Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.
A whooping 2 billion people use Instagram each month. Thanks to the plethora of features it offers, millions of people and brands use it to share their stories effectively. The massive audience-base offers a great opportunity to build awareness, influence consideration, drive sales and create social proof.
But often they face the effects of negative engagement that destroy their online credibility and drive potential customers away.
This engagement mostly occurs in the comments section, where people intentionally dump shortcomings and bad-mouth brands. How can you tackle this?
Well, you can solve this issue by hiding and deleting comments on Instagram.
Let’s get started...
Why do you need to hide Instagram comments?
Every day, you see your favorite brands posting on Instagram, trying to provide value through content.
Although the number of followers on their accounts might show their authority, there's an ugly side to this picture.
The truth is, most brands or individuals looking to generate growth on Instagram cannot maintain a powerful social proof.
It’s critical to understand that you can create the best content in the world, educate your potential customers, and offer free-items, but if you don’t build social proof around your brand, you’ll miss out on opportunities that could prove revolutionary.
An interesting statistic claims: 70% of shoppers look to Instagram for their next purchase. This means your next customer is probably going through your posts to learn about the products/services you offer or considering making their first purchase.
Another statistic says: 86% of potential customers hesitate after seeing negative comments.
As shocking as it sounds, social media reputation, aka social proof, plays a critical role in a brand’s growth.
So, what affects social proof?
Negative engagement is the prime reason brands fail at social proofing.
This is because no matter how hard you try, there are people who’ll leave negative comments, create spam, complain, and intentionally bad-mouth your efforts.
The takeaway is people are impatient; they don’t believe in second chances while choosing a brand. This is because they can easily pick another with just the click of a few buttons.
According to a survey: 35% of customers in the US post negative comments about companies on social media.
Imagine putting in hours to create valuable content for your audience but losing out in the comments section.
This is why you need to get rid of these 35% comments aka hide Instagram comments to build a positive social proof so that when a potential customer comes, they get the best word-of-mouth about your brand.
Comments section: the social proofing battleground.
Over the years, customers have changed their perception of brands on social media.
They have become extremely selective of their choices and put in more effort before going with a product/service.
Apart from the shiny side of a brand’s page, its posts, stories, the real social proofing battle takes place in the comments section.
Say you are scrolling through Instagram and come across an advertisement offering an exciting collection of jeans.
You navigate to the brand’s page and find magnificent offers suitable for your budget.
But in the comments section, you see many people complaining about the quality of the product, poor customer service and more.
Would you make a purchase after reading these negative feedbacks?
Obviously, you won’t.
Now, this situation could have ended on the other note of you making a purchase, if you had read positive feedback.
This’s how negative comments affect a brand’s reputation and sabotage their growth efforts by driving customers away.
If you’re looking to hide instagram comments, there are two types of comments you need to act on.
Random and promotional comments
You might have come across comments that make no sense to the context of the post. These comments come from people who want to harm your reputation intentionally. They type random words, sometimes slang/inappropriate comments paired with images, GIFs, and videos.
Another set of people comment only for self-promotion. They leave a link to their account or website and urge people to click on them. Removing such comments can help you draw the attention of customers toward positive comments relevant to your posts.
Hate speech and complaints
Creating a bad word-of-mouth doesn’t take much time. All you have to do is speak ill/ criticise someone with an intent to destroy their reputation. This Is what happens in the comments sections of posts on Instagram. People spread ill rumours, hate speech and trolls to grab attention.
Sometimes you’ll come across genuine complaints of customers, but they can scare new customers. Hence, it’s wise to deal with the complaints privately.
Now that you know what comments to remove from the comments section, there’s another action you can execute to win your customers.
Reply to customers
Customers love attention and want to feel valued. Whether you are dealing with a new customer or a regular one, addressing their complaints and comments is a great way to offer them value. It can help you build social proof, incentivise people to keep commenting, and connect with the audience.
Next time a potential customer lands in your comments section, they’ll find how you treat your customers.
