You are choosing between two creators for your next campaign. Both have around the same number of followers. Both have a strong engagement rate. Both get a similar number of comments on every post.
On paper, they are interchangeable. So you pick one.
A few weeks later, one campaign has people asking where to buy the product, many of them people who had never come across the creator before. The other has a handful of heart emoji and a comment from the creator’s friend.
The difference was there all along. It was in the comments.
Why comments matter more than they used to
A few years ago, a creator’s post was mostly seen by their followers. That is no longer how Instagram works.
In April 2024, Mark Zuckerberg said that for the first time, more than 50% of the content people see on Instagram is recommended by AI. In December 2024, Instagram launched Trial Reels, which let creators show a Reel to non-followers first, before their own followers see it.
So a creator’s post is now regularly put in front of strangers. That changes what brands should be asking. It is less about how many people follow a creator, and more about whether their content is engaging enough to make someone who has never seen them before stop, react and care about the content.
That is why comments matter more today than they did before. Engagement from someone who already follows a creator is the baseline. Engagement from a stranger is a much stronger signal, because it shows the content itself is doing the work. And comments are one of the clearest indicators of whether that is happening.
The problem: engagement metrics in isolation measure activity, not engagement
Engagement metrics are built to be compared. Followers, likes, comments and interaction rate all fit neatly into a spreadsheet. They provide a good proxy to the type of activity generated by a post.
But focusing on the metrics alone misses the qualitative aspect of the activity. Metrics in isolation cannot provide a clear picture of the value of the engagement generated.
Comments are where this matters most. They are one of the key engagement metrics on Instagram, and they take more effort than a like. So a busy comment section feels like proof of strong engagement. The problem is that looking at counts alone lumps valuable, pointless and manufactured engagement together as if they all have the same value:
- A question about the product: someone actively interested.
- A string of emoji: a quick reaction that could sit under any post.
- “So proud of you!!”: a friend showing support.
- “Great content, check my page”: spam.
Each one adds exactly one to the total. The same count can hide a completely different mix, and the mix is what decides whether the creator can potentially meet your campaign goals.
What the number cannot show you
When you only look at the comment count, a few things stay invisible.
Whether people watched. Comments that mention something specific in the post show real engagement. Generic comments could have been left without watching at all.
Who is engaging. A comment section full of the same ten accounts across posts tells a very different story from one with hundreds of different people joining in.
Whether it is organic. Some creators are part of groups of accounts that agree to comment on each other’s posts. The numbers go up without any real engagement behind them.
Whether the engagement reaches beyond followers. Plenty of creators, especially smaller ones, get most of their comments from people they know. That is genuine, but it does not show that their content can engage strangers, and strangers are exactly who Instagram is now showing it to. A creator whose comments include questions and reactions from new people is building an engaged audience, not just keeping an existing one happy.
The real question
The comment count answers "how many?" When you are booking a creator, the question you actually need answered is "can this content spark real engagement, including from people who do not already follow them?"
Why teams do not check
Most marketers know the comment count is a rough measure. They rely on it anyway because the alternative is slow.
Reading comments properly means opening post after post and scrolling through every reply. For one creator, that is manageable. For a list of twenty, it is hours of work that rarely makes it into a busy week. So the decision gets made on the numbers, and the comments go unread, along with the one thing they could tell you: whether the creator can engage people beyond their own followers.
If you are choosing creators right now, our guide on how to find the right influencers for your brand covers the other signals worth checking alongside this one.
The solution: read the comments, at scale
The answer is comment analysis: looking at what comments actually say and turning that into something you can compare. Good comment analysis tells you:
- How genuine the engagement is: whether comments relate to the content or could be left anywhere.
- How much is low-effort: the share of emoji, one-word praise and generic replies.
- Who is behind it: engagement from a wide mix of people, or from a small circle of personal connections.
- Whether anything looks coordinated: signs that comments are being traded or bought rather than earned.
With that, you can see whose content earns real engagement, and whether it reaches beyond the people who already follow them, before you spend anything. It also gives you a more honest starting point when you come to measure influencer marketing ROI.
Look past the count
More and more Instagram posts are being shown to people who do not follow the creator. That makes real engagement the thing that matters, and comments are one of the best ways to see it. Just not by counting them.
Scoop reads every creator’s comments for you, so you can see the engagement behind the numbers in one click. Book a demo to see how.
- Posts reach strangers now: more than half of what people see on Instagram is AI recommended, so content has to engage people who do not follow the creator.
- Engagement from strangers counts most: it shows the content itself works, not just that followers are being supportive.
- Counts measure activity, not attention: a product question and an emoji add the same to the total.
- Comments show what numbers cannot: whether people watched, who is engaging and whether it reaches beyond followers.
- Reading comments takes time: most teams skip it, which is why it is worth automating.
