If there is one thing that gets our goat (as this blog has a farmyard feel about it) it’s companies who get a work experience student (or interns as we now call them, which sounds a lot more important) or a temp or a VA to ‘do a bit of twittering’.
Those folks over at www.spinsucks.com feel just the same, and you can read their take on it here http://www.spinsucks.com/spin/should-interns-run-your-social-media-program/
We would like to nick the Chinese proverb that they quoted: “It takes years to take an egg and grow a chicken and an instant to make chicken dung.”
Why would you trust a wholly inexperienced person to write things about your brand? Brands are valuable commodities and companies spend years and usually an awful lot of money nurturing them and making sure that the brand is working for them because, hey, brands are big business. So we continue to be stunned that so many organisations still do not understand the significance of social media – neither the huge amount of positive things that it can do for them if used properly in an integrated campaign nor the terrible and costly damage that can be wreaked in inexperienced hands.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say again, social media must be treated in the same way as traditional media i.e. handled in-house by skilled marketing people and senior executives and/or outsourced to a specialist agency.
Just because a bright young thing has loads of mates on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that they are the best person to be your business’s ‘social face’ – after all, what do they know about corporate messaging and brand management, let alone crisis management when the s**t hits the fan?
Social media is not a standalone exercise – to be used to its greatest effect it must be integrated with the existing traditional sales, marketing and PR activities, not to mention HR and customer services, all things that your even your brightest intern will have little knowledge of, let alone expertise.
We have to confess that not all of us are exactly spring chickens here at TMMC towers, but all of us have more than 20 years experience in not only Comms, Marketing, PR, Media etc, in all their various guises, but also Business and the Corporate world, not to be mention having been at the cutting edge of the 2.0 version ever since it hatched (sorry). Which means we really do know what we’re clucking on about (sorry sorry).
So, if you are serious about taking advantage of the undoubted benefits that social media can offer as an integrated part of your marketing and PR strategy, drop us an email on hello@themediamarketingco.com or give us a ring on 020 36647973.
