A peer in my industry published an online video where they talked about hiring interns for social media marketing. This is a common topic as I actually hear a lot of marketers talk about social media as a young verses old topic. After all, young people grow up with Facebook and Twitter. Still, just because an employee meets the demographic of social media users does not mean they are the right employee for your company’s social media marketing strategy and implementation.
Social Media is often a confusing and scary topic to many marketers. When it comes to traditional online marketing, I often advise marketers to “get it right on a napkin before you worry about putting it on the Internet”. The same is true for social media.
Participating in social media is like being at a cocktail party. There is a subtle way to interact and crowds develop around those perceived as important. One wrong word and you can find people excusing themselves from the circle.
Back to the intern question . . . would you send an intern to represent you at a cocktail party? If I were to select an intern to represent me at a cocktail party, they would have to be a very well rounded individual with a lot of industry experience. Thus, my response to the notion that an intern or younger generation employee should be tasked with a corporate social media presence is not favorable. Senior marketers should own the strategies and engage outside consultants to get it right and then consider bringing in a more junior resourse to execute the strategy.
The BuzzBin disagrees with my thinking by stating that “The skills that today’s young people are learning through networking on Facebook and MySpace and writing personal blogs on LiveJournal or Xanga will be instrumental in building a place in tomorrow’s workforce.” Writing skills are not developed because of platforms. What I am impressed with are young people who have worked for their school newspaper and used Facebook and Twitter to increase the traffic to their journalist quality articles exponentially via new media platforms.
Take control of your social media strategy and make sure your campaigns and initiatives get off to the right start by asking the following questions:
- Is your campaign brand focused or promotional? If it is promotional, social media might not be the most effective avenue. Evaluate Pay Per Click advertising and affiliate marketing alongside social media.
- What are your Return On Investment Requirements? Can you measure ROI from your efforts?
- How does a social media campaign integrate with mainstream marketing initiatives?
- Where does a social media campaign fit in your marketing calendar?
- Does your social media message work as an elevator speech or on a billboard?
I once had the responsibility for building a help desk to serve a small university community of computer users. This community had every version of Windows and other odd systems imaginable.
I hired college kids at $10.00 per hour because if they didn’t know how to fix something, they knew someone who did. I suspect that the social media marketing would work the same way. They are highly social and highly experienced using this technology!
I fully agree with their aptitudes for “getting it” and their work ethic. I’m all about interns on the implementation front. We’ve had 3 successful internships since starting our firm. My push back on interns is when key business stake holders want to AVOID social media because they don’t understand it and simply push it off to an intern.
Thanks for the parallel into IT as it is very applicable.