“You don’t give your Twitter duties to an intern” – Morgan Johnston from Jet Blue at #140TC
Business is lazy. If business doesn’t understand something, it quickly assigns it, outsources it or otherwise gets it off the to-do list. At the Twitter Conference #140TC in Mountain View this wee, Morgan Johnston talked about how important it was to have someone in the company with authority interacting on social media.
He had several stories about directly helping customers because Morgan had full penetration into the organization. To the extent that he held the door open on a plane for two extra minutes so a family running from one delayed flight (on another airline) to that flight could make it. The family had a member who was tweeting his pain while they ran.
Outsourcing your social media activities to an intern or a consultant means you stand a pretty good chance of working with someone who may well know how to use Twitter, but knows nothing about your business. Don’t get me wrong, I know some people who are free lance community managers, have more than one client and do a great job. But these people make it a priority to know their client’s business and ensure that they can quickly get to people capable of acting on a customer request.
If you must outsource your social media interaction, make sure that the person you are hiring cares, that you take the time to train them in whatever they need, and that you give them access to resources.
If you can’t do this, then don’t outsource. Do it in-house – which you probably should be doing anyway.
This is the challenge. If you ask companies "would you hand over discussinos on your brand with the Press to an intern" they freak. But we are also trying to convince companies that the should allow ALL staff to have a voice. dilemma dilemma ;P
Posted by: Laurel Papworth | 01 July 2009 at 18:34