Inside BetterHelp’s ‘repeatable, scalable’ comments-section social strategy

Sometimes all it takes is one comment to make a change.

That could be taken as a grand statement about life, but here, it’s a literal one: After posting a comment on a video that went viral last year, BetterHelp’s marketing team has doubled down on the comment section as a growth strategy.

“The team had a breakthrough moment with the Pitch Perfect conversation that was happening online,” Sara Brooks, chief growth officer for BetterHelp, told us, referring to a comment the brand made on the viral post of college students performing a capella from last November. (The film features college a capella groups competing for prizes.) “The team came into the comments section in TikTok and said, ‘Close enough! Welcome back, Treblemakers!’ And it really resonated with the community. Got over 300,000 likes on just one comment. We started to see, ‘Hmm, something is happening here.’”

It can be hard for some marketers to replicate viral success, but for BetterHelp, the move fit into a larger strategic shift to focus on speaking to communities. Since its first outsized response to that TikTok comment, BetterHelp has continued to find different comment sections to be a part of—mostly on TikTok, where BetterHelp has 537,400 followers, and on Instagram, where the brand has more than 635,000 followers.

“What we found is that this is a really repeatable, scalable way to show up in culture,” Brooks said. “Fast forward to today, our follower count on TikTok, our daily new followers has grown a hundredfold. People [are] really resonating with the brand as we’re showing up in these cultural conversations.”

Brands have long shown up in the comments section of viral TikToks and Instagram videos, with some, like Dove and HelloFresh, playing in the space for years with the goal of garnering positive brand sentiment and centering their brands in cultural conversations. Often, that cultural conversation revolves around a fandom of some sort, like a TV show or a franchise.

For BetterHelp, though, the shift is more than just being part of cultural conversation—it’s a growth strategy.

“We’re fortunate in that, for better or worse, mental health is part of the cultural conversation,” she said. “But where there are cultural conversations that your brand can earn the right to be in, add some value and show up, and I think that it could be a great success.”

Just post it

Brooks estimates that since focusing on the comments section last fall, BetterHelp’s daily new follower count has grown from roughly four new followers a day to approximately 450 a day. Like count is also growing: In July, BetterHelp had posted 19 comments that had generated over 10,000 likes each, according to the brand.

To get those results, BetterHelp goes to bat quite often. BetterHelp comments on roughly 200 to 350 posts per month, with roughly 10 to 20 of those posts gaining significant traction (which the brand quantifies as generating more than 10,000 likes).

The approach requires speed, as the cultural conversation and what’s popular or worth commenting on can quickly change. That’s meant that BetterHelp has had to set up guidelines around what makes sense for the brand to comment on and what exactly should be in those comments, which gives Kerrie Ngo, social media and community manager, freedom to comment.

It also means that Ngo is very online with her screentime on TikTok, which adds up to roughly 20 hours per week.

BetterHelp isn’t showing up in just any comment section, though. The team considers what’s taking place in culture, what conversations people are already having, and if there’s a role for the brand that would make sense for the audience, Brooks said. Questions like, “Would your therapist opine on this?” and “Would this be a conversation that you had with a friend?” are part of the consideration process.

“[We’re] making sure that we’re choosing those conversations, not inserting ourselves into conversations where we don’t belong,” she said. “Importantly, we’re never selling, because we would break that trust that we’re building.”

Building trust

Avoiding a pushy sales approach is key, Brooks told us, as the approach wouldn’t resonate with the communities the brand is trying to reach and would undercut the brand’s goals. “This is about resonance and trust,” Brooks said. “It deliberately is not about direct response, very intentionally.”

That may be part of the reason that the response for many comments has been warm.

That said, the approach has led to more than just follower growth. Brooks noted that the comments strategy has had another benefit in recent months: starting conversations with creators about collaboration opportunities.

Overall, the approach is something Brooks sees as “fairly available for most brands,” she said, adding that what’s most important is “your unique angle.”