The battle for attention on social platforms is fierce; Millions of businesses compete with creators and consumers to get their posts into feeds – ideally without having to pay for it. Apart from your own posts, there is still a very little-noticed way of generating visibility via the platforms and building up a reach: with comments under the posts of other accounts. OMR Editor-in-Chief Roland Eisenbrand shows examples on Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter and explains why he believes that the relevance of “comment marketing” will only increase further.
550 million. More than half a billion. This is the number of views that are said to have generated videos within six months in which Tiktok users called up the US snack brand Slim Jim (roughly comparable to Bifi in Germany) to comment on their account or to leave under a specific video of another account.
From the start, Slim Jim positioned himself on the platform as “CEO of Verified Comments” in appropriate Gen-Z slang: “We wanted to be the creator known for when you ring, he comes and is there [und kommentiert] – no matter what happens. And of course people test things like this to the limit,” says Evan Weissbrot from the responsible agency 180. The result: around three million videos with the half a billion views mentioned.
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But that’s not all: Since launching his own account in February 2022, Slim Jim has gained 4.3 million followers on Tiktok – more than Nike, for example (3.8 million) or McDonald’s (3.1 million). For videos with the hashtag #I’m smilingTiktok now even has 1.6 billion views. This makes the brand one of the most successful examples of comment marketing on Tiktok on the one hand, and one with a relatively unique strategy on the other.
Free riding on viral videos
As a rule, brands simply comment under videos that are played on Tiktok at the respective time on the “For You Page”. They speculate on collecting so many likes with funny and quick-witted comments that they are displayed high up and are immediately visible when the comments are opened. If only every second or third viewer looks at the comment area of a video with double-digit million views, the respective brand still reaches an audience of millions free of charge.
In November 2021 we had already reported on this development with OMR. At that time, for example, the majority of the top comments (comments can be liked on Tiktok; the most liked ones are displayed above) came from a tiktok video by Taylor Swiftwhich has been viewed 26 million times to date, by brands.
Unpunctual, but funny
In Germany, Deutsche Bahn recently took the “Tiktok Comment Game” to the extreme. In this case, the group did not rely on comments under the videos of other accounts, but explicitly encouraged other brands to exchange blows in the comments of their own videos. Many companies followed the call, from Edeka to Lidl to Mymüsli.
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Deutsche Bahn then prepared the most entertaining exchanges of words in its own videos on Tiktok and in screenshots on Facebook and Twitter, which also generated considerable engagement there and thus additional reach. Added to that occasional press coverage. In January, Bahn achieved more likes on Tiktok than any other German brand.
Appear directly under Trump’s tweet once…
The practice of generating visibility and attention through comments has gained a new quality on Tiktok, but it is not an entirely new phenomenon. This development had already taken place on Twitter. There is no actual comment section on the platform. But anyone can write replies to tweets there, which are then displayed under the original tweet.
In recent years, a rather disrespected species of users has emerged on Twitter who reply to all tweets of an account and „Reply Guys“ (they are usually men). Some apparently hope to attract the attention of the “original tweeter”. Others use this tool with a different strategic goal, replying to the tweets of accounts that have a lot of followers and generate a lot of attention – in the hope of scooping something for themselves.
From Trump – to Musk – “Reply Guys”
This phenomenon was particularly pronounced during Donald Trump’s US presidency. Every time Trump tweeted something (Twitter offers the option of being informed about new tweets from an account via push notification), an armada of other users flocked to the platform to respond to the tweet. Because of the tremendous amount of attention Trump’s tweets received, Buzzfeed called the section below his posts “the internet’s most valuable ‘chunk of land’.”
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Trump opponents Ed and Brian Krassenstein were among the biggest beneficiaries at the time – before their accounts were blocked for several years for allegedly operating fake accounts. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, the accounts were unblocked and the two currently have 844,000 and 616,000 followers respectively. The twin brothers are now working on Elon Musk, who is currently likely to generate the most attention on the platform.
Youtube comments as advertising space for rapper outfits
On YouTube, too, clever marketers have tried again and again to generate attention through comments under particularly successful videos. Music videos in particular (which, if the respective song becomes a hit, can accumulate millions of views within a very short time) are obviously a grateful target. Since 2018, the operators of “Immerfresh” have been looking for items of clothing that rappers wear in music videos, promoting them via affiliate links and drumming for their website in the YouTube comments.
In 2020, fans of the satirical rapper MC Smook apparently used YouTube comments under worldwide hits in a rather humorous way to generate views for his videos. Other rather dubious representatives of the industry tried to generate visitors for their websites on which they sold cell phone subscriptions to the inexperienced.
With stolen comments in Cristiano’s “Viewport”
On Instagram, on the other hand, it is obviously much more difficult to generate visibility in the comments under posts from accounts with many subscriptions. In some cases, up to two of the comments are directly visible in the feed. But apparently many digital celebrities have recognized the value of this “real estate”. As a result, comments from their own brands can often be found there. Pop star and actress Selena Gomez, for example, often features comments about her cosmetics brand Rare Beauty or her ice cream brand Serendipity.
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Nevertheless, some unscrupulous fortune seekers on Instagram apparently manage to build attention and reach by means of comments on other accounts. So has the account „Rich Kids London“ (the name says it all) apparently copied the comments of other users under the posts from third-party accounts, which quickly attracted a lot of likes. “Rich Kids London” operator James Ison then posted this as his “own” comment either under the same posts or other, similar posts from other accounts.
Will the For You Page revolution continue?
The counter account “richkidslondonstoleyourcomment” has documented this practice for some time. “Rich Kids London” does not seem to have been harmed by this questionable approach. The account currently has 1.9 million followers. And if you scroll through the most recent posts by football superstar Cristian Ronaldo on his account, you will always come across comments from “Rich Kids London” in the few comments directly visible under the posts.
The reach potential of comments on the major platforms could continue to grow in the future. Because following the example of Tiktok (where the “For You Page” is no longer based on the “Social Graph”, i.e. the contacts of the users, but primarily on their usage behavior), the other platforms are also increasingly switching to algorithmic recommendations – most recently Twitter with its own “For You” feed. As a result of this development, the reach peaks of viral posts are even more extreme (videos that go viral on Tiktok can accumulate views in the tens of millions within a few days). On the other hand, the chance of reaching a completely new audience with a comment under such a viral post is even greater.
This text first appeared in OMR.