DEEP DIVE: Disabling Comments on Social Media Posts

Disabling Comments on Social Media Posts

Which is worse for your brand:
Disabling comments on social media posts? Or taking the brand hit from negative comments?
 
Turns out, there is an answer.

Table of Contents

• Summary

• Listen to the Interview

• Read the Interview

  • Do consumers even notice?

  • Main findings

  • The impact of high-engagement

  • Deleting individual comments

  • The bottom-line impact on brands

  • Can too much honesty help?

  • Platform’s use of language

  • The most surprising findings

  • Wrapping up

Introduction

There are many decisions to make when you're posting an ad on social media for your brand — the placement, the timing, the audience, the hook, the creative.

But one factor that doesn't get talked a lot about is the comments. After all, social media ads are mostly just posts with a budget behind them — posts that can include comments.

That's great if your company has a lot of goodwill and gets positive comments; less so if you don't.

Which is why some marketers consider turning comments entirely off. Sure, you'd prevent negative comments, but what do consumers think of that strategy? Do they even notice?

Now, we have some answers thanks to new research published in the Journal of Marketing.

Freeman Wu is the co-author of the paper “No Comments (from You): Understanding the Interpersonal and Professional Consequences of Disabling Social Media Comments”

He is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville Tennessee, and he spoke with Tod earlier.