20 Online Reputation Statistics That Every Business Owner Needs To Know

Have you Googled yourself lately?  If you haven’t, you may be surprised by what you find. Nearly 50% of US adults say the results aren’t positive.

And that’s not something to be taken lightly. We live in a world where your online reputation can be your strongest asset or your biggest liability.

Employers, clients, colleges and customers are increasingly using Google as their sidekick before making important decisions. What shows up in your search results could mean the difference between a job and the unemployment line, a new customer and a lost opportunity, an investor meeting and an unanswered email.

There’s no excuse for being unaware of your online footprint. In fact, it’s downright irresponsible.

Here are 20 statistics that prove the value of online reputation management:

The Power Of Online Reviews

1. 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. (2016)

2. Online reviews have been shown to impact 67.7% of purchasing decisions. (2015)

3. 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. (2016)

4. 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more. (2016)

5. Every one star increase in a Yelp rating means a 5 to 9% increase in revenue. (2016)

6. 82% of Yelp users said they typically visit Yelp because they intend to buy a product or service. (2013)

The Power Of Search Results

1. 91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web. (2012)

2. 65 percent of people see online search as the most trusted source of information about people and companies. That’s a higher level of trust than any other online or offline source. (2014)

3. Nearly 50% of US adults who Google themselves say the results aren’t positive. (2012)

4. 93% of searchers never go past the first page, instead using only the first 10 search results to form their impression. (2014)

Impact On Business Revenue

1. Businesses risk losing 22% of business when potential customers find one negative article on the first page of their search results. (2015)

   • Businesses with two negatives on the first page of search results risk losing 44% of its customers.
   • If three negative articles pop up in a search query, the potential for lost customers increases to 59.2%. (2015)
   • Have four or more negative articles about your company or product appearing in Google search results? You’re likely to lose 70% of potential customers. (2015)

2. Nearly half of U.S. adults said they have Googled someone before doing business with them. (2012)

   • 45% said they have found something in an online search that made them decide not to do business with the person.
   • 56% have found something that solidified their decision to do business with the person.

The Effect On Hiring And Firing

1. A bad reputation costs a company at least 10% more per hire. (2016)

2. 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates, up from 11% in 2006. (2017)

3. Of all recruiters, 95% believe that the job market will remain or become more competitive. If you don’t stand out online, your competition will. (2015)

4. Seventy-five percent of HR departments are required to search job applicants online. (2010)

5. Eighty-five percent of U.S. recruiters and HR professionals say that an employee’s online reputation influences their hiring decisions at least to some extent. Nearly half say that a strong online reputation influences their decisions to a great extent. (2010)

6. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters and HR professionals have rejected candidates based on information they found online. (2010)

7. 57% of employers are less likely to interview a candidate they can't find online (2017)

Originally published on Forbes.com.

Ryan Erskine is a Senior Brand Strategist at BrandYourself, where he helps people take control of their online presence. Visit his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his book here.

A 6-Step Blueprint To Improve Your Glassdoor Rating

Picture this: your company has a few bad apples pulling the rest of the team down. Maybe they have toxic personalities that are poisoning the team dynamic, or perhaps they are severely underperforming -- or not showing up at all! Whatever the issue, you’re way beyond the “three strikes and you’re out” rule. Eventually, you just say enough is enough, and you fire them.

Your disgruntled ex-employees rant about it to their friends and family, spinning the narrative however they please. You don’t care because you’re rid of them and won’t hear from them again. They eventually find new jobs and everyone moves on with their lives.

It’s a tale as old as time. The only problem today is that those ex-employees vent about their frustrations online too, leaving you to suffer the consequences.

Now picture this: your next round of job applicants look online to find out more about your company. They turn to Glassdoor to get a glimpse into your company culture and salary averages. Like a Yelp for employees, Glassdoor features anonymous company reviews by current and former employees to help applicants navigate the job market.

Unfortunately, when they scan your company’s Glassdoor page, all they find are scathing negative reviews from your unhappy former employees. With thousands of alternative career options just a click away, can you really blame them for passing on your opportunity?

