Comments on: Should Social Media Be Handled By an Intern?

By: Clive Roach (@jedi_roach)

Clive Roach (@jedi_roach) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:55:11 +0000

I had an exceptional intern last year, wow, she was great, now works for DELL. However, as a team we would have been great but I would feel a bit off letting her run the whole thing. I can mix 27 years of experience in the business with my Social expertise, so working wither her would be great, but I do feel some business awareness is needed

By: Raj Khera

Raj Khera — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:55:40 +0000

I agree. You wouldn’t give the keys to your sports car to someone who just got their driver’s license, let alone a learner’s permit, unless you were in the car to supervise. By the same token you shouldn’t give the keys to your online reputation to someone in college or an intern without providing clear guidance and then carefully monitoring their activity. What they might see as something worth posting could come back to bite.

I’m a big fan of interns and nurturing young talent. Providing a mentoring opportunity for an intern to learn creates a valuable experience for both the student and the mentor. Here is a recent blog post I wrote to share some ways students can creating-luck.com/2011/12/02/find-a-mentor-using-social-media find mentors using LinkedIn.

By: Samir

Samir — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:42:12 +0000

Some good points for sure. But let’s not ignore some of the advantages of someone that is intimately familiar with these new marketing tools. They already eat, sleep, and breathe the tools, and are usually better versed on them than anyone presently in your company. Having them as a member on a Social media team can be quite valuable.

Social media experts come in all forms, and many of the best ones out there don’t have the traditional business degree with a marketing background. Community building isn’t an exact science, so it can’t really be ‘taught’. The best thing I can equate it to is hosting a good party with a business spin on it.

By: Nigel

Nigel — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:14:54 +0000

I respectively agree & disagree with some points in your post Nick.

I believe that an Intern can “Handle your Social Media” if you structure the roles right from the start of the Internship.

If the subject matter experts do the content creation, and the Intern builds and manages the channel it can be effective, save hours of time, and save money for your organization.

I was an Intern at a technology company last summer. As an intern I helped launch their YouTube Channel, Twitter, Facebook Business Page, LinkedIn business page and Flickr. These Social Media assets now have top 10 rankings for their target keywords

The YouTube videos also rank for some competitive, non brand keywords that are proven to pull leads based on the Google Analytics Goals I setup from scratch to track PPC & Social Media performance.

I also helped the Sales team with their LinkedIn Profiles, and held company training to teach them how to use LinkedIn Groups to drive traffic to the website.

That said, I did not handle the content creation. As an Intern I needed help creating the CONTENT of the Social Media assets because I don’t have the years of industry knowledge and intimate knowledge of the businesses’ brand.

I strongly agree that the Intern should never be the “Voice” of your brand. Your customers don’t want to hear from the Intern, they want to hear from the “Experts” of the business.

Unfortunately the experts don’t always realize the value of SM, don’t know how to use the tools, and frankly don’t have time to manage these channels.

In my opinion, the most effective strategy is to get the Experts to create the content and the Intern to actually handle the day to day monkey work of the Social Media channel. This includes creating the channel, posting the “experts” content, optimizing the content, and sharing the Social Media pages and posts through Social bookmarking.

Cheers,
Nigel

By: Austin marketing

Austin marketing — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:46:41 +0000

I believe that since interns do not have any long term commitment to the company, they do not feel responsible to any act whose repercussions are in the future and this affects their current actions. Thus they should not be left to handle such vital matters which are material to the company’s corporate image.

By: koch

koch — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:39:01 +0000

Leaving an intern alone to do all the work is like gambling with you company’s reputation. Not saying that there is no creative fast-thinking young people out there but social media requires a min. of business / industry knowledge associated with some marketing skills. The best way of using an intern properly would be giving him/her some guidelines, and before anything gets published on the web must get approved by someone responsible for the PR of the company: Pres, CEO, VP, manager, etc.. If the intern is not serious, you’ll know pretty soon, and better move on to someone who are willing to learn this with your company. That’s right! Interns might not put your company as priority due to low or no pay. However if they accepted the job is because they were willing to learn something new and exciting! And perhaps take this amazing social media experience to the next level. Not only that, but also the person responsible for the intern will learn what’s more appropriate for their own business through the experience they’ll have with either either, their own or an external marketing company. Peace out!

By: emory @ clickfire

emory @ clickfire — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:40:31 +0000

Nick, I don’t think I’d want to put an intern “in charge” of anything that might involve brand presentation. Nor would I want a VP tweet all day.There is plenty of hands of work that an intern can do with a little training and at low costs to help a SM campaign–research, lists, posts, etc.