You just inherited the city’s social media. Now what?
Almost nobody arrives in this job trained for it. It lands on the clerk, the recreation coordinator, the new hire who “is good at Instagram.” There is rarely a handover document, and the last person’s benchmark was a feeling. So before you change anything, it helps to know what normal actually looks like — measured across 1,301,388 public posts from 4,600 U.S. city and county governments over the last twelve months. Here is what the data says your first ninety days should look for, and the one number that stops most new communicators worrying.
- Most posts get nothing, and that is normal. Between 33% and 45% of local-government posts earn zero likes, comments or shares. A typical post in a town under 10,000 earns 1 to 2 reactions total.
- Find your size before you judge yourself. A community of 3,000 and a city of 120,000 are not playing the same game. The table below is the benchmark.
- Showing up beats showing off. Governments posting in 40+ weeks of the year run median engagement of 4.5; those posting in fewer than 26 weeks run 2.0.
- Post a photo. Photos are 83% of the calendar and out-perform both text and video on a typical post. Video is a lottery, not a strategy.
- The biggest fixable mistake: meeting notices and board agendas take 14.1% of the average calendar and are the worst-performing topic we measure.
In this guide: Week 1: what normal looks like · The number nobody tells you · Weeks 2–4: show up · Weeks 5–8: fix the mix · Photos, text and video · Weeks 9–12: report it · Where these numbers come from
Week 1 — find out what normal looks like for your size
The first mistake is comparing your account to a city ten times your size, or to a brand. Local-government engagement scales with population, and the gap between bands is large. Before you set a single goal, find your row.
| Your population | Governments | Posts per week | Typical post earns | A good post earns | Posts with zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2,500 | 616 | 1.5 | 1 | 28 | 44.7% |
| 2,500 – 10,000 | 1,253 | 2.7 | 2 | 42 | 38.1% |
| 10,000 – 25,000 | 1,110 | 4.1 | 3 | 54 | 36.3% |
| 25,000 – 50,000 | 699 | 5.2 | 4 | 70 | 35.2% |
| 50,000 – 100,000 | 432 | 5.8 | 5 | 78 | 34.5% |
| Over 100,000 | 490 | 6.2 | 5 | 89 | 32.6% |
Read your row and write those three numbers down. They are your baseline. If you run a village of 1,800 and a post earns 6 reactions, you are above your median, not failing. Ninety days from now you want to have moved the middle number, not chased the outlier.
The number nobody tells you
Here is the finding that changes how most new communicators feel about the job: a third to nearly half of all local-government posts earn no engagement whatsoever. Not low engagement — zero. No like, no comment, no share.
This matters because the instinct after a quiet post is to conclude something is broken — the algorithm, the content, you. Usually nothing is broken. A meeting notice that nobody reacts to has still done its job if the people who needed it saw it. Judge the month, not the post.
Weeks 2–4 — just show up
The clearest pattern in the data is unglamorous: the accounts that post regularly do better than the accounts that post in bursts.
| Weeks active in the year | Governments | Median engagement per post |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – 13 weeks | 299 | 2.0 |
| 14 – 26 weeks | 334 | 2.0 |
| 27 – 39 weeks | 1,003 | 3.0 |
| 40 – 52 weeks | 2,937 | 4.5 |
A realistic target for month one is simply a post every week you are at work, at the cadence for your size in the table above. That is one or two posts a week for most small communities. It is a lower bar than new communicators usually set themselves, and it is the one that correlates with everything else.
Weeks 5–8 — fix the mix before you add volume
Once you are posting consistently, the biggest lever is what rather than how much. Ranking topics by how a typical post performs, against how much of the calendar each one takes, shows a clear mismatch.
| Topic | Typical post earns | Share of calendar |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure & planning | 6 | 8.7% |
| Events & community activities | 5 | 17.3% |
| Public safety & police | 5 | 15.2% |
| Business & economic development | 4 | 3.9% |
| Recreation, parks & tourism | 4 | 5.7% |
| Government information & boards | 2 | 14.1% |
Meeting notices, agendas and board announcements are the single weakest category we measure — and they take roughly one post in seven. You cannot stop posting them, and you should not. They are statutory, and reach matters more than reaction for a legal notice. But if they are a seventh of your calendar and infrastructure is a twelfth, the correction is obvious: the road closure, the water main, the sidewalk project — the work residents can see out of the window — is the most reliably engaging thing a local government posts, and it is chronically under-posted.
Photos, text and video — what actually works
| Format | Share of calendar | Typical post | Average post |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo | 82.7% | 4 | 122 |
| Text only | 10.0% | 2 | 27 |
| Video | 7.3% | 2 | 63 |
Read those last two columns together. A typical video does no better than a plain text post — both earn 2 — but the average video earns more than twice as much as the average text post. That is the signature of a lottery: most videos land flat, a few travel a very long way, and the average is dragged up by the winners.
For someone new to the job with limited time, that matters. Video is expensive to produce and unreliable in return. A clear photo of the thing you are talking about is the highest-return unit of work in local-government communications, and four posts in five already are one. If you are wondering whether to spend Tuesday afternoon editing a video or taking twenty photographs of the new playground, take the photographs.
Weeks 9–12 — put one page in front of your manager
The last piece of a first ninety days is not a post at all. Somebody will eventually ask how it is going, and the honest answer — “we averaged four reactions a post” — sounds like failure to anyone who has not read the table above. Bring the comparison with you.
One page is enough: your posts per week against the median for your population band, your median engagement against the same, and your three best posts of the quarter with what they were about. That reframes the conversation from “is four good?” to “four is the median for a city our size, and here is where we beat it.” Our separate guide on reporting social media to council covers the framing in more depth.
Where these numbers come from
Related reading: What should we post this month?, Should your city turn off Facebook comments?, and Reporting social media to council.
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