I used to treat comments like notifications I needed to just… clear. See comment > reply if I had time > move on. But when I crossed 10,000 followers on LinkedIn — a platform where genuine community building can have benefits way beyond engagement metrics — I knew I was not doing my audience (and myself) justice.
Many of my creator teammates were running into similar issues, especially if they were active on multiple platforms. Replying to comments can be pretty time-consuming. You’re jumping between apps, missing notifications, and losing track of conversations.
Plus, you’re missing out on the powerful engagement boost that comes with actively responding to comments on your posts — that’s up to 42% more engagement.
So, we built new features in Buffer to make this a whole lot easier. Now you can see and reply to comments from Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, X, and LinkedIn — all in one workspace. For free.
Community is what we’re calling Buffer’s new engagement hub. It brings all your comments from Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Threads, and Bluesky into one workspace.
Our goal was to create a calm, productive space where you can easily manage all your comments. You can reply, dismiss, or turn interesting comments into new posts without switching apps.
It’s free for up to three channels, and it’s designed to help you stay on top of conversations without the chaos of native platform notifications mixing everything together.
Built specifically for creators (of all stages)
Most engagement tools weren’t built for folks like us. They’re priced for enterprises with dedicated social teams (at $500-2,000/month), which means that if you’re a creator or small business, you’re either paying way too much or piecing together native notifications across multiple apps.
I think that’s a problem. Comment management shouldn’t only be accessible to big brands. So we made it free. With Buffer, you get comment management for up to three social channels across LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and Bluesky for free.
No credit card required. No trial period that ends in 14 days. Just access to the kinds of tools that were previously locked behind pricey enterprise software.
Community goes beyond being a simple inbox. Here are all the things you can do in the new tab.
Native platform notifications mix everything together. Someone followed you, someone left a comment, you got a DM — all competing for attention in one notifications feed. And that’s without adding multiple platforms into the mix!
We wanted Buffer to help filter through all this noise.
In Community, comments stay visible until you take action. Every comment remains accessible, never buried under follow notifications or profile views.
Control your comment queue with:
- Notifications when new comments arrive
- Filters to sort by unanswered, newest, oldest, or resolved
- Manual dismiss for comments that don’t need replies
- Persistent visibility until you respond or dismiss
You decide what needs a response. Comments don’t just disappear — they wait for your action.
My best post ideas often come from comment threads. Someone asks a question I hadn’t thought of, or mentions a pain point that resonates with others, which often sparks great content ideas.
On TikTok, creators have been doing this for years with the reply-to-comment feature. Instagram has Q&A stickers. The pattern is pretty clear — your audience is telling you what they want to learn about.
I think most social inbox tools miss this. They treat comments as tasks to clear. Buffer treats them as content opportunities.
You can create posts directly from comment exchanges in two ways:
- Turn your own reply into a standalone post
- Turn someone else’s comment into a post
This closes your content creation loop. You’re finding your next post idea in the conversations you’re already having.
Comment Insights (powered by AI) are currently in beta and coming soon. They’ll help you identify themes and patterns across all your comments, like:
- What questions keep coming up?
- What topics generate the most discussion?
- What’s resonating with your audience?
You’ll get data-driven content ideas directly from your audience, across all your channels in one view.
Comment Score is designed to help motivate you — a bit like an accountability buddy.
It tracks three things:
- Consistency — Are you showing up regularly to reply? (Week-over-week activity matters more than one-off bursts)
- Reply speed — How quickly do you respond? (First 2 hours = maximum points; algorithms notice fast replies)
- Response rate — What percentage of comments are you engaging with?
Your score starts based on your existing comment history (0-100), so you’ll see how you’ve been doing before you even start using Community. Visual feedback shows progress — think animations when you reply, confetti when you level up.
Scores above 85-90 require 2-3 consecutive weeks of consistent replies. This prevents gaming the system with one-off activity spikes.
I’ll be honest, it’s experimental. We’re still tuning the algorithm. It’s a hard problem to solve. Sometimes it might feel too harsh, sometimes too rewarding. Feedback is very welcome as we iterate to find the right balance!
Get a dashboard that grows with you
Whether you get 5 or 500 comments per post, we wanted Community to help you nurture and grow your audience. We know that folks on the different ends of this spectrum need different things, so we tailored it to match.
For beginner creators
You might not have a huge volume of comments to wrangle (yet!), but Community can still give you simple tools to stay consistent.
You’ll get:
- Notifications when you get a comment
- A focused interface to reply quickly
- Comment Score to track engagement habits
For seasoned creators
You need help sorting through volume and identifying what needs immediate attention.
- Filters to sort by unanswered, newest, oldest, and resolved
- Bulk resolve comments
- AI-powered replies that learn from your past writing and help you reply faster while keeping your tone consistent. You stay in control — edit, customize, or send as-is.
Coming soon, you’ll get:
- Smart AI Triage to categorize comments (i.e. Needs Review vs. Simple Replies)
- Custom categories to sort by keywords, questions, or sentiment
- Advanced filtering
We’re super energized about Community’s potential, and we’re still hard at work bringing that to life. Here’s what you can expect to find in your Community tab soon:
1. More channels
Available now (6 channels):
- Threads
- Bluesky
- X
Coming soon:
- TikTok (most requested)
- Additional platforms to reach full coverage
2. Smart AI Triage
Automatically categorize your comments:
- Needs Review: Comments with substance, questions, multiple sentences — where human connection matters.
- Simple Replies: One-word responses, emojis, basic reactions — less meaningful interactions.
This feature will also allow you to create custom rules, like:
- “Questions” → Auto-sort any comment with a question mark
- “Product mentions” → Flag when someone mentions specific keywords
- “Negativity” → Identify potential negative sentiment for priority response
3. Comment Insights
Soon you’ll be able to ask questions about your comments across all channels with natural language answers, based on your comment history. You could ask things like:
- What’s the dominant sentiment in my comments?
- What percentage of comments are in other languages?
- What themes keep coming up?
- What questions am I being asked most frequently?
4. @mentions support
At the moment, you can see comments only on posts you published. Soon, you’ll see comments on posts where you’re @mentioned (even if you didn’t publish the original post).
5. Superfans
I’m particularly excited about this one! With our upcoming Superfans feature, you’ll be able to:
- Identify your most engaged followers
- See common characteristics
- Discover content they’re creating
- Build deeper relationships with top supporters
This moves beyond comment management into relationship intelligence — understanding who’s truly engaged with your content, and how you can better create value for them.
Replying actually helps your posts perform better
If you needed a little extra nudge to check out Community (and just reply to those comments on your latest post): Our data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, recently analyzed nearly 2 million posts across 6 platforms.
The findings were pretty clear: replying to comments boosts engagement consistently across every platform he studied.
How much? It varies:
- Threads: +42% engagement lift
- LinkedIn: +30%
- Instagram: +21%
- Facebook: +9%
- X: +8%
- Bluesky: +5%
I’d never have been able to keep up with the comments I get on LinkedIn (a great problem to have!) without Community.
Staying engaged there has led to some amazing opportunities for me, like conference speaking invitations, professional collaborations, and some really meaningful conversations about mental health, hiring practices, and company culture.
I’m just having a really great time meeting interesting people from around the world and being able to engage in real conversation. And I hope Buffer can help more people experience that, too!
