know or will soon discover.

The best way to stay on top of them is a social media management suite inbox. First, having a single overview of your incoming comments across all social channels is convenient. Then, they are a host of functions available to speed up and simplify the process of replying to comments. These include bulk actions and response templates. 

As mentioned above, a badly parsed or thoughtless response can have disproportionate repercussions. This makes an approval flow and audit trail valuable, especially to larger organizations.

Final thoughts on how to respond to social comments

As you can see, replying to comments on social media is simple once you have the basics down. Equally, the importance of responding to comments cannot be understated. So if you promote your business on social media, it’s time to take control of your social interactions.