Whether you decide to follow this process yourself or hire an online reputation management firm to do it for you, here is a six-step blueprint to improve your Glassdoor reviews and help you attract top talent.

Scope Out The Damage

If your Glassdoor page is in bad shape, you can take solace knowing that you’re not alone. Most companies can’t achieve a positive Glassdoor without a plan. In fact, the average company rating on Glassdoor is a 3.3 out of 5. (And that average includes all the companies with plans -- imagine how low that would be if you took those out!)

It all boils down to human nature. People tend to write negative reviews at a much higher frequency than positive ones. Angry employees look for justice by venting online while happy employees are content with the way things are. They have no reason to review.

To get a sense for how deep your Glassdoor troubles go, first, locate your average rating and the current number of reviews. If the number of negative reviews only amounts to a small percentage of your total employees, then it’s probably not representative of the average employee opinion.

On the other hand, if it looks like everyone in your company has already complained online, you may have bigger fish to fry. Excellent Glassdoor reviews start with being an excellent employer, and I can’t stress that enough. No amount of online reputation management is going to convince unhappy employees to praise your company online.

Assuming you have the ‘great employer’ bit down, and the Glassdoor numbers are in your favor, then it’s time to start improving.

Claim And Optimize Your Profile

Chances are, you already have a Glassdoor page with negative reviews on it. As a general rule, I’ve found that most business owners tend not to care about Glassdoor until they notice an issue.

In order to manage your company page on Glassdoor, you’ll need to create a free employer account. You can go here go do that. All you need is access to a company email address so you can verify your account.

A free employer account allows you to update basic company information, view analytics on profile visits, and join the conversation by responding to reviews -- more on that later.

If you don’t already have a company page, you’ll be able to do so once you create your free account.

There is also a paid version which allows you to further build out your page, feature a review of your choosing, and advertise your company and jobs on open competitor profiles. However, you don’t need a paid account to improve your Glassdoor rating so we get too deep into that here.

Send Review Requests To Current Employees.

Getting happy employees to review is more an art than a science. Usually, you can motivate employees to write positive reviews if they:

• see how it helps the company
• understand the process and are ensured anonymity
• have guidance on what to write, and how to do it
• don’t feel pressured
• are asked at the right time and place

Some companies prefer to use an external agency to avoid directly asking colleagues to write positive reviews. This helps the goal seem more business-oriented and less like a personal favor.

Start by rounding up management, marketing, and some long-tenured employees to consolidate a list of current people at the company. The benefit of starting here is that you’ll begin to immediately counteract the existing negative reviews from disgruntled ex-employees with the other side of the spectrum: happy current employees.

You may be tempted to immediately ask all your employees to review so you can wash your hands of this issue. There are a couple main reasons why this is a bad idea:

• It looks suspicious if you have very few reviews, then a waterfall of positive reviews all at once, and then none again.
• Negative reviews are likely to trickle in at the same rate as they always have. So those positive reviews are going to get buried by more negatives at some point.

For these two reasons, it is better to put your happy, current employees on a review schedule to spread them out over time. Depending on the size of your company, you may want to ask a few people to review each week or several dozens.

When you ask, remember to keep in mind the motivation factors mentioned above. You’ll want to make the process as easy as possible for your employees, while also ensuring that they understand why it matters and how their anonymity will be protected.

With this review schedule running, you’ll have the ability to begin configuring your ‘key moments.’

Determine Your Key Moments

In every organization, there are key moments when employees are feeling particularly enthusiastic and are most likely to write positive reviews about the company.

Common examples include promotions, meetings where you recognize good work, and fun activities like happy hours and retreats.

Think about those moments in your company. Do you host a Bagels with the Bosses event that brings the team closer together? Is there a particularly fun team-building activity you do every year? What about that amazing onboarding process that you’ve developed for new hires?

Draft up review request language that’s tailored for each key moment. Then, make sure you put a process in place to collect the names and emails of employees once they have encountered those moments.

All that’s left to do is send out the requests and you’ll be well on your way to a higher score.