Can you hide comments on Instagram?
Yes, you can hide Instagram comments, but it’s tricky.
This is because Instagram doesn’t allow you to hide comments from the comments section itself. You need to go to the settings menu and use a couple of options to hide the comments.
What happens when you hide Instagram comments?
Before addressing, the prime question: How to hide Instagram comments?
Let’s discuss what happens when you hide a comment on Instagram.
Does the other person know?
When you hide someone’s comment, Instagram doesn’t notify them. Hence, they have no way of knowing you have hidden their comment. But they can see the comment on your post on their Instagram application.
Can other people see the hidden comment?
It’s good to note when you hide a comment, other people won’t see it and hence the name: hidden comment.
Can you see the hidden comment?
You won’t see the hidden comment on your post, but you can see it in the preview app. If you wish, you may unhide the comment.
How to hide any comment on Instagram?
Instagram offers you a few settings to deal with comments on your posts.
You can choose to hide offensive comments, comments containing specific keywords, block comments from certain people, or turn off comments altogether.
While you can follow a set of steps to hide offensive comments using Instagram, there’s a simpler way to make your life easy.
CommentGuard is an AI-powered Facebook & Instagram comment moderation tool that helps you remove offensive comments from your posts and advertisements.
All you need to do is start your free trial and follow the steps below:
- Add your Instagram page linked to your Facebook page from your CommentGuard’s dashboard.
- You’ll see all the comments on your posts and ads, under the “All” category of the comments section. You can also choose to review specific comments later by adding them to “To Review.”
- Click on the struck-through eye icon to hide an Instagram comment.
What’s best about CommentGuard is its plethora of filters that provide you unique settings to deal with your comments.
You can automatically hide Instagram comments based on many filters.
Profanity filter
The Profanity filter is a wonderful feature that draws power from an AI algorithm to auto- hide Instagram comments that contain profanity.
This means every time someone comments something offensive, CommentGuard will hide that comment immediately and automatically.
Toxicity filter
Let’s be honest. Many times, we come across comments that gravely affect our sentiments. They mayn’t be offensive, but create a negative impact. This means you need to deal with these comments as well, to make sure the comments section is the best advocate of your brand.
Now, Instagram doesn’t have a feature to accomplish this, but you can use CommentGuard to auto-hide comments that would be perceived as toxic by readers.
Filter URLs, images, and emojis
The comments section of growing brands offers opportunities to individuals and communities to self-promote their services by sharing URLs to their websites and pages.
But there are also people who purposefully create spam by attaching inappropriate images and emojis to their comments.
These can prove costly to your efforts and create a negative reputation around your brand.
Hence, getting rid of such comments is critical. This Is where CommentGuard shines.
You can use filters to automatically hide Instagram comments containing spam URLs, images and GIFs.
Now, if you want to use Instagram’s feature to only hide offensive comments, follow the steps below:
1. Open Instagram and tap on the hamburger icon after clicking on your profile.
2. Tap on settings > Privacy > Comments.
3. Toggle on “Hide offensive comments.”
How to hide specific comments automatically on Instagram?
The comments section clean-up process has evolved over the years.
Today, you have the option to auto-hide comments containing specific keywords or phrases.
Say, you are a Print-on-Demand business name “Print Media” on Instagram and want to deal with negative comments.
You can set manual filters to auto-hide comments containing phrases like Print Media Fake, Fraud service, Print Media Worst, etc.
You can use CommentGuard’s keyword blacklist feature to create rules and define phrases and keywords.
The software will reply to or hide Instagram comments containing these keywords.
Here’s how you can do this:
1. Under the rules section, create a new rule.
2. Name the rule and set up a trigger: “Comments containing certain keywords”
3. Add the keywords and choose an action.
4. Create a reply. You can also add emojis.
5. Pick whether to send it as a private message.
6. Save the rule.
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t allow you to send private replies to comments containing certain keywords, but you can decide to hide them.
