It’s easy to rationalize hiring an intern to run your business’s social media.
For starters, it’s cost effective. Your new social media guru can be paid in college credit or offered a starting wage salary. It also makes for a convenient hiring process. Since most college students are already using social media, it can appear easy to find someone to fill a social media manager position.
But, when you take into consideration the full effect social media has on your business’s marketing, it may be worth investing in a marketing professional to manage your brand’s voice and presence. Here’s why:
Experience, Experience, Experience
There’s nothing that hands-on experience can’t beat. While an intern or recent college graduate may have taken a few social media courses in school, that learning can rarely offer what experience brings to the table. An experienced social media marketer will know how to run a successful campaign, determine who your target audience is, efficiently create content, and properly interact with your audience – including those negative comments – with ease. It is always a smart decision to have experience you can trust with proven results managing your social media marketing.
Knowledge Retention
One of the most exciting aspects of social media is that it is constantly changing. This means campaigns may need to be restructured to better suit a channel’s algorithm and it may be necessary to quickly develop new strategies. As many marketing professionals know, consistent creativity and innovation are the keys to success on social media. This is why knowledge retention is important. While most internship positions come with a start and end date determined by class or seasonal schedules, an established position at a business does not. Give your business’s social media presence the opportunity to flourish online by entrusting it to someone dedicated to the role of watching it succeed and sparing it the experience of constantly changing hands.
Social Media Is More Than Posting
Social media does revolve around the sharing of information, posting updates, and finding creative ways to market your product, but it is also much, much more. Your social media presence is the online face of your business. It affects company branding, brand voice, and customer relations. On top of this, it also can offer valuable insights such as in-depth social media metrics and analytics that can aid in boosting sales, connecting with your audience, and driving successful results. It’s more than maintaining a look or posting witty captions, so it’s important to give that responsibility to someone who can best utilize it.
While we strongly believe a marketing professional should take charge of a company’s social media presence, we also believe interns can be a great asset to a social media team. Interns can bring a lot of fresh ideas to your workplace, making them valuable in their own unique way to a business’s productivity and success. In fact, we happily employ a few ourselves at KWSM!
If you would like to learn more tips on social media for business, you can check out some more of our blogs here.
