How Can Social Comments Improve Marketing?

Benjamin Ard (00:16)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Sarah. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Stadler (00:21)
Great to see you. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Benjamin Ard (00:23)
You bet, Sarah, I'm really excited for this episode. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. It's something we haven't covered yet on this podcast and that is saying something. We are 250 episodes in, so that's amazing. At the point in time that this comes out, it's probably like 275. So that's really, really cool. So I'm super excited. But before we dive in, Sarah, let's get to know you. Tell us about your career.

Sarah Stadler (00:46)
Yeah, absolutely. So my name's Sarah Stadler. I'm VP of marketing at Respondology. I've built my career in B2B SaaS marketing, specifically in the startup world. I started out as a wee little marketing intern, hand addressing envelopes for direct mail campaigns. And now I'm here leading, building brands to acquisition. I've had three successful acquisitions as a marketing leader in my career. And I'm now

fourth startup with an excellent team of people. Respondology is software that helps marketers get the most out of their social media comment sections. And we do it in a couple of ways. One is by helping discreetly moderate those comment sections. So they're free from spam, abuse, toxicity, things like that. And then we also help marketers deeply research their comment sections. So for everyone familiar with social listening tools that go nice and broad across the internet,

Respondology goes deep into the comment sections and helps marketers understand the sentiment of what people are talking about. It helps surface topics in the comment sections that are most common that people are discussing. And it provides a rich, rich set of data to help marketers change their strategies, help with product development, get back to customer success reps, things like that. So very, very fun.

Benjamin Ard (02:06)
I love it. One thing I would probably say, if you ever want like an alternative title, it sounds like you're the ultimate unicorn tamer. Like you manage to like corral unicorns and for some reason you've got that nailed down. So I love that.

Sarah Stadler (02:19)
I like that. I am seeing sparkles on my business card as we speak.

Benjamin Ard (02:23)
I like it. love it.

other question we always ask, what do you love about content and marketing?

Sarah Stadler (02:29)
I have been obsessed with commercials since I was a little kid. And I loved this whole idea of something big being told in this short little period of time. And I think for me, that's content wrapped up in a bow, right? Like really, really good commercials back in the day, like when the Super Bowl was really putting like

That's the only reason I watch the Super Bowl is just for the commercials. I don't care about the sports. I remember that though, from being a little kid and loving that. And that's really what drew me to the practice. I'm obviously not in the practice of just pure play advertising at this point in my career. But what I love so much about marketing is that the content is what makes it. You can't have it without content and really good content.

Benjamin Ard (02:59)
You

Sarah Stadler (03:22)
is memorable and life-changing. And I think it's pretty cool to be a part of that.

Benjamin Ard (03:27)
I love that, that's awesome. Well, today, Sarah, we're gonna talk about how you can use your social comments and really incorporate them into your content strategy. First and foremost, why should I care about the comments section? I mean, sometimes we kind of avoid the section. Why should I actually care about it?

Sarah Stadler (03:44)
Yeah, I think the reason you should care about it is because it's the only direct path to one-on-one communication with your audience. You you've got your DMs, of course, on the social media front, but comments are where everybody goes to have a discussion. And it is a focus group, in my opinion. You we talk about that a lot. I have a team member who's talked about that a lot. Her name is also Sarah. And she talks to us constantly when we're...

putting together our content strategies and even helping our own clients at Respondology about how the comment sections are full of people who are there to give you honest and direct feedback. And so that's the number one reason to care about those sections is there's really no other way to get that unless you have a big old budget to get your focus groups. Yeah.

Benjamin Ard (04:31)
I love that, I love that.

That makes perfect sense. So when I'm looking at the comments section, I kind of see how I should enjoy it and I need to embrace it. What can I do with it? Obviously there's the feedback you just talked about, but is there anything else I can do to actually like build out a content marketing strategy from it?

Sarah Stadler (04:48)
one of the best social media leaders that we have is the global social media manager for Duolingo. Anybody listening who follows Duolingo knows that that social account is at the top echelon of really great ways to manage social media. And she talks a lot about using the comment sections as your content brief. And I love that. I think that's a really smart way to think about these sections because

you can see what matters to people. You can pull topics out of there. And I think with really rich comment sections for anybody who's marketing or just participating across multiple platforms, you're on TikTok, you're on Meta, you're on X, wherever you might be. If you've built a strong community and your social media marketing has worked really well for you, those comment sections are going to be full of genuine feedback.

genuine conversation. And you can pull that information and make decisions about what you want to talk about next. Again, it does come back to that sort of focus group idea where you don't as a marketer now have to come up with everything on your own and you don't have to send out formal surveys and you don't have to add another thing to your list of things to do with not enough resources, not enough people.

