Quick Answer: Can we have the "intern" manage it?

Our intern seems to have a lot of social media skills. Can we have them handle it for our organization?

No, the Intern shouldn’t manage your social media for you. UNLESS--and here’s the big reveal--you feel the Intern has the skills/capacity to interface well with your marketing team, understand your greater strategy, and both articulate and manage your social media efforts in conjunction with that strategy.

Think about how you would select for any other skill. Writing. Graphic design. There are plenty who can spout beautiful prose or produce stunning art... but you would have an impossible time getting them to connect with and further your communications efforts. How about media relations? Probably a lot more powerful to have someone who has an established track record of working with reporters and editors rather than the CEO's wife who happens to know a reporter because they met at one of her charity events.

Truth is, the technology’s pretty easy to learn. To relegate it to the “intern” because “they’re good with computers” is... well, in my presentations, I respond to protests about how hard it is to learn social media with “You’re telling me that you don’t have time to learn how to use a word processor because you’re too busy typing something on the IBM Selectric.”

So, my initial admonishment is: Get thee some knowledge. There are some nuances to social media that you really have to experience to process/manage. That will take some effort. (But, major. professional. development. cache.)

But to revise my initial answer: If you feel that the intern or assistant—or whomever you’re eyeing because they talk incessantly about their Facebook—has the skills to work as part of your marketing team and 1) understand what you are trying to accomplish with your marketing/public relations efforts 2) articulate to the team what they can accomplish via social media 3) understand/communicate what is working or not working with a particular campaign (and make appropriate adjustments), then, yes.

And ask them where you should start your learning process.

Oh, and a tiny little secret: This assumes that YOU have a solid traditional plan established and in execution in the first place. If you’re still in that state of “just don’t have time to update the media list…” and keep sending press releases to the wrong (and now ignoring you if they’re even still at the publication) reporters… social media isn’t going to solve anything for you.

How’s that for snark?