I’m really excited.

Starting Monday, July 26^th I’ll be a regional editor at Patch.com responsible for all reporting of news, events, service-type pieces, profiles, directory listings and much more for the Port Jefferson, NY version of Patch.com. I’ll hire some freelancers to do writing for the website but for the most part – as I understand it – it’s my baby. I have a Managing Editor who will oversee my work on the website and crack the whip as often is necessary to bring me in line.

The Up Side.

The first positive is that I will hold a position that I have long wanted: Editor of a news or magazine website. I always felt the desire to write and report but much more than that to prove that I can successfully run a website’s content from soup to nuts and bring in enough of a readership to support the venture. I’m not sure of the traffic goals yet but I’m sure I will find out soon enough. In the meantime I have personal goals and measures in mind, which is a percentage of the population of the town I will be covering. All of that aside I want to publish the most relevant, interesting and well-written content I can produce.

The second positive is that I will be very, very, very close to home. (Did I mention Port Jefferson is really, really, really close to my house?) No more commuting four hours per day! That’s right. For the past two years I have been enduring the drudgery of a two-hour commute each way to and from work. It’s mind numbing to try to understand what it’s like. The delays, the hot trains, the early, early mornings, getting home way passed dinnertime and the sheer physical toll it takes on a person.

Not to say that I won’t be getting up early or missing the occasional dinner ever again. I expect that I will. I just don’t expect to be sitting on a delayed train on a Friday night after trying to leave work early and end up getting home way passed the time I should have been home on an average night. Not to mention the cost. It’s about five grand per year. It’s a grueling way to eek out an existence and I will be very happy to leave that behind.

The Down Side.

Now for the downside. I’m sad to leave The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter as a full time employee. When I first arrived at the organization I had no idea how much the people who work there and the patients we care for would become so much a part of my life. The ALS Association is a terrific non-profit. They put people first. They truly care about quality of life of ALS patients.

Props To The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter.

The patient services department provides medical services at our three local certified ALS clinics, monthly support groups, education, bereavement, grants, equipment lending and more all for free. The department is staffed by dedicated individuals and high-quality professionals.

The Walk to Defeat ALS department is also staffed by a crew of very caring individuals who do their best to ensure that every single one of our six (working on seven) area walks go off without a hitch. The planning and execution of these events is so tremendously complicated yet when the day comes people arrive ready to rally, have fun and support our cause never knowing how much work the staff has done all with happy, smiling faces.

The chapter also has a back-office staff that keeps things humming along so that everyone else can do their jobs so well. The administrative staff at the Greater New York Chapter is committed to even the most mundane details of the job.

Development and Advocacy people have to do some amazing things to get the grants and donations the chapter needs to keep going as well as traveling to the legislatures at the state and national level to advance the needs of ALS patients in government. Some terrific victories, including full service-connected assumption for any ALS patient who was in the U.S. military and a national ALS registry to track patients over time that will be rolled out over the course of the coming year. Both of these have been hard fought and won by our representatives at the national ALS Association and through our local chapter.

You can see why I’d be hard pressed to leave this organization. Being able to contribute in some small way to the work at The ALS Association Greater New York chapter has been personally and professionally gratifying. It’s nice to go to work everyday and do a good job. It’s better to go to work everyday and know that you have made a difference in the lives of people who really need it. I’m lucky in that I believe that this is the first job I’ve ever had at which I gotten more from working there than I could ever have contributed to the bottom line. It’s been good for the mind and for the soul.

Bringing Patch To PJ.

I really don’t know what will happen in my time at Patch.com. That’s the way it is when you start a new job. You have all these hopes and expectations yet reality is never very much as what we imagine. It’ll be hard work to be sure but I have a good feeling about it. It have a million ideas in mind and I’m formulating a plan of action. It’s going to be good to contribute to the community and hopefully do some good. I believe in the business model that AOL has invested in with Patch.com and I think it will be a great success. I hope to contribute in my little way to that success. It’s very exciting.

Port Jefferson is a town that has been a big part of my experience growing up on Long Island. My mother used to take my sister and me to Port Jefferson on sunny days for ice cream and to look at the boats in the harbor. As I grew up I learned to love the life of a town by the sea with so much to offer from a long and varied history to great places to eat and of course “down port” at night was just an awesome place to party and hang out when I came of age. I now live one town away from Port Jefferson and frequently go down port for events, dinner, bars, hanging out, shopping, etc. I do some fishing and boating right out of Port Jefferson Harbor (Buoy 11) and go into town more than ever before. My school district doesn’t have its own library (too small I guess) so given the choice of surrounding libraries, I decided to join Port Jefferson Library. When I was a total freelance writer a couple of years ago I spent a lot of time in that library and other places around town (yes, the Starbucks on Main Street!) doing my writing. I have always loved this area and I’ll be proud to manage the Patch.com presence there.

