Dear Miscellaneous Misinformed Company,
Your company has a message in front of thousands, if not tens of thousands of prospects and clients a month. People who are in-market for your service, or eyeballs you’ve paid for through your Pay-Per-Click, traditional advertising, or organic search efforts – and they visit your blog and site.
But, that biggest of direct customer and prospect touch points, your blog, your Twitter, your social media presence, is handled by someone who has a month or two of real experience and has the assignment because they have a Facebook page. By doing this, you’ve decided that in a first meeting with your biggest potential client, you’re going to stick your intern in front of them.
Meanwhile, you’re spending thousands of dollars on professionals and professional services to write and distribute press releases that reporters increasingly ignore and customers simply don’t read or care about. Journalist coverage is important – but more and more (upwards of 70%), journalists are turning to blogs for their information about companies, too.
You’re playing russian roulette with your company and brand by hiring an intern for such a customer- and media-facing task. Do you really want people who are just learning how to communicate doing so with your brand name?
Some Pitfalls Of Interns Being Your Company Face
Miscellaneous Misinformed Company Marketing Director, I like you. Enough to warn you.
- Social media is about relationships and nurturing those - there’s a good chance the intern will be gone in a few months.
- Inexperience around what is appropriate to talk about to your audience (I’m sure you remember the mistakes you made at 21. I do. Wowsah).
- Inability to use the tools properly, including having an understanding of Search Engine Optimization to help the site rank better
- Lack of understanding of how to implement audience-appropriate, effective calls to action
- Topics have lack of focus, no story arc or editorial calendar (we’ve found they need to be taught what one is)
- Legal Liability (for instance, loose lips sink ships! You should share, but knowing the line between sharing and company secret is important).
- Many times interns do not have adequate language skills, making the company look childish – especially if they’re not from a discipline that involves a lot of writing
- Shows community how much you value them – and that’s not much, since you’re going to have someone who doesn’t even get paid deal with them
- Lack of passion – although interns may be excited, it’s always better to have people who are truly passionate about the business, technology or topic blog, or even use an outsider’s perspective through a corporate reporter.
What do you think? Should companies trust their message to interns? Do you have additional pitfalls or benefits (other than cost?)
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