TLDR: Spend ten minutes a day on comments with a fixed routine: two minutes to scan, five to sort into four buckets (lead, question, praise, noise), three to act on the leads. Reply to leads first, answer questions second, and ignore the rest in bulk. The aim is to find buyers quickly, not to read everything.
Try to answer every comment and comments become a second job. Most of them are praise, emoji and tags. Only a handful are people ready to buy.
The routine below finds that handful. It takes ten minutes, and you can run it on a timer.
The ten-minute routine, minute by minute
| Minutes | Step | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 2 | Scan | Open all comments and DMs from the last 24 hours in one view. Don't reply yet. |
| 2 to 7 | Sort | Tag each one as lead, question, praise or noise. |
| 7 to 9 | Act on leads | Reply in public, move to a DM, log the lead. |
| 9 to 10 | Close out | Answer one or two questions, then stop. |
Set a phone timer. When it rings, you're done, even if comments are left over. Anything unread tomorrow joins tomorrow's scan, and a lead that matters will still be there.
Four buckets and the words that put a comment in each
Lead. Contains a price, a plan, a date, a quantity, "do you ship to", "can you do", "how do I buy" or "DM me". These get answered first.
Question. Asks how something works or whether it fits. Not buying yet, but one good reply often turns it into a lead.
Praise. "Love this", fire emojis, tags of friends. A short reply or a like is enough. Don't spend time here.
Noise. Spam, off-topic, arguments. Hide or ignore.
Your own audience will have its own trigger words. After a week, write down the ten phrases that came before real sales, and sort by those.
How to reply to a lead without sounding like a script
Reply in public first, so others see you answer. Then move the detail to a DM.
- Public: "Happy to help, sending you the details now."
- DM: the actual answer, one link, one question that moves it forward.
Don't paste a long pitch. A short, human reply gets more answers than a polished block of text.
Let a rule catch the obvious ones
Some leads are easy to spot by a single word. Trigger-word automation in Mydrop can watch for words like "price" or "link" in comments and send an instant reply and DM. That covers the clear cases while you're away. You then spend your ten minutes on the comments that need judgment.
The social inbox shows comments and messages from every connected profile in one list, which turns the "scan" step into a single screen instead of six apps.
Keep a tiny log so the routine improves
After each session, add one line to a sheet: date, leads found, replies sent, sales that came from earlier leads. Two weeks of that tells you three things:
- Which platform produces the most leads per minute
- Which trigger words are real
- Whether ten minutes is the right amount
If you find leads on only one platform, spend your ten minutes there first. If you find none for two weeks, the problem is probably the posts, not the triage, and turning comments into conversations that drive sales is the next read.
For the deeper system behind this routine, see Turn Low-Engagement Comments into Leads: A 3-Tier Triage, and for messages that arrive privately, prioritise high-intent social messages.
When ten minutes is not enough
Two signs the routine has outgrown one person: leads sit unanswered for more than a day, or the scan alone takes more than two minutes. At that point, split by platform or by brand, with one owner each. Workspaces keep each brand's inbox separate, so a second person can take half without seeing the rest.
Start the timer tomorrow morning
Set ten minutes in the morning, use the four buckets, and write down the leads. After one week you'll know how many buyers were in your comments all along. To get every comment in one view, start free on Mydrop.
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