Social media revolutionized digital marketing, and those who think otherwise are ignoring the stats. Over 40% of the world’s population is on social media, and 71% of them would recommend a business they’ve had a good interaction with on these platforms.

Users can interact with brands directly on social media. They can like, share, and comment, giving you real-time insights into what they think about you. But, there’s also a downside: the negative comments.

This article will take a rather unexpected approach, and argue why they should be removed.

Negative Comments Can Be Good, But They Are Mostly Damaging

First, it’s important to understand what type of negative comments should be disallowed. The negative comments that shouldn't ever be allowed on social media are the ones that bring nothing to the table, for anyone. Not the business, nor the users.

Some examples include:

Revenge comments made by users who’ve had a bad experience with your brand, and try to trash your reputation;
Anything from the hate speech category, which usually appears once a brand takes a clear stand on a social issue;
Negative comments that are only marginally related to you, but disrupt the overall flow of the conversation.

In other words: if you deserve the negative comments and said comments are created in a fair way, with adequate language, then they’re fair game. But when the user turns to hate speech, insane allegations, or trolls the comments section, who does that help, other than the user posting the comment?

Free Speech versus Responsible Speech

Social media pages are seen as a public forum, and deleting or hiding all negative comments can be seen as a form of censorship, which can frustrate users.

But, at the same time, you as a business also have the responsibility to make sure this public forum, which you set up and manage, is a safe space for your followers. When a user tries to create chaos here, this can affect the rest of your audience negatively, maybe even hurt them, so why should you leave them be?

In the end, it’s the free speech versus responsible speech issue. Free speech gives everyone the right to express their thoughts about something without fear of retribution. But free speech will always include responsible speech too, meaning you cannot hurt others just because you want to express yourself.

Over to You

Telling a brand their product is bad and they should change it is free speech. It’s the user’s opinion of you, and though you might not agree, it is what it is. But beyond that, negative comments have no place on a social feed.

There are countless ways of tracking your engagement on social media platforms, but it’s fair to say that some matter more than others.

If we take Facebook, for example, it’s easy for marketers and business owners to focus a lot on the ‘like’ metric, meaning the number of reactions (like, love, angry, wow, sad, haha) it generated. The more likes, the more successful the post, right?

Not so fast. While yes, having posts with a large number of likes can tell you a thing or two about a brand’s ability to reach a certain audience, there is another metric that is much more telling: comments.

Why Are Comments Important?

Comments are rarely a metric one focuses on. It’s great if they appear for a particular social media post, but marketers are more concerned about the overall audience that post reaches. But comments symbolize something more powerful than likes.

For one thing, it’s easier to give a like than to comment. The former involves a tap or a click of the mouse, while the latter requires a lot more effort on the user’s part. Additionally, a like does not guarantee the user actually read and understood the post. The comment, on the other hand, requires the users to go through the post in its entirety, and share their thoughts with you.

Comments essentially signal that your audience isn’t just an audience in the traditional sense - comments mean your target takes part in the conversation you start and are actively contributing to it. A post with a high number of comments speaks to a brand’s ability not only to reach a certain audience size but also engage it and get it to react.

The Benefits of Focusing on Dialog

It’s much harder to get people to comment than to get them to like something. Again, this has to do with the very effort required by each of these tasks, but if you focus on engaging in a dialogue with your audience, these efforts will pay off.

Here are two key benefits of getting the audience to talk to you:

They Add Life to Your Page: If a new user stumbles upon your page for the first time and sees a lot of people commenting on your posts, that sends a clear message to them. This page is active, engaging, and other people are paying attention. This can be enough for them to decide to follow you as well.
You Build a Community: Likes or follows don’t necessarily say much about your community, as there is no guarantee your posts will reach all of those people. But when they comment, a lot of social algorithms will continue to show these people posts of yours, and you can build a stronger audience.

Final Thoughts

Comments are a telling sign of how strong a brand is because everybody knows it takes a lot of effort to engage an audience. And as far as metrics go, you’re a lot better off focusing on comments than likes.