You can just get in there and start to learn. And I think that that can be a really valuable way to inform a content strategy and what you decide to talk about next or what you decide to never talk about again. I think it's a two way street.

Benjamin Ard (06:23)
I love that. That's super cool. So we've talked a lot about really ingesting the ideas and the comments and the information into our strategy and how we apply it and how it benefits the company and the understanding. What are your recommendations for how we engage with that community? Obviously, you know, if we post material or someone else post material and we're in the comment section, how do we act and interact in that section to make the interaction?

I said interaction a lot there, but how do we make that exchange really valuable and actually meaningful?

Sarah Stadler (06:52)
the

Yeah, so that's a great question. think, you know, what we see from kind of the people who are doing the best of the best in their social media comment sections is they are able to remove the things that would inhibit community interaction first and foremost. And so when comment sections are riddled with spam, it takes a really long time to get to the comments that are actually real. And so I think that the

the best actors are removing that spam using a moderation tool, right? Similar to what we offer at Respondology. And that's the first big step to take when you have a ton of something like that in your comment sections. Because what will happen is people won't interact with you. So you won't even be able to engage, right? Because we all know how it is when you land on a post and it's just spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.

I don't have time to scroll through this. So a first best practice is to get rid of that stuff first. And in conjunction with removing things like spam, if you do have a comment section that's being completely overtaken by hate speech, abuse, a lot of toxicity, that is really important to move out of the way as well because we don't want the interactions on our posts, whether they're paid or organic, to be full of things like that.

On the paid side, it makes it really hard not only to interact with the audience that's trying to speak to you in a genuine way, but it also makes it hard for those paid campaigns to actually get served appropriately and for your budget to be used well. And then on the organic side, of course, if it's full of hatred and toxicity, nobody wants to be there. And what we've learned is that people will take that.

as what your brand stands for before they'll believe anything that you actually do with your own engagement in the comment section. So it's really important to get rid of that too. Once you've got those comment sections in a place where the conversation is genuine and authentic from your audience, then it's your job to show up that way as well. Respond to the people who are even criticizing you. I'm not advocating for removing criticism.

I think it's important to interact with the comments that are challenging your content, challenging what your brand is doing, but they're doing it in a way that's respectful and in a way that can actually create helpful conversation. Get in there and respond to those things. Talk to people about that. Make sure that you aren't trying to hide anything that doesn't need to be hidden. I think it can be agreed among many that

the you know it when you see it, comments can go, right? Those don't deserve a lot of response and activity. But the comments saying things like, I want to figure out how to buy this product, but your website's not making it easy for me. Great, let's get in and let's talk to somebody about that. Comments that are offering full blown praise. This is my favorite beauty product to receive every month. Here's my empty tube again. I can't wait for the next one.

Get excited with that customer, talk to them, and make sure that you at them in your response. Really engage, because the point of being on social media is to create connection with your audience. If you're trying to use it as a one-way channel, maybe find a different channel. There are different advertising channels to do that with. There are...

multiple platforms where we can get seen, where we don't have to interact with our audiences. This is the place to do that. So the minute that your comment sections are cleaned up enough so you can surface the real people who are talking about real things, get in there and talk to them. And make sure that's part of your brand guidelines. You know, if you have a larger team working at your company and you want to make sure that the response is

You know, if you're working in a highly regulated industry or something like that, you need to be careful about what's being said because of different regulations. Write that into your comp, write that into your brand guidelines, make sure people understand it so everybody is empowered to speak. And then finally, I think another best practice that's really smart to employ is developing a code of conduct for your comment sections. We do this all the time for our physical spaces. Nobody is.

that they can't run into a physical store shouting obscenities or trying to sell counterfeit products. Nobody's surprised that they get in trouble for something like that or that they're asked to leave. And I think that it's important that we treat our digital spaces the same way. We are allowed to treat these owned spaces in a way that's right for the community that we're trying to cultivate and build.

