Social Media,  Though marketing directors and CEO give talks about how important social media is to their business, when you often look at their operations, you often find a 19-year old, summer intern in charge of it.

If you owned a restaurant that prided itself on service, would turn managing the restaurant and pleasing thousands of customers over to the newest, youngest employee?  Yet when it comes to social media, I’m always astounded at how small to mid-sized firms hand their business’s public engagement via social media to an intern as a busy work job. I’ve worked with global clients who have done the same.

I’m not knocking on interns.  Having a previous client that promotes the power of interns, I do understand that interns can do a lot of things to employers. And yes, it’s very likely interns have a better understanding of social media tools than their temporary and  30-something-plus employers.  But it still takes personality, people skills and knowledge to engage audiences. And for business that requires more than updating your status report about their bar you are in.

But because of that lack of understanding of employers, firms relegate social media management and strategy to the lowest, cheapest person. Usually, an intern, because, like previous internship responsibilities like getting coffee, they don’t see how it’s linked to sales, brand or growth of the company.  It’s just busy work. Without the link to sales, the model and purpose of social media management for companies seems to be more like a phone tree: a channel and tool to deliver an electronic smile and keep customers from  to talking (or bothering) a real employee.

This video  by Socialnomic author Erik Qualman really hits home of bringing this issue up, from an intern’s point of view.