Should You Hire an Intern to Do Your Social Media

Most mod­ern com­pa­nies rec­og­nize that Social Media is valu­able – even vital – and it is here to stay. Each week I see more busi­ness­es open­ing Face­book pages and begin­ning blogs. Many small busi­ness own­ers, how­ev­er, have told me recent­ly that they are get­ting burned out. They all say the same thing: ​“I per­son­al­ly don’t want to Tweet and Post. I’ll just hire an intern to do it for me. They are young and into all that stuff!” So, should you hire an intern to do all your social media mar­ket­ing? Or should you out­source your social media to an ​“expert?” Interns Lack The Training There was I time when I thought that hir­ing an intern from a local uni­ver­si­ty was not a bad idea. That was until I did some research and con­duct­ed some inter­views. I have found that many col­leges around the coun­try intro­duce stu­dents to Social Media but don’t teach them how to turn these trends into busi­ness tools. One intern direc­tor – of a busi­ness school no less – even admit­ted to me that his uni­ver­si­ty is way behind the times! Social media mar­ket­ing changes rapid­ly, and the only way our edu­ca­tion sys­tem will keep up and train stu­dents for suc­cess is by hir­ing suc­cess­ful social media mar­ket­ing con­sul­tants, such as Seth Godin, Chris Bro­gan, Mari Smith,David Mer­ri­man Scott, and Gary Vayn­er­chuk. These con­sul­tants (and many more like them) would change the whole busi­ness world if stu­dents could hear their mes­sage and put it to use. Until that hap­pens, we have to look else­where. So where else to do we look? Mom Blog­gers I must say again that I think it far bet­ter to do social media mar­ket­ing in-house rather than out­sourc­ing it. Yes, get advise and assis­tance from con­sul­tants, but then have some­one with­in the com­pa­ny do the social net­work­ing. The CEO or own­er first must embrace the idea. He (or she) must be will­ing to give an employ­ee the free­dom to use social media as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­pa­ny. If there are no employ­ees with the skills or inter­est to use social media tools like Face­book, Twit­ter and blog­ging, then you must look at hir­ing a part-time social media employ­ee. My sug­ges­tion, for those of you who own a small ser­vice busi­ness, is to hire some­one who is active­ly using social media right now. One of the best places to start your search is a suc­cess­ful Mom­my Blog­ger! Mom Blogs are very pop­u­lar these days; you may even have a cus­tomer who has a mom’s blog. If she has a good fol­low­ing base and is suc­cess­ful using Twit­ter and Face­book, hire her! See if she is will­ing to work part-time for you. She should be local and know your com­pa­ny. I’d rec­om­mend her com­ing into your office at least once a week and attend­ing any com­pa­ny meet­ings. The idea is for her to get to know your com­pa­ny, inside and out. She already knows how to use the social media net­works. She can then take over your cur­rent social media sites or start from scratch! Your turn What is your take on this? Do you agree? What are your plans for begin­ning, improv­ing or grow­ing your Social Media in 2011? BTW, I’m sure you can find an intern or stu­dent who could be suc­cess­ful at help­ing your busi­ness. If you have one work­ing right now, don’t fire her. If you like her, get help from a good social media coach.