Personally Respond To Reviews

When business owners get a negative review online, many get scared to respond. I’ve heard things like, “I don’t want to legitimize it,” or “that guy is absolutely crazy, he won’t listen to reason” or “what if we bring more attention to it?”

Think of it this way: if you were researching a company, how would you feel if you saw these two variations of the same review:

• Employee: There’s too much pressure, and people don’t seem to care. They won’t listen to you, even when you’re suffering.

or

• Employee: There’s too much pressure, and people don’t seem to care. They won’t listen to you, even when you’re suffering.
• Company Response: Sorry to hear that you didn't get the level of support you expected. Thank you for taking the time to give us your honest feedback! We care deeply about our people and go above and beyond to provide the support that you need. If you are not getting that support from your manager, please contact your HR business partner so that we can help. —Your friends at Facebook

I borrowed and roughly edited this exchange from an employee review on Facebook’s Glassdoor page. If you’re anything like me, you feel much more positively about Facebook as a company when you read the second version.

In the first variation, Facebook’s lack of response seems to match the reviewer’s complaints, and the company comes across a bit like a cold-hearted software engineer sweatshop. But in the second variation, you get a personal response with a sincere apology and suggestions for how the employee can get help. That kind of response can mean a world of a difference, both for the employee who left the review and for all the potential job applicants who are researching the company online.

And don’t forget to respond to positive reviews too! Imagine how thrilled your employees will be to receive a personal thank you for taking the time to review. Just hearing that their input matters and is deeply appreciated may be enough to turn your happiest employees into brand ambassadors.

Actually Adapt Based On Feedback

One of the biggest benefits of having an active Glassdoor page is that you receive consistent, honest feedback from your employees on what’s working and what’s not. Armed with that kind of information, you’ll be well-equipped to make internal changes to accommodate the most common compliments, complaints, and suggestions.

If you notice a worrying trend in the feedback you receive, you have the unique opportunity to fix that problem before it gets out of hand. And if you see that most employees are thrilled by something small, perhaps it’s worth doubling down on that perk to show that you’re paying attention.

Remember, excellent Glassdoor reviews start with excellent employers. And you never know — if you keep up the good work, you may just end up on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list one day.

Originally published on Forbes.

Ryan Erskine is a Senior Brand Strategist at BrandYourself, where he helps people take control of their online presence. Visit his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his book here.

What The Harvard Meme Students Can Teach Us About The Reputation Economy

In June, Harvard withdrew admissions offers from 10 students who exchanged offensive, obscene and hateful memes in a private Facebook group called “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”

You might be tempted to shake your head and chalk this up to immaturity, but it’s not just college kids being held accountable for their digital posts. Remember the woman who lost her job over an insensitive AIDS tweet? And earlier this year, a dean at Yale was fired for inflammatory and hateful reviews that she posted on Yelp.

If one thing is clear, it’s that we’re all becoming much more vulnerable to online blunders that can ruin our careers. Already, 50% of US adults say their Google results aren’t positive and that number is bound to increase as we live more and more of our lives online.

The scary thing is that, as our online vulnerability has increased, so too has our reliability on digital searches and screenings — both manual and automated — to make important decisions. Depending on the study, somewhere between 30% and 40% of college admissions officers admit to screening social media accounts to learn more about their applicants. And 30% said they had found info online that had negatively affected an applicant’s prospects.

College admissions officers aren’t alone. Today, 75% of HR departments are required to look candidates up online before offering them an interview. And 70% use social media to screen candidates, up from 11% in 2006. With access to tools that help automate this screening process, can you really blame them? Walmart receives 5 million job applications per year. Even if you only spent 5 minutes per application, it would still take you 205 years to get through every application before you even held a single interview.

Customers are following suit. Even when consumers start the buying process with a referral, Google is the very first place they look to do their due diligence. Online search has become the most trusted source of information about people and companies -- a higher level of trust than any other online or offline source.

The Rise of the Reputation Economy

These trends aren’t going to reverse anytime soon. As data aggregators become more powerful and digital information about our reputations becomes more readily available, we can expect our online reputations to play a bigger and bigger role in whether or not we land important clients, business deals, or job interviews. Even the White House is exploring what it would look like to make “social media screening” a part of the vetting process for immigrants to enter the country.

