Comments moderation is a necessity on YouTube, especially for those who have amassed a huge subscription base. It is not only important to engage your audience with informative content, but it is also important to moderate subscriber comments and views on YouTube for engagement, to ensure civility, and for a healthy channel community.
YouTube has features which enable you to moderate comments both on individual accounts and channels where comments need to be screened and approved before they are published. You can also filter comments for spams or reported comments until you review them for approval. In this article, we shall look at how to moderate your YouTube comments for better engagement.
Anyone who has a YouTube channel that is growing will eventually need to moderate the comments section to ensure that the subscribers you have fought so much to attract do not start offending each other and pushing one another away from your channel. You are really doing this to keep your subscription base intact and to grow it further. Many viewers are more comfortable in a civil environment devoid of abuse or trolling.
Comments moderation can be tedious especially where there is a big subscribership with a ton of comments. For this reason, YouTube has made available tools to make the work of managing the comments and views on YouTube easier.
Features to moderate your YouTube comments for better engagement
Content List
Use comment moderators to your channel
You do not have to do it yourself, and you probably can’t. YouTube has a feature where you can have several comments moderators to screen comments on your channel. You can engage friends and family or an assistant as long as they understand what you are doing. Alternatively, you can choose to hire a social media pro to moderate.
Moderators have authority to screen and remove comments from the commentary section and set it aside for your review and approval- you need to make the approval or the step to delete a comment yourself. Comments moderators are the best and quickest tool for flagging potentially unwelcome comments.
Set your channel to filter and flag comments automatically
Customizing your moderation settings to auto filter or auto flagging will make your job a lot easier. Enable the automatic tracking to highlight comments, phrases or words which you do not want appearing in the comment section.
This feature will:
- Hide users you do not want appearing on the comments section as well as the comments they leave.
- Block unwanted words so that anything will be set aside for review.
- Automatically approve clean comments for publication.
Actively and consistently moderate comments
You can use capable moderators and the right settings for auto-moderation but you still need to play your part which is to delete unwanted comments and block or hide users whose comments you do not want appearing.
Moderate individual comments directly in the comment or better yet, use Creator Studio to do it effectively. Review comments reported or set aside as spam to delete or approve them.
Go ahead and disable comments
Another way of moderation is to simply disable commentary on a video or channel even though it is a blanket move which blocks off good comments as well. This should be your last option because it is better to allow comments and moderate them individually.
Conclusion
Even though comments moderation is for the greater good, if it is not done properly, it may lead to you losing followers. Moderate the right things- do not block or delete non-abusive comments, opposing views or harsh criticism otherwise you will lose viewers.
Some comments that should go without hesitation include:
- Irrelevant or off-topic comments
- Spam
- Abusive and offensive comments
- Inciteful comments
Comments moderation is good for long term viewer attraction and will help you attract and retain the right people for your channel. Bad or irrelevant comments can easily send people packing and it is your responsibility to ensure that people feel welcome and respected on your channel.
Use these 4 features to moderate your YouTube comments for better engagement with your followers and subscribers. They will boost views on YouTube by making your channel more attractive.