From our inbox · July 2026 · Public Square Analytics

“We Are LIVING for These Benchmark Reports!!” — What Users Actually Say About GovFeeds

We’re a small team, and the founders read every reply from every city and county that uses GovFeeds. Going back through more than a year of those emails — every thread, every subscriber — a picture emerges of how local-government communicators actually react to seeing their work benchmarked against peers: what delights them, what they ask for next, and what they tell their colleagues. Here are the themes, in their own words.

1. The monthly report stops being our report and becomes theirs

The clearest pattern across the whole inbox: the monthly benchmarking report gets absorbed straight into each government’s own reporting rhythm — to managers, boards, and staff meetings, usually within days of arriving.

That same communicator later told us the reports are “extremely useful” — and that the team had moved its own internal reporting cycle to the start of the month so our benchmarks could feed straight into it. Another month’s edition got a two-word review: “These are gold!”

That second quote is the whole product in one email: the report lands, and the first thing the recipient thinks about is the board. Elected officials want performance metrics; communicators rarely have peer context to give them. The report is that context, ready to forward. And from a town administrator in New England, on the town’s first report:

This matches what we heard in the 70 interviews that shaped GovFeeds: communicators don’t just need data, they need something they can put in front of leadership. When the report starts riding along in the packet to the manager, the board, or a staff meeting, that’s the product doing its actual job.

2. Our first subscriber’s story, in five emails

One county communications office has been with GovFeeds longer than anyone — long enough that you can watch the whole relationship, and half our roadmap, unfold in a handful of replies.

The week of the first demo, the reply was simply: “I just subscribed to the service, and look forward to getting the reports” — followed immediately by a list of the county’s department pages to include. A few weeks later came the request that changed the product: could we build a monthly overview of posting and engagement? We built it. That request became the monthly benchmarking report — the feature subscribers now say they’re “living for.”

The following spring, an email arrived the night before a big internal meeting: could the report be reformatted for printing? It was going in front of the county manager the next morning. We sent a print-ready version within the hour — and the verdict that came back was one word: “perfect.” This summer, nearly two years in:

“The changes you have made at our request” is our favorite phrase in the whole inbox. That’s what a two-year subscriber relationship looks like when it works: they ask, we build, the tool gets better for everyone — and by year two they’re introducing us to their professional network unprompted.

3. “Easy to use” is the compliment that matters

Local-government communicators are busy people wearing several hats; a tool that demands training dies on the vine. So the reactions we watch for most closely are the ones about friction — and they’re the ones that make us proudest. “Very easy to navigate to get the data I need,” from the county communicator above. “Fantastic — a great tool and so easy to use,” from a communication manager in Virginia. “A terrific tool,” from a town manager in Massachusetts. “A powerful tool for someone operating in local government communication,” from a city official in Virginia. “Definitely a great tool!” from a county community-engagement director.

The self-serve arc shows up right at the start, too. A public information officer — pointed our way by the city administrator — signed up for the trial before we’d even exchanged emails, then wrote: “Excellent, thank you Bruce! I will read through the quick start guide and begin exploring the tool.” Two weeks later the city subscribed, and soon after we were adding a teammate’s login. No demo required, no sales call — the same reason there’s none in front of the free trial today. City managers move just as fast when the fit is right: one evaluated the tool alongside the outside agency that runs the city’s feeds and replied, simply, “We will proceed with GovFeeds.”

4. The first question is always about peers

Send a local-government communicator a benchmark and their first reply is almost never about their own numbers — it’s about the other governments. Who’s doing well? What are they doing? Can we see?

We sent over the list — along with what those cities were posting that worked. Because that’s the real answer to the question: the value isn’t the ranking, it’s the working examples hiding behind it. The same instinct shows up in how new subscribers describe joining:

“Part of the team” is exactly the mindset we hoped for — and notice the closing offer to help us. Government communicators don’t treat peer cities as rivals; they treat them as colleagues whose homework they’re allowed to borrow. GovFeeds just makes the borrowing systematic.

5. Users shape the roadmap — and always have

Read back through the inbox and you can watch subscribers design half the product. The monthly report was a user request. So was multi-platform coverage: within hours of receiving her town’s first report, back in 2025, the same assistant town manager quoted above wrote:

Both of those are now standard: reports cover Instagram and X alongside Facebook, and benchmark whole government portfolios — the parks page, the police page, the library page — not just the main account. When we rebuilt one New England town’s report to include its police, fire, library, recreation, and public-works pages, the administrator’s reply captured why it matters: “Thank you! This will better show what we do. It is very decentralized, which is a challenge itself, but works for our staffing profile.” A day later, another request: one more department page. We added it for the next edition.

Even the sharp-eyed replies are a form of enthusiasm. When a communications director caught our early Instagram coverage missing some of the city’s posts, the correction arrived wrapped in the best possible framing: “Can you look into the discrepancy? Otherwise I really love the reports!” The catch was right — we patched it within a day, and every subscriber’s counts got better because one user cared enough to check. Users who treat the data as worth correcting are users who are relying on it.

6. It spreads the way local government actually works: peer to peer

Local-government communications is a profession of borrowers, and it shows in how GovFeeds travels. Nobody guards it. In fact, the very first referral in our inbox predates the product’s name: an economic-development official we’d interviewed walked us across the (virtual) hall to the county’s communications director — who became a subscriber. It’s been like that ever since:

One town administrator’s first act as a subscriber — the very week of signing up, before the first report had even arrived — was to email an introduction to a fellow administrator in another town, describing GovFeeds as a tool that “provides sample successes” other communities can learn from. That introduction looped in a third city’s communications office along the way. And from a communications manager in the Pacific Northwest, asked if he knew peers who’d want a free benchmark report:

It moves inside organizations the same way. The very first reply to our redesigned-app announcement, from the assistant town manager: “This is great. I’m going to share with our new Communications Director.” A city administrator meets us, then hands the tool to the PIO — who becomes its biggest user. A communications director signs up, then sends four teammates’ addresses the same morning so the whole comms team has access: “I have them all copied above. This is our communications team.” A city manager loops in the town’s outside communications consultant. The subscription is flat-priced for exactly this reason — the more of the team that’s in the data, the more useful it gets.

What these emails built

• The monthly report itself — requested by our first subscriber, now the feature others say they’re “living for.”
• Instagram & X coverage — asked for within hours of the first report, now standard.
• Whole-portfolio benchmarking — parks, police, fire, and library pages counted alongside the main account, because that’s how governments actually post.
• Print-ready report formatting — requested the night before a county-manager meeting; the printout was “perfect.”
• Report timing — editions land in the first few days of the month, because teams fold them into their own reporting cycles.
• Peer examples in every answer — when someone asks “who’s doing well?”, the answer always includes what those governments actually posted, because that’s the part people use.

If you’re a subscriber reading this: keep replying to the report emails. Every one of them gets read, and half of what’s good about GovFeeds started as one of your replies.