Managing Your Social Networking Presence: What is the best skill set?

I'm in Chicago for the Making Media Connections Conference.  Today is a full menu of workshops before tomorrow's conference.  I'm sitting in Heather Mansfield's workshop on Social Networking Sites.  A lot of good practical information about setting up and managing your individual profile and groups (and Fan Pages) on Facebook, Myspace, Change.org, and YouTube.   In passing, Heather made a comment, "You need to have a person with the right skill set to manage your organization's social networking presence."   I asked what the specific skills were.  Her response:

• Someone who is on the Internet a lot
• A risk taker
• Someone who is tech savvy, or at least comfortable or self taught
• Someone who has grown up using the sites and really enjoys it
• Someone who takes a less regimented in communications - less formal - uses happy faces
• Someone who has a good online persona and personality
• Someone who enjoys it

Comments

[Will Hull]

Also, interns make perfect candidates for this type of position to help shape this new horizon.

[joan]

creativity and improvisation. and of course keep believing that what you're doing is worth it , at the end of the day you need everyone to be truly convinced of the things you're doing...so they'll be ready to follow you!
Take care Beth
keep up the great blogging

[Will Hull - United Cerebral Palsy eAdvocacy/eCommunications Coordinator]

Tips for managing interns:

1. Start them off slow
2. Let them watch any and all videos your organization has produced
3. Teach them about what you want to accomplish as well as the history of the organization in the first couple of days
4. Demonstrate appropriate comments such as "Thanks for adding United Cerebral Palsy. Over 65% of UCP consumers have a disability other than cerebral palsy. When you get the chance visit our Web site at UCP.org. Thanks again."
5. Engage them in any and all meetings to get a sense of the projects your organization is working on so they can advertise/get-out-the-word about them.
6. Let them explore the networks in their own way and utilize their skill-set in applying them to expand your network.
7. Many interns will come from a college setting and it is a lifestyle necessity to be on networks such as Facebook and MySpace, allow them to use what they already know to expand your organization's presence online.

These are just a few, but they go a long way.

Tips for finding an intern:
1. Go to the nearby University Web sites and post internships on their job posting boards.
2. Use Craigslist
3. Go to their University and put up flyers in their dining commons or student union building
4. Appeal to their student government and Greek governing boards such as Interfraternal Council (IFC) and Pan Hellenic to ask them to spread the word about your internship.
5. Interhships are seasonal so look for Spring interns around November, look for summer interns around April and looks for fall interns around April and August (August you would probably need to rely on internet job posting boards). Stick to their schedules.

Thanks.

[Beth Kanter]

Balletvox.org - also rocketboom has a person who does this