Many people think it is a great idea to hire the local high school or college student to be the social media intern for their company when the marketing budget gets small. It sounds like it is the answer to all of your problems, but here is why you need to be careful before hiring just any millennial.
Creation vs. Consumption
Just because someone spends 6+ hours a day on Instagram doesn’t mean they are an expert. There is a huge difference between consuming content and creating it! When creating content it helps to know the ‘why’ behind the content and understand why someone would engage with your content. Not all millennials are trained in producing quality content, but some can be! Look for someone who is studying in the communications or marketing field or maybe has experience at a marketing firm.
Relevancy
The best person to have working on your content creation should be someone with professional training in the subject AND is very well versed in the respective industry. If you can’t have both, opt for the former. Knowing the industry very well can be extremely useful, but having a trained professional on your team who can create engaging and quality content is a smarter investment.
Data Based Strategy
As a general rule of thumb, organic content is typically only reaching a maximum of 4% of your audience. That means that an engagement rate of 1% is actually good, but most companies don’t even have that. Knowing what metrics are important, how to track them, and what the data tells you is extremely important in the process of creating better content. There should be a strategic A/B testing plan in place to continue to experiment on what types of posts get the most engagement, leads, and sales.
Don’t get me wrong, millennials can be very good at social media, in fact, I am one, but I have worked in the industry for over 2 and a half years and have studied this field as well. Not all people who were born and raised in the social media environment have the tools or skills needed. It is important to ensure they are experienced, have a strategic plan and can tell you what the data means.
