Adding Comments To Your Digital Products

There is no doubt that to enable your digital products to have a more “personal appeal,” you need a feature in your digital product which would allow your customers to interact with you. Arguably, the best way that you could do this is to add a comment section.

With a comments section, your readers, listeners and/or watchers would be able to send you their feedback about your digital product. This alone makes comments section very useful. It’s like having a free survey tool for your digital product.

Imagine having for example a blog where you don’t have a comments section. You may end up in a situation where you have blogged for months without realizing if the people who read your blogs have a positive or negative opinion about your blog.

Of course you could use Google Analytics for example to actually know how many people go to your website and the blogs of yours that are popular, but only a comments section would truly give an insight of what’s in the mind of your customer.

Whenever I read a blog or article in a website or watch a video in YouTube, I make it a practice to at least scan the comments section of these digital products. There have been instances where I have gauged the quality of a digital product based on what are written in the comments section.

And I am by no means alone. There are people who specifically leave comments directed at the future readers/listeners/watchers of a digital product. There are commenters for example who give the specific timestamps or pages on where the actual content of a digital product is.

If you create digital products and people leave these kinds of comments, this could only mean that there are people who think that your digital product has plenty of “fluff” in it. These commenters might not be saying this to you directly, but this message is very clear.

There are also people for example who would specifically tell you which specific part of your digital product appeals to them. I don’t think I need to explain much the importance of these kinds of comments.

These comments enable you to know which parts of your digital product are working or are grabbing the attention of your customers. You can then repeat them. This is one of the huge advantages of a comments section.

Having a comments section with a reply feature also enables you to publicly reply to your customers. This enables a transparent communication between you and your customer. This is especially helpful if you and your customer are in good terms.

A customer might be praising your digital product and expressing it in your comments section. The best action for such situations of course is to reply back and express your gratitude to your customer for praising your digital product.

By doing this, you not only endear yourself to your customer who is praising you, but you also get to show everyone publicly that you are not only a very grateful person, but a person who actually take the time to read comments posted by customers.

According to Social Media Personality and entrepreneur, Gary Vee, he sees to it that he personally answers all the comments posted to him. He claims that answering comments takes up a large part of his time.

I don’t know how he does it or if he even succeeds in doing so, but it is clear that by having a close relationship with his customers by answering their comments, he has become a very financially successful man.

Of course, being very public with your comment interaction with your customers is not only full of advantages. There are disadvantages as well. Not all of the readers of your article for example would agree with you.

And they might show their unhappiness about your article in the not so civil way. And this is one of the most frustrating part of being involved in a digital product. Comments section have enabled malicious people to hide behind anonymous identities and abuse people with their comments.

These people are usually called “trolls.” Not only does they abusive people with their words, but they can even harass people on a continuous basis. They can incite other people to abuse the creators of the digital content.

As a creator of digital content, could you deal with trolls and other abusive people who are not civil when they interact with you on the comments section? You might think this is a non-issue, but many digital content creators have suffered mental stress due to these sort of people.

You might say that the best strategy against these people would be to pay no attention to them. But these people as said could have the capability to incite other people to abuse you in social media. Take note of this probable situation whenever you think about not doing anything against such people.


You would not always produce the most correct or most quality digital content. You might try, but you would not be always at your best especially if you are producing regular digital content. This is just the reality.

And there are people just waiting for an excuse to humiliate other people for the most trivial of things. It is beyond this article to discuss why there are people who behave this way, but the important thing is that there are people who do.

And these kinds of people could be very destructive for anyone who creates digital content or any other content. It is said that the biggest of ships can be sunk by even the smallest leak. Sadly, this is very true.

Let say if you create online history articles and you made a mistake on a certain part of your history article. Not only would your mistake open you to criticism about your article, it would also open you to criticism on all your past and future articles.

This is all due to human nature. It is said that most people remember more the bad things associated about you than the good things. This is very true. People are fired from their jobs for a single mistake no matter how many good things they did for a company.

