I was at a the PSFBuzz conference on Effective Social Networking and Web2.0 strategies yesterday and met lots of public sector organisations at different stages in their evolutionary journey with social media.

At one end of the spectrum was a large Scottish council that had been actively using social media tools to engage with it’s residents for a couple of years but was now being overtaken by neighbouring authorities. 

Great news, said my new friends, it can be lonely being the first to do something new – we’ve now got others to follow and learn from.

Then there was the London borough that had tried lots of different social media tools like Bebo and Twitter but was still grappling with internal issues.

That officer is now looking to put a Social Media policy in place to coral good practice and give guidance and encouragement to colleagues.

And then I chatted away to a Communications officer from a large North East housing association who was hoping to gain insights into best practice and hear from the excellent speakers from Medway, Devon, Lichfield and Newcastle councils who all shared their social media stories and achievements.

One of those speakers was Carl Haggerty (@carlhaggerty), Enterprise Architect from Devon County Council, who talked passionately about the cultural change that using social media tools will bring to an organisation.

Carl spoke about the transparency that the tools bring (scary enough) and how critical it is that organisations do actually act on the feedback they get once they’ve started actively engaging with citizens. And how, in order to build and maintain the trust, councils need to be able to show what they’ve done as a result of all the engagement.

This advice was backed up by the excellent chair person, Dave Briggs (@davebriggs) who summed it up:

“Councils should get into social media in four steps – they need to listen, acknowledge, create and then share. Those that do it well will create a community with their followers; getting people to care about you is the absolute key.

And if social media tools can help you to get people to care about their community, that can’t be a bad thing.”

And, because it was that kind of event, thanks are due to the man at the back of the room who shared this valuable resource on 50 barriers to Open Government.

Read, weep and then act.