I agree that it would definitely be harder or at least a bigger step for someone outside of comms to get started on this road. I hope in my organisation being a contact point for them would allow confidence in going forward as well as offering advice.

I think your points about sustainability are interesting. It sounds like I’m doing something similar to you although perhaps in a different way. We have a couple of corporate things run by me but everything else we’ve got going is run by people in the service areas. They have my guidance and support (and that of the rest of my team – not just me!) but do the updates etc themselves.

I agree that this is really important if social media is to be used more widely throughout organisation. I like the idea of surgeries

There is something around sustainability here as well. To get social media to be a mainstream Comms, engagement and service delivery channel then we need to be working to train and support staff around the organisation to use it well. This is the approach we are taking and we’ll have to see how that goes. It may take us a while to get there but we’re hoping that eventually we’ll have a sustainable model. Another Council Web Manager I know runs social media surgeries for internal staff which I thought was a great way to spread the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm.