- Future Social
- Posts
- Why your brand shouldn't care about comments
Why your brand shouldn't care about comments
Most of your followers will happily watch content without ever chiming in, and that's okay.
Jack Appleby
August 05, 2025
Hello, friends! I’m in a swell mood. Hit two amazing concerts last week—Spin’s first show ever (ex-Turnover if you’re an emo) and The Band Camino’s tiny secret show over at Mercury Lounge. Also just got an offer to play professional basketball for a weekend in BRAZIL?! AND Future Social’s back this week? Kate Hudson in Almost Famous voice “It’s all happening!”
But let’s talk social things. Today we’ll touch on:
Why your brand should think views over comments
The tiniest bit of American Eagle commentary
A weird marketing move from Paramore’s Hayley Williams
—Jack Appleby
Whether you’re working your first job or a 20 year vet, I genuinely believe that everyone has a unique story worth sharing that could catapult your career. My last few jobs came in the DMs from people who read my thoughts on LinkedIn! You’d be amazed how a handful of smart posts could change your life.
Too many personal branding services are too expensive, so I built Break An Egg. It’s a $5/month service that’ll give you 30 writing prompts every month, all built around mining your brain for what makes you special, not just what we think gets engagement. You’ll also get access to a community with the 1000+ BAEs who’ve subscribed!
Why your brand shouldn’t care about comments
What marketing publication hasn’t sang the praises of Liquid Death?
The water company’s turned disruptive branding into a billion dollar business, consistently whipping out perfectly clever, tongue-in-cheek marketing stunts that speak to the silliness of it all. If you catch me in the corner at a concert, I’m probably nursing a sparkling tall boy.
I’ve always appreciated their CEO’s willingness to share the thinking behind the company—you gotta give Mike Cessario a follow on LinkedIn.
But today, we’re here to chat about one specific post of his that I reallyyy think we’re not focusing on enough as social media marketers.
The Engagement Inequality (or the 90-9-1 Rule)
The following is pulled from Cessario’s LinkedIn:
There's an "engagement inequality" reality on social media called the "90-9-1 Rule" which is important for brands to understand.
90% of people on social are passive observers who do not engage by clicking like buttons or posting comments. They treat social media the same way they treat their television: they sit back and watch the circus.
9% of people on social will lightly engage with the low effort of hitting a like button or the share button, but not commenting.
Only 1% of people on social are active engagers who take the time to write comments and post content frequently.
As a brand, unless you believe that 1% of the internet speaks for the other 90% of us, don't let the loud 1% of the population in the comments dictate what decisions you make for the other 90%. Comments can be very misleading because it's such a small fringe of the people watching and they often have personal motivations for why they comment that has nothing to do with the content.
Yes. Yes yes yes. It’s thinking that we intrinsically know, yet naturally buck against. Maybe it’s because we as social media marketers enjoy when our content inspires comments. Maybe it’s businesses don’t give social teams enough access to sales data, so we overindex on social data sometimes to our own detriment. Maybe it’s because Engagement Rate was a staple metric before the For You Page started pushing our content to non-followers.
No matter the reason, it’s important for social media marketers to be more honest about how the common scroller scrolls.
What does it all mean, though?
Social marketers are sometimes too addicted to feedback loops. If no one comments, we assume the content flopped. But the 90%? They saw it. They might’ve even loved it. They just didn’t clap for you.
So with that in mind:
Optimize for views, shares, & watch through over comments. We used to CTA everything to drive commentary, when I could argue our CTAs should emphasize following or sharing.
Throw out Engagement Rate as a metric. Every social network now has short-form vertical video that reaches non-followers, so why are we continuing to use a metric that analyzes our performance vs. followers? I’m more interested in our averages and continuing to increase our averages.
Keep reading the comments, but don’t let them drive the car. Think of the comments as a sampling, not the bible. Know what’s being said, but know the quiet lurkers are who’s paying your bills.
The next time a post gets 200K views and 12 comments, don’t panic. You might’ve just reached 180,000 people who were quietly nodding along.
An example from my personal life
I didn’t build my personal brand to become a content creator—I just wanted to find new jobs and bosses, and figured tweeting would reach more hiring managers than cold emails. And when I scored my first lay-off (thanks, COVID), I tweeted that for the first time in my life, I was available for hire with no current job.
12 minutes after I fired off that tweet, I got a DM from the Creative Strategy Lead over at Twitch, asking if I wanted to join her team. I had no idea she followed me, her Twitter account was very bare, and she’d never engaged with a single piece of my content, but she had read my thoughts for years. Within 3 months, I was wearing purple and working in gaming again, my last gig before I started this newsletter.
Never, ever underestimate who’s seeing your content, and always focus on more eyes over more comments.
It’s go-time for holiday campaigns
Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to extend your Q4 campaign to performance CTV.
You can:
Easily launch self-serve CTV ads
Repurpose your social content for TV
Drive purchases directly on-screen with shoppable ads
A/B test to discover your most effective offers
The holidays only come once a year. Get started now with a $500 ad credit when you spend your first $500 today with code: ROKUADS500. Terms apply.
A quick thought on the whole American Eagle / Sydney Sweeney thing…
Yeah, I’d get huge open rates if I wrote about American Eagle right now, but I wanna see how more of this plays out before I sound off. I did share some initial thoughts on my LinkedIn, namely that I think this campaign’s probably working for them & I don’t think there’s an apology coming.
One of my favorite singers pulled a marketing stunt I kindaaa hated…
I’m a biggg Paramore fan. The band was a major beat during my music journalism days (my reviews are still on their Wikipedia pages!!!), but Hayley’s release strategy for her new solo album made my head spin… and I still have barely listened to the new music because they just made it kind of… a pain. You can read my analysis right over here.