Comments are harder than likes, which is why they're worth chasing
How three unglamorous changes took a campus sustainability program's comment volume up 292% — and why engagement metrics are an editing tool, not a scoreboard.
A like is a reflex. A comment is a decision.
That distinction is why, when I took over social for a campus sustainability program, I stopped optimizing for the number that goes up easily and started optimizing for the one that doesn’t. Over the following year, engagement rose 16% and comments rose 292%.
Nothing about how we got there was clever.
Make something for every post
Every post got an original graphic. Not a stock photo with a caption over it — something designed for that specific message.
This is more work, and it is worth it for a reason that has nothing to do with aesthetics: in a feed full of recycled imagery, visible effort reads as legitimacy. A student scrolling past can’t evaluate whether your grant program is well run. They can tell whether you cared enough to make something.
Write to one person
The single biggest change to the captions was narrowing the audience in my head from “students” to one specific student: a sophomore with an idea for their department who has no idea the university will fund it.
“Students are encouraged to apply” is addressed to no one. “You have an idea for your building. We have the funding” is addressed to her.
Ask for something small
Polls, prompts, calls for project submissions — anything that gave someone a low-cost way to participate. The threshold for a first comment is much higher than the threshold for a second one, so the whole game is getting people over the first.
What the numbers are actually for
I want to be careful here, because “292%” is the kind of figure that invites the wrong conclusion. It’s a real number from a small base, in a niche account, over a year of consistent work.
Engagement data isn’t a scoreboard. It’s an editing tool. It tells you which subject lines earned the open, which stories held attention, and which asks people actually acted on — and then you use that to write the next thing better. The number going up is a side effect of taking the feedback seriously.
Written by Lindsay Mauss. If this was useful, or you disagree with it, say so.