And the commute will be a cakewalk.

Went out again tonight and came back at about 1AM. Seems like Optonline email is finally working. On the website is a message that reads:

“We have resolved the problems that some customers were encountering with E-Mail and Log-In access, and both are now restored. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely, the Optimum.net Team”

There’s a link to a PDF that has the following statement:

“The email disruption has been resolved. The issue was caused by a digital mail storage device malfunction. We believe that this was an extremely rare, one-time problem after more than a decade of uninterrupted email service and that no customer email was lost. We apologize to our customers and thank them for their patience.”

Under that is some bullet points. The most interesting one? A line that claims that only a “minority of customers” were affected. Since I have no way to verify how many customers were affected I can’t say but it looked to me that at the very least all of Long Island was affected. Plenty of people on Twitter, Facebook and in the comments of my blog complained. The phone lines to Cablevision were tied up with calls. Is that a minority of their customers? Were you affected? My anecdotal evidence would suggest many thousands of people were affected. Id be interested in final numbers.

I’m also interested in why Newsday and News 12 did so little in covering the story. The reasons are obvious but troubling. There’s a lot wrong here and it doesn’t sit well with Optonline customers or people who rely on Newsday and News 12 for breaking local news.

That is one thing I worry about, the lack of choice and competition in cable access to broadband. Even if I dropped Cablevision’s VOIP service and went to say, Skype I’m still using that over Cablevision’s Optonline broadband service to support it. It was bad when you had to choose between cable TV or an antennae but not that you HAVE to get your broadband basically through one and maybe, maybe two providers, this lack of basic customer service is appalling. It’s making me think about all the other services I use from this company that I rely on everyday: phone, tv, broadband.

Alternative: Smart phone?

This ridiculous customer service we’re getting from Cablevision over the email outage makes me rethink how much I rely on them for many other products and services. (I am a Triple Play subscriber with DVR.) Seems the only other choice I have is to use a smart phone and pick a halfway decent data plan from a cell company to access internet and have a host of free email services. With the focus on mobile in everything from banking to news the way to side step big cable providers may be using smart phone to access the web. You don’t get the big screen real estate and it’s hell to watch feature length movies on but at least I can use it for basic browsing and activities like searching for information that I need to do on the web, including checking my email.

Email Alternatives?

I still use email heavily. That’s not going away but my strategy for relying on email may need to be rethought. I can use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog and a ton of alternate free web based email services instead of optonline email. I have a bunch of other free web based email services that I use but I do rely heavily on Optonline mail. Know what, after this, I am going to chance that. Maybe gmail is more reliable.

It’s like the old joke: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In this case if Cablevision’s Optimum Online email service goes down and they don’t say a thing about it to customers, is it a non issue?

For almost a full day now I’ve been unable to access my optimum online email account getting a “Service Temporarily Unavailable” error message (among other types of error messages I received throughout the day) every time I tried to log in with my Mozilla Thunderbird email client. Initially I thought that it was my email program so I hopped on over to the optimum online webpage to check email through the web based email. Turned out I couldn’t get in through that route either. Nothing on the website alerted me to there being a problem so I went about the rest of my day thinking it was just a glitch that would be resolved soon enough.

Since I had a concert to go to last night I was pretty much unplugged all evening and I didn’t even try to check email until this morning. I thought I’d be treated to a whole slew of unread email when I logged in this morning but lo and behold, nothing. Same error message. Again I hopped on over to the web to see if I could check email that way and again, no go. Curiously the Optonline website has no messages, no alerts, nothing to signify that there is an ongoing problem with their webmail system. I had to do a Google search and find a couple of small article on websites I’d never even read before to find out that another person in the universe is having the same problem as me.

Perhaps it’s not that big of a deal but you’d think Cablevision (the company that owns Optonline) would have let out some sort of press release or at the least put a message on their website alerting people to a problem and saying they’re working on it. Isn’t that PR 101 for any company these days? It takes nothing just to acknowledge there’s a problem and that you as a company are aware of it. Especially since the front page of the website where I can log into email has a large news window right there on the front page. Lots of stuff going on there but absolutely nothing about the email server in their own company being down.

