Today’s blog topic came from my friend Jeff Lipschultz.

There’s been a lot of talk (and action) lately centered around “Social Media Interns.” Can you share with us the parameters for having an effective program? Some work for free. Some work remotely. Qualifications? Training required? Return-on-investment (of time/dollars).

It won’t come as a surprise to some of you that I don’t think interns should be doing your social media (sorry JC Maldonado!). It’s not that they can’t Facebook and tweet for you. It’s that they don’t have business experience to set the strategy for which tools you use, how you use them, and how you engage your customers.

Can they set you on the networks? Absolutely! Can they help you reserve your names on Name Check? For sure! Can they teach you how to use the tools. Yes!

At Arment Dietrich, we don’t hire interns until they’ve graduated from college. We learned, early on, that we were training college students the basics of communication, sending them back to school, and letting them go work for another company. If we hire them after they’ve graduated from college, we have a better chance of teaching them the basics and then hiring them full-time.

Same goes for your company.  Interns do not have business experience. Just like you wouldn’t let them pitch a new business prospect, present to the board, or (in our business) call reporters, why would you have them engage and connect with your customers, your employees, your stakeholders, and your prospects?

And Jeff? If an intern works for free…you get what you pay for.

I wrote about this topic earlier this year, as well as was interviewed about it by The Big Money. You can see the blog post here, along with A LOT of comments from interns who were doing social media work for the summer.

What do you think?

Last week, Caitlin McDevitt from Slate and The Big Money called, wanting to know if I have an opinion on the Pizza Hut twintern.

Do I have an opinion?!?

You can read the article here, along with my opinion. There also was a blog written by BFG Communications about the topic. It seems we all have opinions about it.

I’m a public relations professional. I know what it’s like to create an event in order to generate publicity. That, clearly, is what Pizza Hut is doing…and it’s working. The twintern seems to be doing a great job. Unless something happens that is drastically different from what she’s doing now, she can have her choice of jobs when she graduates.  Good for her!

But this begs a bigger business decision: Why would you let an intern have control of your brand, in any form?

I’m a fan of interns. We have a competitive intern program, and we hire the best of the best as full-time employees. In fact, 50 percent of our staff started as interns. So don’t get me wrong when I say…interns should not be running your social media program!

This is your brand. This is your reputation. This is your public perception. In most cases, you’ve spent years and thousands, if not millions, of dollars creating your image. WHY would you put it in the hands of someone who has zero years of business experience? Because they’ve been using social networking their entire lives? Yes, but how many of those years have they been using it for a business application? That’s right. Zero.

Just like you wouldn’t let an intern pitch the media, go to a meeting with the bank, present a new business proposal, or lead the organization, you should not let an intern run your social media program.

As a Chinese proverb goes, It takes years to take an egg and grow a chicken and an instant to make chicken dung.