I’ve been asked many times by clients “Why can’t we just hand our social media plan to the intern?” They say interns know all about that “Facebook stuff.” I agree, they might have grown up using social media, and it is second nature to them. That doesn’t mean they are the experts. Someone still needs to make sure that they are communicating your brand online effectively.

Jowyang had a great quote on Twitter “Interns, while creative, heavy in social, and not ’soiled’ from corporate culture are great at tactics –but may not know business side” I definitely agree with Jowyang. They can be great at the tactics but keep in mind you are essentially handing the keys of your business over to the intern. There is an obvious dark side to this whole thing.

Via ApramSi

First of all the intern isn’t going to be there forever. Nowadays Gen Y is skipping from company to company as quickly as they going from one BF/GF (short for boyfriend or Girlfriend, the whole text message language is another topic). So when they leave after a short tenure in your company how do you keep your social media efforts going? Especially if they have attached your brand to their personal brand. Tricky.

Now even worse than that, what if you part on bad terms? They have all of the logins to your accounts. They set all of them up under their information, or at the very least have some of their personal information intertwined with the companies. Do you know how to get access back from them, and hopefully cut the cord? Depending on the social network this can be incredibly difficult. The absolute worst outcome is they can tarnish your online reputation by posting a few choice words in the social networks. Sure you can threaten legal action but the damage is already done. I’ve seen this happen first hand, and wow is it ugly!

You can avoid all of this by approaching your social media strategy carefully and making sure you have the proper checks and balances in place.

1. Make sure that someone is overseeing the entire strategy, and that they know your complete marketing strategy. Your communication efforts need to feel cohesive both online and offline. This is a great place to engage your agency. Have the agency oversee the strategy. Then they can direct your team on what to communicate, and where to communicate online. This keeps things feeling cohesive, and stretches your budget.

2. Monitor the space. I can’t say this enough. Make sure you know what your team is posting, and what people are saying about you. This will also help in measuring how effective you are in the social media space.

3. Have a company social media policy that explains what employees can and cannot do in this space as representatives of your company.

4. If you do let an intern post on behalf of the company, do frequent checks on their content. I do think that an intern can be effective communicating on behalf of the company but they have to be mentored. That is why they are at your company right?

5. Make sure that the social media accounts are setup by the person overseeing the strategy or someone else in management. You want to make sure that you don’t lose access to those accounts. There is no better way to kill your social media efforts than to lose access, or have your employees say something nasty on the company account.

6. Know how much time is being spent doing their job. Most likely this isn’t their only job function, and you need to make sure that they aren’t using it as an excuse to chat with their friends on Facebook.

Overall make sure that you are approaching the project in the right way. I know that everyone is budget conscience these days but just because interns are cheap doesn’t mean they are the best solution. The old saying “you get what you pay for” will come back to bite you. They can definitely help keep the cost down, but make sure that you have someone that has experience with communicating brands effectively.