I see this as a big failure on the part of Cablevision. When I try to call customer service the line is constantly busy, which makes me think that many, many others are also experiencing the same problem and calling up to complain. It doesn’t make sense that the company would go almost a full day without even a peep on their website that there’s a problem.

Update: I found this Yahoo Answers conversation about the Optonline email issue too.

Update 2: This is funny. Optonline has an important announcement section on the front page. Last update as of 10:57AM on July 16, 2010 even after 24 hours of email outage… April. Really?

Update 3: Finally. I found this at about 12:30PM. Cablevision released the following statement which is a link from their important announcement section:

Cablevision is experiencing technical issues that have resulted in email delays and email access issues for some customers. We have located the problem and expect to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers, and we will update this announcement as more information becomes available.

Update 4: At about 12:50PM I got a few emails that came through my email client but they were sporatic and random. Went to the Optonline website and click on the web access to email and got the following alert.

You think the idea of user-generated content as a business model was invented in the Aughts? No way. Media outlets have been drawing on material created by amateurs, consumers and customers for generations and repackaging it for your entertainment.

Folksy as it may sound, our history is driven not strictly by the polished content produced by a class of citizens with a slew of degrees and many years of training – a surprisingly amount has been generated in a largely unfiltered form by the masses.

Read the rest of my blog post on ReadWriteWeb.

A few days ago I went into my favorite local wine store to replenish the old wine cellar. OK. So I don’t have a wine cellar. I have a cabinet in my kitchen next to my refrigerator where we keep the booze but I love going to the wine store because even though I probably have surveyed the labels and bottles a thousand times, there’s still a sense of discovery when once in a while they put out something new or I find a bottle I may have overlooked before. My wine budget is very limited. The idea of spending anything more than ten to fifteen bucks for a bottle makes me cringe.

Anyway, on this particular trip, I was contemplating a brand and type of wine I’d definitely had before but was unsure about. So I did what I usually do in that situation: I ask the owner of the wine store his opinion. The conversation (about a Malbec by a vineyard called Misterio) led me to discover some interesting things about the wine I was buying, confidence in my ultimate purchase and some alternative suggestions that I ended up buying as well. Ultimately, the wine was great, my friends who had come over for a glass were impressed with the wine and I got to look like a hero. All because I trusted my local wine guy, someone whom I consider an expert.

We need experts. Experts are the ones who have spent an inordinate amount of time learning about one particular thing (like wine) so that the rest of us don’t have to. An expert has a body of knowledge that takes an investment of time and resources that many of us simply cannot afford for every touch point in our lives.

Let me give you another example. When your car breaks down, you’ll bring it to an auto repair shop. Your mechanic should be an expert. His knowledge base might be very deep and kept up to date with the latest developments. I’d hate for my mechanic to tell me he can’t fix any cars that were made after 1985 because that’s all he’s bother learning up to.

Another aspect of expertise is that they have to demonstrate trust. You can be the best car repairman in the world but the average person needs to trust you as well as your expertise because chances are that gearhead jargon is Greek to most people. Trust can be garnered in many ways. One is to develop a deep personal relationship. But who has time for that? I just want my car fixed I don’t want a date. Another is by having other people that you already trust tell you that the person you’re hiring is, in fact, an expert in their chosen field. I’d prefer an automotive expert, thank you, not a middle of the road mechanic.

So if it’s true for wine sellers and mechanics then why is being a social media “expert” considered supercilious? All industries have experts. We need experts in the social media industry too. Business people have little care for the echo chamber musings on Twitter of professionals in the marketing and communications industries stumbling all over each other to insist “no, no, no I’m no social media expert” and that ironically a sure sign of someone who doesn’t know what they are doing will call himself an expert.

If the industry is to mature and become respectable part of communications and marketing then it needs certain purveyors who have an expertise. Otherwise, any old person could do it. I’ve seen an illogical aversion to expertise in social media yet many have built careers on providing consultation to businesses on this very subject.

You’ve been doing this for years. You have read all the professional websites, seen the tests, applied tried and true principles of marketing to social media to see if it sticks and have worked out theories, white papers and ongoing discussion groups about the particulars of ROI in social media.

So, what are you, a Beta tester?

