Swedish authorities have been dealt a mission by the Swedish state, where each agency works on the basis of their assignment. Communication has become more and more important for authorities, there are several reasons for the use of communication and they may differ from authority to authority. Some authorities claim that the purpose of the communication work is to create awareness and recognition among citizens. A communication form that has become increasingly important for government agencies is social media, according to the government authorities should implement social media in their communication work because it is very important that the authorities are available where the citizens are. Previous research has focused on the risks and opportunities that the social media generates for the public sector. The authors of this study considered that there was no research that focused on what the impact of social media actually generates public authorities. For that reason the authors decided that the purpose of this paper should aim to find out what goals authorities want to achieve through social media, what strategies authorities use to achieve their goals, and how the authority measure the effects of using social media. In order to answer these three questions the authors chose to do a qualitative study in which seven Swedish authorities were selected. In order to answer the questions of this study the authors contacted the seven authorities to conduct a qualitative interview with the persons that are responsible for social media in each public authority. The results of this study showed that the authorities are capable of setting goals and strategic plans for how they want to achieve their targets, however all the authorities showed big gaps in knowledge when it came to measuring the impact that social media actually generates. The authors found that some authorities had come to the conclusion that they need to develop their measurement tools further, while others argued that developed measurement tools may be relevant in the future.