With our personal and corporate digital reputations so heavily scrutinized during purchasing decisions and big life moments, you might find yourself drawing parallels to how banks and credit card companies use credit scores to make their decisions on rates and loans. The difference is that, as we become savvier at retrieving and analyzing digital footprints, the impact of your online reputation is likely to play a much larger role than a credit score ever could.

Think of it this way: the average young person today will switch jobs 12 times in their career. That’s a new job (and another reputation screening) every three to four years of our professional lives. And by 2020, 40% of the US workforce will be working freelance on the side. All in all, more than 60 million people will consistently rely on the power of their personal brands and online footprint to further their careers and bring in a steady income.

Unlike any generation before, today’s employees must consistently pitch themselves to the next employer. (Hence, the rise of LinkedIn.) Any skills you acquire need to be showcased and visible, both for human and automated screeners. The people that figure out how to showcase themselves well for digital screenings will earn more opportunities. Those that don’t will miss out and wonder why they’re getting passed over.

Online Privacy Offers a False Sense of Security

Importantly, the reputation economy goes far beyond what is searchable and public.

The Harvard students shared memes in a private group message on Facebook, and the posts still ended up in the hands of admissions officers. How did that happen?

It’s simple, really -- someone shared them. Even if you believe in the general goodwill of the tech corporations that host all this data, your online posts and messages are only as private as the people you share them with. (One lesson we can take away from today’s political climate is that private emails have a funny habit of getting unwanted public attention.)

And don’t forget that apps like Snapchat have blanket permission to “store and distribute” your drunk and nude selfies — you agreed to it in the terms and conditions — and Facebook has admitted toplaying games with your privacy settings, offering up your “private” account to potential friends by using your phone’s GPS data.

Online privacy offers a false sense of security because it lulls us into thinking we can post, share, message, or email whatever we want online without repercussions.

My advice? Don’t post or share anything online that you wouldn’t want your customers or employers seeing.

Your Online Presence Can Be a Valuable Asset

When people hear horror stories like this one, their first reflex is to hide. Some folks change their name on Facebook or start spending less time on social media.

It’s a good idea, but unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the main issue, which is that colleges, consumers and employers are all using online reputation screenings as an integrated part of their decision-making process.

Your online reputation is the information people (and machines) find about you online, so hiding behind privacy settings -- or not posting anything at all -- actually puts you at risk. If a hiring manager’s automatic screening tool can’t find anything about you online, it’s an easy reason to move onto the next candidate. (57% admit to doing this.) When clients Google you and can’t find anything about you or your business, they’re just one click away from your competitors.

So while those Harvard students were using Facebook to spread hateful messages, remember that you can choose to use your digital presence to build identity capital, support your career and drive revenue.

Be smart about how you position yourself online. It may be your ticket to success, and it doesn’t require a Harvard education.

How Trump Supporters Tanked CNN's App With 1-Star Ratings

Earlier this month, Trump supporters and others accusing CNN of threatening a Reddit user took justice into their own hands by leaving thousands of 1-star reviews on CNN’s mobile app. The digital lynch mob left CNN with an average rating of just one star in the Apple App Store.

CNN suffered a similar attack in Google’s App Store but was able to more easily withstand the assault thanks to hundreds of thousands of preexisting positive reviews.

CNN currently has a one-star average in the Apple App Store.

The swarms of negative reviews have left Apple and Google in a tricky situation. Do they respond, implicitly taking a political side, or do they stand by and do nothing, perhaps eroding trust in their app store ratings?

Accusing an app of publishing fake news — as many of the reviews do — does not violate terms of service. There also aren’t any “rules” against masses of people deciding to review all at the same time.

“Legally, there is not an issue here,” Matt Pinsker of Pinsker Law wrote in an email. “The fact that the ratings are based on a perception of lousy and biased reporting is no different than giving a restaurant a bad review because you think their food or service is lousy.”