If I was the average businesses manager and I was looking for someone to teach my company to utilize social media I would certainly seek out an expert. I think that the evidence is very clear that social media outlets have been used effectively and powerfully by businesses (New York Times, Ford), consumers (Motrin Moms, US Air) and the masses (Iranian protestors, Hudson River plane crash iPhone photographer). With predictions that social media will start to replace email in the near future how can we not see this as a viable, growing industry with a need for experts?

So if you have the skills, have a client base and are intensely involved in the industry of social media then you are an expert, there’s no denying it.

On a side note, people who should be calling themselves experts have taken up a number of other labels and titles all in a concerted effort to avoid calling themselves an expert. It’s no wonder we have so many inventive terms since this industry is populated by so many self-professed geeks.

For one, I hate the guru moniker unless it’s in philosophy or spirituality. Who wants to be the social media guru – as if you had some magical power? Nobody. If you are an expert, people expect certain things from you. If you are a guru they expect other things.

We certainly don’t want that kind of baggage now do we?

And don’t get me started on ninja!

Michael T. Hanley is a CPA with a good grasp of the use of social media and communications. I wrote a blog post recently about his use of email communication and recently we spoke by email about being what he calls an Accountant 2.0. You don’t see many Accountants getting excited about social media, blogging and email campaigns so I thought Mr. Hanley might have some wisdom to impart on how just about anyone in any industry can add Social Media Marketing to their mix of promotional strategies.

@obilon: CPA’s aren’t necessarily known for their literary prowess. What prompted you to start blogging?

Michael T. Hanley: I’ve been an active writer for several years now, having articles published in many journals & publications nationwide. I have also contributed to many articles written by other writers/reporters. So, writing has always been an integral part of my work and my marketing strategies. A couple years back, I decided to create a blog in order to make my published writings (and some of my unpublished thoughts/opinions) more readily available. My client base and target audience consists of small businesses in New York, primarily on Long Island. When I get published in the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, or any CPA Journals, most of my clients and potential clients will not stumble across those articles. So, I’m consolidating everything into my blog.

@obilon: You’ve hit all the social media high points with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blog. Why is this important to you to be involved with social media and Web 2.0?

Hanley: I have actually been branded as the “Accountant 2.0” here on Long Island. This is one of the things that the business community has recognized me for and it is one of the things that has resulted in numerous referrals. The business community is changing…small business owners are becoming more savvy and they want to know more about why things are what they are. I view my role as the “Accountant 2.0″ as that of an educator, a listener, and someone who is tech savvy. Here is a copy of the text that appears on the Accountant 2.0 page of my website:

Accountant 2.0 is an educator. Gone are the days where an accountant’s job is to simply “save you taxes and keep you out of jail” while you turn a blind eye to what he is doing. Today’s business owner is an educated taxpayer…today’s business owner wants to know why they’re getting the refund they’re getting, what they can do to make that refund bigger, what they can do to boost income, and what can they do to cut costs.

Accountant 2.0 is tech savvy. Today’s accountant is accessing your QuickBooks file remotely in order to make changes and print reports. Accountant 2.0 can be reached 24 hours/day via e-mail whether they are at the office, at home, on the road, or out of town.

Accountant 2.0 is a listener. Accountant 2.0 will never brow-beat you and tell you “it is what it is.” Today’s accountant will listen to your story, assess your situation, and give you some options. He will weigh the benefits and downsides of each option and help you pick the one that is right for you.

@obilon: What do you like best about using social media to promote your business?

Hanley: I like the fact that it allows you to reach a different audience. For example, through Linkedin.com, I am the highest rated accountant in America based on client testimonials. Because of my high rating, I appear at the top of searches when people are using Linkedin to find highly rated accountants. Three of my clients have found me through a Linkedin search and these are three clients who I never would have met otherwise. Also, through facebook, I started a “Business Owners” group for alumni of my High School with the goal of finding out who from my High School ended up starting their own business. I have since taken on two former classmates as clients, I have hired a third to work for me, and I have been networking with a handful of others in an attempt to pass business back-and-forth. These were existing relationships that had grown weak over the years as our lives went in different directions since High School and facebook offered a forum to revive these relationships.

@obilon: What do you like least?

Hanley: Sometimes you learn things about people that you wish you could unlearn. Not all of my business contacts use sites like facebook in the most professional manner. So, you learn certain things about people and sometimes it can make it akward to refer business to someone who you know acts unprofessionally on their free time.

