This thread has had plenty of answers, but here's the version I prefer.

It extends the existing UITextView class so is easily reuseable, and it doesn't intercept the events like textViewDidChange (which might break user's code, if they were already intercepting these events elsewhere).

Using my code (shown below), you can easily add a placeholder to any of your UITextViews like this:

self.textViewComments.placeholder = @"(Enter some comments here.)";

When you set this new placeholder value, it quietly adds a UILabel on top of your UITextView, then hide/shows it as necessary:

Okay, to make these changes, add a "UITextViewHelper.h" file containing this code:

//  UITextViewHelper.h
//  Created by Michael Gledhill on 13/02/15.

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface UITextView (UITextViewHelper)

@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString* placeholder;
@property (nonatomic, strong) UILabel* placeholderLabel;
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString* textValue;

-(void)checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder;

@end

...and a UITextViewHelper.m file containing this:

//  UITextViewHelper.m
//  Created by Michael Gledhill on 13/02/15.
//
//  This UITextView category allows us to easily display a PlaceHolder string in our UITextView.
//  The downside is that, your code needs to set the "textValue" rather than the "text" value to safely set the UITextView's text.
//
#import "UITextViewHelper.h"
#import <objc/runtime.h>

@implementation UITextView (UITextViewHelper)

#define UI_PLACEHOLDER_TEXT_COLOR [UIColor colorWithRed:170.0/255.0 green:170.0/255.0 blue:170.0/255.0 alpha:1.0]

@dynamic placeholder;
@dynamic placeholderLabel;
@dynamic textValue;

-(void)setTextValue:(NSString *)textValue
{
    //  Change the text of our UITextView, and check whether we need to display the placeholder.
    self.text = textValue;
    [self checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];
}
-(NSString*)textValue
{
    return self.text;
}

-(void)checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder
{
    //  If our UITextView is empty, display our Placeholder label (if we have one)
    if (self.placeholderLabel == nil)
        return;

    self.placeholderLabel.hidden = (![self.text isEqualToString:@""]);
}

-(void)onTap
{
    //  When the user taps in our UITextView, we'll see if we need to remove the placeholder text.
    [self checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];

    //  Make the onscreen keyboard appear.
    [self becomeFirstResponder];
}

-(void)keyPressed:(NSNotification*)notification
{
    //  The user has just typed a character in our UITextView (or pressed the delete key).
    //  Do we need to display our Placeholder label ?
   [self checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];
}

#pragma mark - Add a "placeHolder" string to the UITextView class

NSString const *kKeyPlaceHolder = @"kKeyPlaceHolder";
-(void)setPlaceholder:(NSString *)_placeholder
{
    //  Sets our "placeholder" text string, creates a new UILabel to contain it, and modifies our UITextView to cope with
    //  showing/hiding the UILabel when needed.
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &kKeyPlaceHolder, (id)_placeholder, OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);

    self.placeholderLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:self.frame];
    self.placeholderLabel.numberOfLines = 1;
    self.placeholderLabel.text = _placeholder;
    self.placeholderLabel.textColor = UI_PLACEHOLDER_TEXT_COLOR;
    self.placeholderLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
    self.placeholderLabel.userInteractionEnabled = true;
    self.placeholderLabel.font = self.font;
    [self addSubview:self.placeholderLabel];

    [self.placeholderLabel sizeToFit];

    //  Whenever the user taps within the UITextView, we'll give the textview the focus, and hide the placeholder if necessary.
    [self addGestureRecognizer:[[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(onTap)]];

    //  Whenever the user types something in the UITextView, we'll see if we need to hide/show the placeholder label.
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector: @selector(keyPressed:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:nil];

    [self checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];
}
-(NSString*)placeholder
{
    //  Returns our "placeholder" text string
    return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &kKeyPlaceHolder);
}

#pragma mark - Add a "UILabel" to this UITextView class

NSString const *kKeyLabel = @"kKeyLabel";
-(void)setPlaceholderLabel:(UILabel *)placeholderLabel
{
    //  Stores our new UILabel (which contains our placeholder string)
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, &kKeyLabel, (id)placeholderLabel, OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector: @selector(keyPressed:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:nil];

    [self checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];
}
-(UILabel*)placeholderLabel
{
    //  Returns our new UILabel
    return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, &kKeyLabel);
}
@end

Yup, it's a lot of code, but once you've added it to your project and included the .h file...

#import "UITextViewHelper.h"

...you can easily use placeholders in UITextViews.

There's one gotcha though.

If you do this:

self.textViewComments.placeholder = @"(Enter some comments here.)";
self.textViewComments.text = @"Ooooh, hello there";

...the placeholder will appear on top of the text. When you set the text value, none of the regular notifications gets called, so I couldn't work out how to call my function to decide whether to show/hide the placeholder.

The solution is to set the textValue rather than text:

self.textViewComments.placeholder = @"(Enter some comments here.)";
self.textViewComments.textValue = @"Ooooh, hello there";

Alternatively, you can set the text value, then call checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder.

self.textViewComments.text = @"Ooooh, hello there";
[self.textViewComments checkIfNeedToDisplayPlaceholder];

I like solutions like this, as they "fill the gap" between what Apple provides us with, and what we (as developers) actually need in our apps. You write this code once, add it to your library of "helper" .m/.h files, and, over time, the SDK actually starts becoming less frustrating.

(I wrote a similar helper for adding a "clear" button to my UITextViews, another thing which annoyingly exists in UITextField but not in UITextView...)