Paid to “Tweet” - A day in the life of a Social Media “Twintern”

  • Posted by Shawn Patriquin, on May 5, 2009

Twintern Charlotte Barker, a recent graduate of the Loyalist College Advertising Program in Belleville, Ontario, will be paid to send out 'tweets' all summer long as a Social Media Coordinator.

The job is a newly created staff position at Belleville's They Integrated Inc., a full service advertising and marketing firm. The unique job title reflects the company's emerging growth with interactive clients and the ongoing integration of social media strategies into campaign development.

As a 'Twintern', Charlotte will be responsible for managing They Integrated's on-line brand presence as part of the company's Social Media Program via social media outlets such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Delicious, Digg while also monitoring the blogosphere and podcasts. As the Twintern, or Social Media Coordinator, she is in effect the on-line "voice" of the company. Armed with a computer, an iPhone and a Flip Mino HD camcorder, she will be tweeting about her experiences while learning about the industry and chronicling those experiences on the company website in her personal blog.

"While some companies may be reluctant to invest human and financial resources to engage their customers during a recession, we know it's imperative that we do exactly just that, especially on the interactive side of our business," said They Integrated President Shawn Patriquin.

"Charlotte understands our company and our culture since she did her school internship with us. By offering her a paid internship during the summer this allows her to weather the storm during the recession and come out the other side better prepared with additional in-demand skills that our industry is seeking."

"To be honest, the position is one-part experimental and one-part experiential", added Patriquin. "Creating the position allows us to have dedicated manpower allocated to furthering the goals of our Social Media Program, which is just hard to manage some days due to the time it requires. For Charlotte, this gives her some security and a bit more breathing room and additional experience to prepare for a career in the industry in a down economy. Not to mention that its also a pretty cool job."

"Essentially, a big part of this position is simply telling people who They Integrated is and what 'they' do, by communicating our corporate culture and capabilities," says Patriquin. "We're engaging prospective clients by utilizing word-of-mouth tools in a new age of communications. New business is coming from non-traditional sectors that are aware of us purely from our presence on-line, and it will continue to be that way. That's the power and attraction of social media for marketers, corporations and brands - to engage their customers in a meaningful way."

Enter the Twintern.

"The Twinterns of today will be the Chief Marketing Officers of tomorrow," added Patriquin. "The economy will improve in time and as Charlotte moves forward she will be armed with the social media skills and knowledge that marketers are craving. In effect, she would probably be as well versed about social media marketing than many of her more experienced peers in the advertising industry, which will be a huge advantage for her."

Rick Chesworth, Program Coordinator of the advertising program at Loyalist College agrees. "Loyalist advertising graduates enter the industry with the skills that will allow them to pursue the career they desire. Advertising is about communicating and engaging people, and having this opportunity builds on what she's already learnt. I think it's a great idea and an innovative position."

"To be honest, no two days are the same", says Barker. "One day I may be posting work related news releases to media outlets. But then on another day I may be sending content that reflects the company to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or playing songs on Blip.fm. All of it just tells people who we are and what we do, which is just another form of Public Relations, but a lot of companies haven't thought of it that way until recently.'

  • Tagged in: blogging, news, social media, twitter, they integrated
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Comments

As a recent graduate of the Loyalist College post-grad PR, I’m impressed (and encouraged) at They Integrated’s willingness to embrace social media. It’s a key PR tool. I’ve connected with Charlotte via twitter (http://www.twitter.com/brynajones), and she’s represented the company well. She’s always professional, and her research and postings are relevant. Congrats They for forging ahead despite economic woes in the sector. It’ll pay off!

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 3:56pm
  • Author: Bryna Jones

All i can say is that i love the fact that you are trying new things and seeing how it goes. Not everyone has the $ to do it, but if it’s possible i think this is a great way to spend $.

It would really be a cool to see how this went in a follow up post, hint, hint.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 4:11pm
  • Author: frank

Great article.  As part of a smaller agency, we’re trying to use social media tools to our advantage in getting the word out not only about our campaigns but also to show people what we’re about and engage in the conversations surrounding PR, Social Media.  As more and more brands turn to SM tools to connect with their customers, agencies need to be engaging as well and turn that expertise into value for clients and potential clients.

