Social media marketing interns
I have a personal set of criteria which I use to select social media interns. My colleagues know me that I only ever have one intern at a time. I put my whole energy into making that intern capable at social media marketing. I map out a range of skills that must be acquired within the internship period. There is ample time to practice within a range of experiences:
- Social listening education
- Weekly test questions based on real life social media marketing situations
- Video assignments
- Assisting with presentations
- Creating blogs and podcasts
I often remain in contact with my past interns to help when they need some help. I am still in contact with interns that worked with me 8-10 years ago.
My latest intern is Hang Vu. Here is a video we made that illustrates how I like to work with my intern:
Interviewing Social Media Interns
What do I look for in a candidate to be my intern? Energy, an eagerness to learn, and a good range of social media experiences in past roles or in their personal use of social media applications. Here is some of the criteria I use:
- Currently studying towards HBO Bachelor / Bachelor of Science / Master of science WO in Marketing, Digital Media or related studies
- A good level of spoken and written English (to communicate internationally and make presentations).
- A practical level of experience using social media accounts and apps.
- Digital marketing knowledge.
- Experience using social media publishing tools (minimum to a basic level).
- Ability to apply brand/company guidelines and/or social media guidelines.
- Feeling comfortable being filmed and doing filming for social media marketing content
- Possess team player behaviors and an investigative mind.
- A high level of self-confidence.
- Some past experience with campaign management, (marketing) communications would be preferable.
- Project management and reporting experience also preferable.
Let me now list some of the fun things I have done with my interns over the years.
Blogs
Some of my past interns have created blogs as a part of CliveRoachBlogs.com. It is a pleasure seeing these blog posts going live and promoting them.
Sofia Marakis created a blog about Pinterest, and also created a short video.
Laura created a blog about the secrets of the Snapchat map. It ranked at the top in Google for the topic “Snapchat map secrets” for many years.
“3 Reasons to use Video on Social Media for your Brand” is another blog example by by another of my past interns, Ieva Vaitiekūnaitė.
Podcasts
I love doing podcasts. I have often had the intern featured and me supporting or interviewing them. It does not have to be about me! I was invited to feature in a podcast by Creative Clicks but opted to have my intern featured along with me because she had some experience and was very competent on the topic so we shared the billing.
“Grasp the Opportunity for Video Marketing” is the podcast by Creative Clicks.
My interns also worked with me on internal podcasts at work. Here is a typical video summary featuring Chinmay Rautmare my intern at the time and Ieva.
YouTube videos
I have created a few of these with my interns taking the lead on the scripts and what should happen in the video etc. I concentrate on the production. This video by Ieva has over 14,000 views.
This next video is about social media command centres featuring Vivi. It is called “3 Simple Steps To Get Started With Command Centres”. It has over 6,500 views and is often used as the starting point to understand the basics of starting social media command centres.
Social Jedi Series
The social jedi series uses animation to introduce social media marketing trends and updates by the major applications. It is one of the three personal brands I run for myself in my spare time. It now features the voices of many of my past interns like Sofia, Ieva, and Lorenco.
Live social media video recordings
I did many live social media education sessions with Laura Embrechts. We videoed the sessions while we broadcasted live on Twitter and Facebook. Here is the blog post she created to support it.
In summary – Social media interns
I love watching my interns develop in their careers. Being influential in seeing them start their first full time job is wonderful. I have obtained a lot of pleasure from social media marketing over the years that it makes me feel very happy giving some of that back seeing someone young starting on their journey. My whole effort is behind them. Therefore I can only have one intern at a time.
In this final example I was proud to invite my intern Ieva to join me on stage after presenting at an event. She worked hard on some of the content so why not? Why not indeed?
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