@obilon: Are you a social media junkie or just someone who finds it as a good way to market your business? Ex. is it just another tool in the tool box or something more?

Hanley: I look at it like another tool in the toolbox. If the social media was as big as it is now back when I started up my practice, I might have taken a different approach and really tried to take a stronghold of it, maybe using it for some Guerrilla Marketing. But at this stage of my career, I view it as a great way to gather, organize, and promote client testimonials and a way to reach an audience I otherwise wouldn’t reach during my day-to-day operations. I think it is a valuable tool for a new business owner who is very hungry and doesn’t have a large marketing budget. But, I have yet to really encounter anyone who has really taken their involvement in social media to that level.

@obilon: In the blog post I wrote about your business I was impressed by your open flow of communication even in busy times for a CPA when you should be gearing up for tax season. It was short, concise and friendly. Many businesses are understandably afraid to jump into communications with customers unless it’s a marketing or ad pitch because they’re afraid of offending people, or being controversial. How do you view corporate/business communications as it relates to the success and future of your company?

Hanley: Any communication that comes off as “salesy” or “adsy” is not the right type of communication for a business owner to send out. There is a fine line between client communication, friendly reminders, and marketing pitches. I’m sure over the years, I have sent out e-mails that have crossed the line into more of a marketing piece than was intended, but I try very hard to ensure that everything my firm sends out is primarily educational and informational.

Michael T. Hanley, CPA is a managing partner at Merl & Hanley, LLP located at 12 Bank Avenue, Smithtown, NY 11787. (A CPA office located on Bank Avenue! Can you get more ironic than that? – LC) You can buy Mike Hanley’s book, “Effective Tax Planning for the MicroBusiness” in stores now! Find Merl & Hanley, LLP at www.merlandhanley.com or call (631) 360-CPAS.

Visit michaelthanley.com for some Tax Saving Tips, Marketing Tips, and General Business Advice. He’s posting a new article every day, so be sure to check it out often. Mike can also be found on the social web on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

By Lon S. Cohen

I read an article today on Mashable on the truth about the average Twitter user. Seems that only 21% of Twitter accounts are considered active by the criteria in a study from security firm Barracuda Labs. Ben Parr reports in the post that they “looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users.”

Good info. But I had to agree with commenter, Chris Bell, who asked about the habits of that 21%.

I’d also like to see more about those active 21% of users. Isn’t it time for a true psychographic profiling of Twitter users with numbers to back them up? What are the psychographics of the active users? I want to know the details of the active users backed by real data. Who does what, when, how and why? Their habits and how they cross post and link. Who are their influencers and who do they influence? I know reports on the bits and pieces have been done but we now need a true overall picture segmented into possible advertising categories to deliver to agencies like beauty, travel, epicurean, etc. .

I tried to define some of the potential psychographics in my own Mashable post but I had no numbers to support it. I found this one post when I did a search on the subject. I’d like someone to get that data and turn them into a report about how people act on twitter, profile them and provide true numbers to back that up. Up to now it’s all speculation. I can’t believe that with all the collected data there’s no packaging that Twitter has done to offer to advertisers (or potential advertisers). I’d expect that Twitter already actually is compiling or compiled that data. Any media company would give you psychographics of their users/readers/viewers and Twitter should be no exception. It would be key to presenting to potential advertisers.

Companies need a comprehensive psychographic profile of Twitter users to decide if they want to jump into social media, how they should work with Twitter in that field and who to communicate with. Advertisers and Marketers need it if they want to advise clients on how to approach Twitter as an extension of their campaigns and branding.

And if Twitter wants to start really making money they need to integrate some advertising into the mix. Facebook is unabashed about their advertising and the data they use to market to users. I think that there’s enough usage, entrenchment and loyalty on Twitter to warrant a little bit of disruptive advertising. Don’t you?

By Lon S. Cohen

You see it all the time. A new job listing pops up seeking someone to fill a social media position. In the details it says that the company is not looking to hire a true professional but… an intern. Some may offer the carrot of possible full time employment. Nothing in the ad says what the stipulations are to gain said full time employment. What measurements will they use to judge if the plan is worthy? What is their bar for success? Do they even know? If you don’t know anything about social media and you hire a non professional to do the job then what are you using to measure performance?

Seems anyone advertising that a potential hire will be “the front face of our company” (as I saw for one job listing seeking an unpaid intern) would want someone little more experience and work history. As someone said to me on Twitter discussing this very topic: Put the best people forward, or don’t bother.