Great post, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about Charlotte’s time as a Twintern

Romanelli Communications - @romanelli
Ryan Miller - @ryancmiller

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 4:48pm
  • Author: Ryan Miller

Congratulations Charlotte smile

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 5:32pm
  • Author: Jessica Bogaard

Congrats Charlotte. Well written & informative. This is such a new position and it’s great to see a creative mind like yours leading the way.  I’m really looking forward to sharing ideas and learning about Social Media with you.  I’ll be in a similar position as Community Manager for FYIndout.

I think we will see positions like yours increase in the near future & I’m really excited to see where you’ll be in 5-10 years.

http://twittter.com/brettkopf

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 5:42pm
  • Author: Brett Kopf

This was great story and one that many agencies can relate too! We are one ourselves, GA has just hired a part-time marketing coordinator to help with social media activities for the company. One big question are you tracking leads and web activities from twitter, are you going to come back with an ROI from the expenditure? I would love to see any metrics you may have on that during the next few weeks.
@gajanshe

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 6:59pm
  • Author: Jan Sheeley

very nice story, I hope I can make it in advertising such like this. I hope I poised in the right direction with http://www.twittrblog.com

  • Posted on May 5, 2009 at 8:27pm
  • Author: Twittrblog

This is truly an interesting way for companies to develop a social media presence while at the same time giving college students and new grads an opportunity for a job in this horrible economy.

I am sure the cost for doing this is relatively small but my biggest concern is - how do you measure success?

One of the biggest problems with traditional advertising and PR is the inability to accurately measure success.

It seems like this form of social media marketing is taking us backwards from this perspective.  The ability to measure web marketing and advertising success has literally changed the face of the industry.  Are companies ready to backslide already?

Most companies have not yet fully embraced the highly quantifiable areas of web marketing like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).  Are they really ready to leap frog to social media marketing?

I for one would be very interested in hearing if other companies are jumping on this bandwagon.

  • Posted on May 6, 2009 at 9:54am
  • Author: SEO Philadelphia

I agree to a certain extent with SEO Philidelphia. I think it’s important to be able to measure the success of social media for ourselves, and our clients. It’s one thing to gain exposure, it’s another to create buy-in, and results for clients. However, I don’t think this issue negates the invalubility of networking. I can’t believe the connections I’ve made through Twitter, Facebook, etc. I just made another as I’m typing this. I love living in the era when knowledge capital is so freely exchanged. Maybe it’s time to start rethinking our view of measurement, and redefine it. Interesting topic!

  • Posted on May 6, 2009 at 11:03am
  • Author: Bryna

We’ve had a great deal of unexpected comments from Shawn’s blog post on our firm’s decision to create a position for a “Twintern”, and some relevant questions were posed regarding SM. Thank you for the interest. I’d like to briefly respond to some of those questions, which were mostly about ROI, tracking and measurability, and communicate some of our SM goals.

First, a little bit about us. We’re a small shop in a smaller market with under a dozen employees. We’ve been looking at integrating SM into our own business and into our interactive product offering to clients. We’re also trying to develop a detailed Social Marketing Program that’s part of our day to day life. I don’t think that we’re much different than many other agencies that are considering doing the same. What I can share with you is that this is new for us, it’s partly experimental, but we had soft and hard goals moving forward. Please appreciate these goals are specific to our shop, what we think will work for us.

First, we wanted to let people know who we are, what we do, and communicate our culture. Our primary goal was simply to get the word out.

We appreciated the time required to do this in a meaningful way, time we didn’t have. Enter the “Twintern”. Charlotte excelled in her school internship with us so we offered her the position. This allowed us to allocate the required resources to develop messaging content and hopefully engage our intended audience, and then grow that audience. It also gave Charlotte a meaningful job in a down economy; as she learns (as we learn) she will be better prepared to move forward in the industry, in hopefully better economic times in the near future.

