Social media is now in widespread use, in New Zealand and throughout the world. In our public sector, many entities use social media as one of their "channels" for communicating with the public. It can be used passively to monitor how an entity is talked about, more actively to broadcast information to the public, or as a means to discuss and debate. Social media can be used to create, share, and exchange information and ideas with the public, and can help public entities to connect with people that can otherwise be hard to reach.
We carried out some work to look at how entities were using social media, and used a form of social media to report on that work. The examples of entities' social media use are described in more detail on our blog (blog.oag.govt.nz).
In this paper, we discuss the lessons that the eight entities learned and draw out themes from their experiences.