So to dispel this unconventional wisdom below are some good reasons why a company of any size should not trust an intern to its social media plan.

They don’t know your business or industry.

Even if your intern is a communications major in one of the top tier schools in the country do you think they know your industry? What do they know about your particular business? Your customers? Unpaid help tends not to do the deep research needed to achieve the goals you’re looking for. Can interns answer customer questions on Twitter in real time? Can they develop insightful blog posts about a part of your industry? Can they field questions from reporters contacting them through any of a number of social networks?

An RFP from a consultant will net you some useful data about social media and your industry that you wouldn’t get from ten interns. And if they think there’s a good possibility to land a contract, a marketing firm will do their due diligence in research about your company and the marketplace. Better yet, a good relationship between internal marketing and communication employees and an outside firm with expertise in social media and social networking can be a great way to get the ball rolling on a plan. This way business knowledge is shared and vetted before putting together a plan.

I drive a car but does that make me a mechanic.

The logic that many companies use to justify getting an intern to develop their social media plans is flawed. Managers reason that younger people just “get” social media. Why? Because they use it. In that way of thinking if I use a car – a very complicated piece of machinery with many working parts – then I must know how to build one from scratch. No company manager would say to themselves, “Hey, this kid knows computers, let’s make him head of IT.”

Just because you find a college student that uses Facebook doesn’t mean he knows how to utilize the platform in the best way for your business. Every industry has a specific way they can leverage each individual social network and it’s not the same across the board. Many banks use Twitter for customer service, while retailers have found success in specific discount coding to drive sales from followers back to their websites. A nonprofit might want to foster a community that interacts and shares stories on a Facebook Fan page while a music website might want to use it to share pictures of bands and post music clips. The nuances of the media can be easily lost on someone unless they have spent a lot of time studying what works best for a particular company.

No company loyalty.

Face it, and intern may or may not be a potential employee but do you want to trust your entire customer facing media plan to someone who is in it just for the college credits? In general, an intern will stick around for a season or two but that’s it. Hopefully, you want to develop an audience and a customer based community for longer than a typical internship. So if you want to develop lasting relationships online, you might want to invest in an employee who will be around to continue to grow those relationships and make them as strong as possible. Consultants of any caliber have an intense vested interest in the success of your company and their plan. Employees even more so.

Even experts are prone to misspeaking.

Forget ROI. If your investment is zero then expect to get zero out of it and possibly end up in a negative if that intern does something to damage your reputation. Even experts have been known to tweet out stupid or damaging comments that they thought were offhanded. So why would you expect anything more of an intern. Many young people are responsible and professional at work and as interns. But it seems logical that your idea of a casual business relationship may not be the same as your college interns. Just peruse your teenager’s text, IM and Facebook messages for a little while and you’ll know what I mean. Why take a chance?

Social media can have more impact than a television ad. The viral nature is well documented and when something big happens in social media the mainstream media is quick to pick it up and run with it. So if your company is thinking of hiring an intern to be the new social media representative ask yourself if you’d trust that same person to go on television to represent your business on the news because it’s very possible that’s where an errant video or tweet might end up. And forget about what might happen when someone makes a connection between your social media intern and a picture from last night’s frat party on Facebook.

Lack of connections in the social media industry.

Here’s the crux of the problem. The social media industry is growing fast. There are many fly-by-night companies out there who promise you 500,000 Twitter followers if you use their simple plan. But the truth of the matter is that this industry has a very reliable and professional base of experts working to improve it and create operational standards to follow. An intern is limited by youth. Many experts have spent years developing connections in marketing and communications as well as a number of other industries.

At this point social media as an industry has been around long enough that practitioners have also developed connections within the industry not only between other marketers but also with ratings, analytics and research experts. There’s applications developers, user experience designers, search engine marketing providers and website creators as well as content producers who need to be consulted for a good social media plan to work. There’s a whole gamut of professional services dedicated to improving social media. Does your intern have these connections? The idea that a young person of an age where they’d take on an internship has a better understanding of social media is fictional and dangerous to the integrity of the field.

Diverts resources.

If you are putting your entire social media plan into the hands of an intern then you also have to have someone who will closely manage her activity. That means resources of some manager must be diverted from other duties. It’s not a simple case of giving someone a task to complete then checking if it’s done to spec. Social media marketing and communication is partially a science and partially an art. Do you think a fresh-faced intern is up to that task without constant monitoring