A determined soft goal was to simply increase traffic to our website and improve SEO. We monitor activity via Mint and Google Analytics for website hits and referrals, and the results to-date have been very favorable. Again, our primary focus is on exposure and networking at the moment, in connecting and engaging.

Secondly, what we do learn we are able to share with our clients as value-added service to existing interactive product offerings. For example, over the past year we’ve developed several successful online promotions for clients. These promotions have allowed clients to data capture prospects and monitor online initiatives to them via Campaign Monitor. In this sense, the initiatives are very measurable.

In terms of true social media measurement our current efforts are focused to paying attention to what people are saying about us and our clients by monitoring blogs, micro-blogs, wikis and video and photo sharing websites. Is it measurable? No, it’s a temperature reading at best.

Our goal in moving forward is to develop an evolving social media program that suits our company’s goals, shaped in part by Charlotte’s experiences as a “Twintern”. Again, this is somewhat of an experiment on our part, and we’re just dipping our toes in the water.

Thanks to everyone for expressing interest, cheers,

Brian Freeman
Creative Director

  • Posted on May 6, 2009 at 3:33pm
  • Author: Creative Director, they integrated

With regards to measurement in marketing communications in general and now social media in particular—I would like to speak to measurement of social media.  My viewpoint is somewhat formed based on assessing what social media can accomplish, and around the notion that people are beginning to see value in who they are.  People and their identities is the starting point for building relationships.  Relationships are built on finding out more information;  developing trust; being able to clarify speculative data; respecting other peoples time; creating a comfort zone, etc., etc.  Those engaged in Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) get that. The moment people engage in conversation, the immediate payback is ‘possibility’.  Possibility somewhat like an adventure only has value to those engaged in it. To measure something from the possibility of making a personal connection is like kinda like trying to measure expectation.  Who wouldn’t like to measure people’s expectation?

The more fragmented the market; the marketing communication tools, the media —the more we need to develop instinct, and insight into the way people gather information, and the way they use it.  Measurement in communication is useful to help those who need assurance, precise measurement is time consuming and expensive. Getting immediate attention, interest, and feedback while not scientific in nature, does provides you with the pulse of that attention and interest, whether the pulse is healthy or not is a form of measurement.

  • Posted on May 7, 2009 at 1:45pm
  • Author: Harvie Brydon

Twitter is a passing fad - make money on it while you can. Eventually everyone will realize that they aren’t that important, and that people who follow their tweets will not show up to help them move into a home, or be the godfather/mother of their children.

After that, companies will be lamenting all the time and money they invested in “cutting-edge” marketing on Twitter. And when that happens, Twitter is done.grand rapids lasik

  • Posted on August 20, 2009 at 11:15pm
  • Author: JohnG

Thanks for your comments, John. Twitter is simply one of many Social Media communication tools available - along with Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, etc -that allow individuals and businesses to engage in relevant dialogue, and yes, to talk about things that are completely irrelevant as well. How long will it be relevant? Who knows, but I know somewhere out there a couple of college kids are working in their parents’ basement on the next big thing. That’s the beautiful, and scary, age we live in; how we communicate evolves almost monthly.

Do I want someone following me on Twitter to help me move in to my next home, or be their child’s god parent? Hell no. That would be a little weird. But if I were a business I would want to know how a consumer felt about my company or my product or my services. And I would actually enjoy receiving a picture from my niece’s birthday next month, be it on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever.

I don’t think there are a lot of companies making money off of Twitter, but I would expect that a lot of companies make use of Twitter and other SM tools to better understand their customers by being able to communicate with them directly in an engaging and meaningful way. Twitter or not, the lines of communication have been opened up like never before and that door cannot be closed.

  • Posted on August 24, 2009 at 2:23pm
  • Author: Brian Freeman

As Brian stated, I think Twitter can be very useful for companies that want to reach out to the audience that Twitter provides. There have been a lot of articles about how younger kids never use Twitter, and that most Twitter users are something like 35-50 years old - but this is still a valuable demographic. phone counseling therapy

  • Posted on September 24, 2009 at 12:34am
  • Author: Jackie

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