Interns are an important part of the team, you’ll be more successful with them –but should not be the core business leader — supplement with seasoned business managers.

I remember being a bright eyed intern during college at Silicon Valley’s premiere web startup Exodus Communication. Filled with enthusiasm some of my seasoned management took to me to learn about how to best understand the web –which was clearly my passion.

Fast forward to 2009, with many companies dabbling in social technologies, it’s easy to assume that social is the domain of the young. In fact, I’d doing research on social media skills for an upcoming report, and am hearing of more cases of brands handing over the social media strategy to interns –I think that’s a bad idea.

While they’re certainly heavy adopters (our data proves this) –it’s not limited to the youth only, take for example this report I did on the active Boomers. Using low cost interns are critical in getting an often unfunded skunk-works project is a good way to get the program up to speed in house –but relying on them for strategic corporate communications is a risk.

How to Use Interns In Your Social Programs:

• Lean on Interns to learn about technology: Although I’m no longer an intern, I’m one of the younger analysts at the firm, I like&ly represent a new type of behavior that’s emerging in the industry, I’m the first of many to come. When it comes to interns, companies should understand their behaviors and best practices with tools. Allow them to become the tool experts: setting up accounts, rebranding tools, experimenting in a safe place, and teaching others. Let them master the hammers, nails, and tool chest.
• Pair interns with senior management for reverse training: The folks from Edelman have a program called ROTNEM (the opposite of mentor) that started off with the Chicago office pairing young bright interns with slower seasoned management (tip from Edelman’s Erik Wagner)
• Develop strategy with senior management: Here’s a critical bullet, don’t turn over the strategy of the program to an intern, ensure that you’re developing plans with business goals in mind that align with the rest of the organization as you put resources and your brand name on the line. Partner up with senior management that’s graduated from the ROTNEM program that ‘get it’ ensuring you’ve top down support, and bottom up tactics. While interns may be master of the toolchest –senior management still owns the architectural blueprints.
• Give interns a safe place to communicate: Companies often want to suppress the voices of this next generation, often resulting them spilling it their friends in public locations like Facebook. Be like Cisco, who created an internal community for Gen Y employees who were given a safe, sanctioned place to communicate.
• Get real data: Do not use interns as your model for going to market. They are not representative as a larger segment, and individual personalities won’t always represent the whole. Don’t be like Morgan Stanley who embarrassed themselves by publishing a report on Twitter based on the opinions of one intern –which resulted in Time Magazine saying to “Toss”.

Interns, like every other type of employee set you have are an important part of your company. We must include them, plan for them, and cater to them as the represent our next generation of workers, buyers, and partners. Use them to understand then model their communication habits, as they grow, include them in more strategic elements of planning.

Developing a social program is like building a house: You’ll need experts that understand the tools, but also leaders that craft the blueprints. –often these are two different types of employees, understand who and when to lean on for both needs.

In this left picture of Ryan and Teresa Valdez Klein, I upload photos (GPS tagged with location and time) in real time from my mobile phone using Shozu, and share it with my network on Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, and now my blog.

Like some of you, I’m still fascinated how digital natives interpret media, communications compared to boomers. Me? I’m in the middle watching it all go down.

Just a few days ago, I compared who had more data about my friend Teresa Valdez Klein, Facebook or the US Government. In the comments, it was almost unanimously the US Government, although interestingly enough, most of the data about her in Facebook is opt-in, rather opt-out.

Do you remember the days of taking your black physical rolls of film to Longs or CVS, waiting a few days or hours to get them developed? There were always risks: hoping we didn’t get an over exposed photo, losing the roll in one’s purse or backpack, or forgetting to pick them up all together? For generation Y, that’s no longer a problem.

Take for example in my recent lunch with Teresa (interestingly I found out that she was in NY the same time I was via Friendfeed) she mentioned her younger siblings were growing up in a world where photos were published instantly to the web from mobile devices –this is a native activity to them.

I spoke with my trusted confidant Jennifer Jones (host of Marketing Voices Podcst) yesterday, when it comes to pictures, her son lives in the digital world. I’ve been to Jennifer’s beautiful home, which has nicely framed pictures of the family and kids from all stages of their life. Like any good mother, Jennifer offered her son to take framed family photos off to college. While it’s often un-cool for any kid to take family photos to college, his honest retort was “I don’t need to Mom, I have Facebook”.

He went on to explain that Facebook photos were more current and ‘real’. I’d add that those photos can be transplanted wherever her son goes, as long as he has access to the internet. Furthermore, they are social objects and assets that are being shared in the nexus of his network, perhaps far more valuable location than ‘on the shelf’.

We start to see a connection of the physical and digital universe. At first positioned as ‘executive desk’ gadgets, the Digital Frame continues to get more popular. I personally have no desire for it, and would only accept it as a gift, never buy it. A few reasons,, to me my sharing is on the web, which I can access from my mobile phone. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of these devices is that many are not internet devices, and a majority of them require physical storage changes –what a hassle.

So where are you when it comes to photos?

Print or Digital?

Instant or Later?

Online or Framed?

Self Contained or Shared Online?

Doubles/Glossy/Matte, or JPEG?