So put together a short code of conduct, make it clear what you will and won't tolerate and invite people to come interact there. The safer the better, people interact in spaces that they feel safe.

Benjamin Ard (12:01)
I love that. That's amazing. One thing that I've been noticing is there's a really big trend when it comes to businesses interacting in social media. And I'm going to throw you the ultimate curve ball. So I apologize. A lot of times the businesses are reducing the amount of interaction from the business account, but encouraging the internal employees to be active on social media, sharing content, things like that. What are your thoughts on that movement? How can you align everyone?

Make sure that responses are proper. Make sure that you're actually finding and listening to those conversations still. How does that change it up if you have a really active employee based on social media?

Sarah Stadler (12:38)
Yeah, that's a great question. And it's something that I'm a big proponent of myself as a marketing leader too. So I mean, the big mantra is people want to hear from people, not brands. Bottom line, it's why we see the influencer space rise up so drastically, right? mean, people turn to people for an understanding. And frankly, I think people trust each other more than they trust a logo. And so I think that has to be part of your content strategy. It certainly is part of ours at Respondology.

I speak with our internal teams all the time about posting for us because we're a B2B brand. LinkedIn is the space that we're spending time. And we're only just getting started with this this year, but getting our executive team to post more. I'm working on it do have very few but important guidelines for what that can look like. A person's own

social media handle is their own. Like my LinkedIn space is my LinkedIn space. My Instagram is my Instagram, my TikTok is my TikTok. I don't, I think it's important that people can be themselves on those handles of their own. And if they are doing something that represents the brand, it's, it's the job of the marketing leader internally to make clear how that brand representation goes.

don't want to be prescriptive about what people say and I never will be. It really comes down to just understand what you're representing and know that there are consequences if you represent things in a way that might not be so great. And it's another, it's like what I said before, there's the you know it when you see it types of things. And I think all of us have to remember that as individuals as well.

If there are things that come up in comment sections on individual employee pages that are direct questions about the brand and things like that, and you want to take it into a private discussion, I always encourage people to DM the individuals so that they can talk in a private discussion because sometimes things can just turn into more of a, we need to have like a real conversation about you using the product that could take up the entire space and it's like no longer relevant for the public audience.

Benjamin Ard (14:46)
Yeah.

Sarah Stadler (14:49)
I think it's important that people understand what your brand stands for, what your mission is, what your values are. And then you are working with people that you work hard to build teams that we trust. And when those rules are in place and people have an understanding of what we're doing, I find it to be just enough. And then you can kind of go forth and have your points of view and your opinions start those conversations. I think it's much more powerful than

only relying on brand spaces alone. And I think a lot of consumer brands do this really, really well. We see it all the time, right? But there is always a risk to having an individual represent your brand and not having as much control over what that might look like. We've even seen it in our own data that brands that work with influencers, the influencer posts see around a 30 % increase in toxic and hateful comments.

Benjamin Ard (15:43)
Hmm.

Sarah Stadler (15:43)
than

posts that the brand does just as the brand. And so you have to be smart. You have to choose your influencers wisely. You have to choose your internal advocates if you're in a B2B space wisely. I think there's more reward to be gained than not.

Benjamin Ard (15:59)
Yeah, I love that. I also think it's a great litmus test. I like how you were talking about that right there at the end. If you're afraid of what an influencer would do in the comment section, maybe they're not the right influencer to work with. If you're afraid of what an employee would say online about your business and how they would approach that, maybe they're not a good fit for your business. You know, I think culture tends to get to each individual and we all make up the culture of a company.

But if there's someone that is toxic or someone who can't handle confrontation in a meaningful way, you know, obviously there's coaching opportunities, but it's also a good opportunity to say, okay, maybe this person doesn't fit the culture as much as we'd wanted and things of that nature. So I love that. Sarah, these go by so quick and we have run out of time. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Sarah Stadler (16:43)
you

Yeah, definitely find me on LinkedIn, Sarah Stadler. happy to talk there.

Benjamin Ard (16:52)
I love it. And anyone listening, go to the show notes and you'll find all of those links right there, making it easy to find everything. Sarah, thank you, thank you, thank you. That was amazing. Really appreciate your time and insights today.

Sarah Stadler (17:03)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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