There are people who comment on your comment section not because they have something to say about your digital content, but rather, they just want to speak whatever it is in their mind. They don’t care if what they have to say has anything to do with your digital product.

Let’s assume again that you create online history articles. Your article has a very formal tone and most of the comments you get are from people interested in your history article. Then you get comments from people who tell their stories of how they got drunk last night.

These sort of comments cheapens your high quality digital content. It has the effect of making people avoid your digital content especially if they think they can be identified with the commenters who comment about nonsensical things.

There are also people who could use your comments section as a place to do their covert marketing. Covert marketing is as the name implies. They are advertisements cleverly disguised as comments.

Just like the babblers, they also cheapen the perceived quality of your digital product. But perhaps the more disturbing part of these covert marketing is the fact that they are usually accompanied by a link to an actual product which may harm your customers.

There are malicious link that are present everywhere online that can harm your digital profile and even steal your personal information. If your customer happens to be victimized by such a link concealed in one of the comments in your comments section, they can have a negative perception of your digital product.

Many advocates of adding a comments section on your digital products say that comments are also indexed by Google and they add length to your digital product. It is true that Google favors longer digital products with more content.

It is also true that Google does index a comment. But let’s analyze these two advantages more clearly. Since the comment is written by your customer and not you, it is unclear whether Google’s indexing of this comment would help your digital product.

Another thing you need to be clear about is that Google doesn’t necessarily rank a digital product based on length alone. Google uses a sophisticated secret algorithm to rank digital products.

There is the danger that the contents of your comment section might actually hurt the indexing of your digital product for a specific search criteria. Let us say that your article talks about car maintenance, but your comments section is filled with people commenting on a movie about car stunts.

There is a danger that Google would index your article based on the search term “movie about car stunts” instead of car maintenance. As you can see, this could hurt your intended ranking of your digital product.

One thing that you could do to offset the negative effects of having a comment section is to control the comments your customers can leave. One of the ways would be via a multiple choice section.

You could ask definite questions related to your digital products at the end of your digital content. You can for example ask if your digital product was helpful to your customers. You can then ask your customers to select an answer to you based on a multiple choice option.

This makes your comments section not only clearly measurable, but it also simplifies the analysis of your customer’s reaction to your digital product. You can even make money by selling the result of your analysis to parties who needs it.

Though considered by many as old fashioned already, leaving your email address allows your customers to still comment and contact you if they ever need to. Not only can you control the public disclosure of the contents of your comment section, but you also make the face of your commenter public.

This is because the email address of the person who commented to your digital product is known. Email addresses are one of the best known ways of tracking even an anonymous online personality.

Through email communication, it is not only you who is exposing their online contact details, but it is also your commenter. You also have the added advantage of relegating malicious emails to your spam folder.

Despite all that have been discussed, the greatest question that needs to be asked is this: “Can you manage your comment section?” Whether to praise, insult or whatever message your commenter is sending, their obvious intention is to contact you.

It is good if your comment section is composed only of a few comments, but what about if there are hundreds of comments in your comment section and some of these comments are even questions that would take some time for you to answer?

Unlike your own digital products, you cannot plan the length and number of the comments your commenters would post to you. You can choose to ignore the comments as if they didn’t exist, but you risk alienating your customers.

Another thing that you need to especially consider is that your comments section are public. They can clearly be seen together with your digital product. Can you let other people control your comments section? Do you have the time to do this controlling?

Famous marketing guru Seth Godin has famously said that he doesn’t have a comment section in his blog because he simply does not care and does not have the time to look at them. Yet, his blog is still famous and attracts a lot of views.

Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of a conventional comment section is the fact that you have limited control of it. It is entirely possible for other people to hijack your comment section and use it for their own intents which could hurt your digital product.

Direct answer solicitation and old style email can help you mitigate the negative effects of a comment section. You should also ask yourself if you can maintain a comments section, people like Seth Godin have proven that it is not really a requirement for your digital business.

Could You Sustain Your Digital Content Business, Timewise?