Tweeting your way into a Twinternship

Karolyn Gruszewski, June 15 2009

At heart, I’m a linguist, so a good pun always catches my eye. That’s why a few weeks ago I stopped to read an article about an emerging twist on the conventional student internship—a Twinternship.

So what’s a Twintern you say? Essentially, a Twintern is an intern, typically a university or college student, who is hired to be the official Twitter spokesperson and brand ambassador for a given company. A Twintern is in charge of reporting company happenings, as well as joining, actively participating in, and establishing online communities for a company’s brand.

Many businesses, especially ones without a definitive social media strategy or communications plan in place, are hiring twinterns to be their new media be all end alls. Twintern job descriptions encapsulate pretty much everything dealing with the social media sphere, including: influencer outreach, monitoring/metrics and crisis communications all in one.

As with any emerging social media trend, there are pros and cons to weigh for both sides. After doing some research on twinternships and reading a bunch of articles, I came up with a few prominent ones to think about:

Pros of Twinternships:

• Recognizing the value of social media communications, by just getting online and having your brand participate in the conversation.

• Pizza Hut recently put out a job ad for a summer twinternship with their company. The twintern’s main  job? – To tweet about corporate events, gatherings, meetings, and product updates. As Bob Kraut, the VP of marketing communications for Pizza Hut outlined, “They’ll be our social media journalist, chronicling in 140 characters or less what’s going on at Pizza Hut.” Although that stuff is valuable information, it can often come off as boring and let’s face it, mundane. Providing facts is fine, but Twitter is also a great platform for injecting humour, sarcasm, and personal nuances into online communications; Twitter is a great porthole for humanizing brand messaging as well.

• The main role of a twintern is simple—to tweet, tweet, tweet; the underlying function of the tweets however is more complex. Some say that twinternships offer an expanded form of customer service; others say that a twintern’s main function lies with corporate marketing and promotion. Regardless, one thing is clear, a twintern’s tweets should support and reflect brand values and key messages, in attempts to build and grow a community of supporters around a brand. A twintern builds loyal relationships with consumers and nurtures those relationships by actively participating in the conversation, and contributing relevant and stimulating dialogue.

Cons of Twinternships:

• Will a (most likely) inexperienced student understand your brand values, culture, and goals well enough to communicate them to your target audience?

• Twinterns are typically being described in a short-term timeframe, for example, a summer internship. One problem that arises with this is that it often takes a lot longer than a twelve-week internship to successfully build brand awareness and join, participate and thrive actively in any online community.

From a social media perspective, I believe twinternships are a proactive, resourceful and creative way to connect consumers with brands, and subsequently build, track and maintain brand recognition online. On the other hand, the trend is not without its caveats; twinterns for companies both big and small need to be familiar with their corporate goals in relation to ‘joining the conversation,’ while simultaneously recognizing the boundaries and rules of engagement in social media communications. I finish this post by reaching out and asking you, have you ever had any experience(s) with twinterns or twinternships? If you have, I’d love to get your feedback on your personal experiences—what worked, what didn’t and what you learned!