Local Governments Get Shared More Than They Get Commented On
If you judge your social media by comments, you’re measuring the wrong thing. Across 667,000+ public local-government posts, 56% earned at least one share but only 34% earned a single comment. Residents treat their city and county like a wire service — something to forward, not debate. That has real implications for what you post and how you measure it.
Share of posts that earn at least one…
Percent of posts receiving ≥1 share vs. ≥1 comment. n = 667,000+ posts. The typical post earns 4 reactions, 1 share, and 0 comments.
Why shares beat comments for local government
It comes down to what people use government accounts for. A resident who sees a boil-water notice, a road closure, a storm update, or a weekend festival doesn’t reply — they share it, so their neighbors, their street, their parent group see it too. The share is the engagement. Comments, by contrast, cluster around a narrower band of content: controversy, complaints, and the occasional viral feel-good post. For most civic content, a quiet comment section isn’t failure — it’s the norm.
What this means for how you post
- Make every post self-contained and shareable. Assume the person who needs it will see it because someone else forwarded it. Put the key fact (what, where, when) in the post itself, not behind a link — a screenshot-able, share-able post travels.
- Write for the forwarder. “Share with a neighbor who needs to know” works because it matches what residents already do. Clear visuals and a single clear takeaway travel further than a wall of text.
- Don’t chase comments. Engineering controversy to spike comments is the wrong goal for a government account. Reach — via shares — is the metric that maps to your actual job: getting accurate information to residents.
What this means for how you measure
If your monthly report leads with comment counts, you’re underselling your work and steering toward the wrong content. Lead with reach and shares, and benchmark them against peer governments — not against brands or against a national “good engagement rate” number that was never built for local government. A post that gets 40 shares and 2 comments is doing exactly what a government account should do.