Follow the steps below to do this:
1. Navigate to settings > Privacy > Comments.
2. Press the manual filter toggle.
3. Type the words you want to filter, separated by commas.
How to hide all comments on Instagram?
Dealing with comments can often get frustrating. Sometimes things get out of control, and you feel helpless.
Say you have done all the things available at your disposal to filter offensive comments or those containing specific keywords. But realize your comments section is still a mess.
Well, there’s another way you can deal with negative comments. You can hide all comments on Instagram. By doing this, you’ll prevent anyone from commenting on your posts.
Although this is not a wise decision because the comments section helps you connect with your audience and makes them feel valued. But if you like, the option is available.
CommentGuard’s Private mode helps you hide all new comments on your posts and ads. While this’s a simple way to accomplish from an all-in-one dashboard, you can also use Instagram to do so.
1. Navigate to the post for which you want to disable comments.
2. Tap on the three horizontal dots on the top-right-corner.
3. Select turn off commenting.
This’ll hide all the previously made comments and restrict new ones.
How to delete specific comments automatically on Instagram?
There’s a famous phrase: Social media is where growth happens. While that's true, the reality is messy.
Every day, you face unique situations, and you must handle them before they affect your brand’s reputation.
This applies to the comments section. Every so often, you need to delete some comments without putting in much thought.
But the problem is, Instagram doesn’t allow you to auto-delete comments. This is a bummer because each time you have to delete a comment, you would have to open the comments section of the post and select the particular comment and delete it.
Of course, it’s a terrible waste of time.
This is where CommentGuard saves the day. All you need to do is create a new rule that will auto-delete comments on your posts. This means you can choose to delete comments containing specific words as well.
Now, people frequently ask: Will the person get notified when you delete their comment?
No, they don’t get notified when you delete their comments.
What does it mean to restrict someone on Instagram?
The final tool in your arsenal is to restrict someone from commenting on your posts.
Say there’s a customer, follower, or individual who constantly creates spam on your posts and speaks ill about your content.
You can tackle this issue by restricting them from commenting.
Follow the steps below to achieve this:
1. Navigate to the person’s profile you want to restrict.
2. Tap on the three horizontal dots.
3. Select Restrict and press Restrict again to confirm.
Naturally, there are some questions people ask regarding this action.
Let’s discuss them.
What happens when you restrict someone on Instagram?
When you restrict someone on Instagram, they don’t see whether you’re actively using the platform.
This applies to reading their messages and receiving any notifications from them.
Any new message from them will get moved to the message request section, and they won’t know you have restricted them.
Can they engage with your posts?
They can visit your posts, open the comments section, and see their comments. But in reality, it’s only visible to them.
CommentGuard: keeps your comments clean
A recent study says: 47% of people see negative comments as being indicative of a brand’s values.
This Is why winning the comments section battle is critical to your Instagram success. However, you needn’t worry because CommentGuard can help you win. Our moderation software offers you a plethora of filters to hide all types of unwanted comments automatically.
You can even create your rules to get the desired results.
Some features include: privately replying to comments and deleting them within the application and hiding comments with many filters like: URL, image, emojis, keyword blacklist, toxicity and profanity detection and private mode.
Thanks to its simple interface, the learning curve is easy, and you can get started in a few minutes.
Whether you need to hide instagram comments or delete them, CommentGuard is truly the ultimate software you need to win the comments section battle.
Conclusion
There you have it. Now, you know how to hide and delete comments on Instagram.
The comments section is a great place to connect with your audience by listening and replying to them. But negative comments can create spam and destroy your online credibility by driving potential customers away. Hence, dealing with such comments is a critical step in building a powerful social proof.
While you can hide instagram comments using its native features, you don’t get the freedom to use septic filters. This Is where services like CommentGuard come in. It is an all-in-one software designed to deal with negative comments on Facebook & Instagram. It gives you the freedom to create moderation rules and use a plethora of filters to win the comments section battle.