Even so, both Apple and Google have decided to respond. While Google Play has worked with CNN to identify and delete thousands of spammy reviews, Apple has added an editor’s note defending the app. “We’re diehard fans of 24-hour news channels, and CNNGo combines the depth of CNN’s reporting and original programming with the instant gratification we crave.”

How Did We Get Here?

It all started when President Trump tweeted a grainy, animated GIF that depicted him in a wrestling match body-slamming a man with a CNN logo superimposed on his head.

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

President Trump’s tweet was the latest in a series of objections to CNN’s coverage of him and his administration. The post has since earned well over a million likes, retweets, and comments, and has quickly become the president’s most-shared post of all time.

The edited video clip was originally posted on Reddit by a user that goes by HanA**holeSolo. When organizations dug into the original poster’s history, they found an archive of racist and anti-Semitic content. One reporter, Andrew Kaczynski, tracked down the poster, and CNN released a controversial article in which they chose to keep the poster’s identity anonymous but said, “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity” should the man ever “repeat this ugly behavior on social media again.”

While Kaczynski later clarified the statement, many interpreted it as a threat from a powerful news organization to publish a private citizen’s identity. Rallying behind the hashtag #CNNBlackmail, CNN detractors questioned the network’s motives and discussed various strategies for protesting the decision.

CNN’s latest reviews on the Apple App Store.

When one 4chan user started a thread called Operation: Mobile Assault, a digital lynch mob of online users took to other message boards and social media channels to spread the call to action. Thousands of negative reviews later, the CNN app is now stuck with a 1-star rating in the Apple App Store.

What Does This Mean For CNN?

In an ecosystem where each star increase or decrease often correlates to huge upswings or downswings in app downloads, attacks like this are usually of serious consequence. It can mean hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in lost revenue for the average company.

However, in the case of a well-known media brand like CNN, the protest may be more symbolic than anything. After all, how much weight are consumers really putting on star rating when deciding to download an app from their media network of choice?

Given the other ratings of popular broadcasters’ apps, the answer is probably “very little.” The New York Times’ mobile app has a 3-star average rating, yet remains the #1 top free app under the Magazines and Newspapers category. Wall Street Journal only has a 2.5-star average and sits in the #3 position.

CNN has actually seen an increase in ratings this year, thanks at least in part to its aggressive Trump coverage. Despite the president condemning the network as #fakenews and some Trump fans nicknaming it the Counterfeit News Network, CNN hit a ratings milestone in Q2 of 2017, posting its most-watched second quarter on record in total viewers.

So in a strange turn of events, could CNN actually benefit from the assault on its mobile app?

Mario Almonte thinks so. “The controversy could actually supercharge sales,” he told me in an interview. Almonte is the President of Herman and Almonte Public Relations, and he explained it to me this way: “Trump’s divisive and combative attitude in politics has politicized brands and consumers like never before, with consumers increasingly making purchasing decision based on their political positions.”

If CNN is lucky, it may indeed turn out that way. But the situation is illustrative of how internet users have the power to collectively ruin a brand’s online reputation in a swift and frightening way. Online news spreads so quickly that it’s not uncommon for situations to easily spiral out of control when people decide to take justice into their own hands.

It’s reminiscent of the woman who got fired over her AIDS tweet. Or of Pizzagate, where a rumor twisted and turned on 4chan and Reddit forums like a dystopian version of the game telephone until people were accusing an innocent pizza parlor of leading a child sex ring. The story grew like a firestorm, and the parlor suffered death threats and hateful comments, until someone actually showed up with a rifle to investigate the theory.

If CNN didn’t benefit from both national brand recognition and deeply polarizing Trump coverage, the effects of the digital assault would likely be damning and permanent. CNN’s situation is not unique, and is just the latest in a series of stories that highlight how we are still very much in the wild west of the digital age.

Originally published on Forbes.

Ryan Erskine is a Senior Brand Strategist at BrandYourself, where he helps people take control of their online presence. Visit his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his book here.

Tired Of Skimming Through Identical Resumes? Try This Instead.

I don’t know about you, but my eyes start to glaze over as soon as I pick up a resume. All those one-pagers with tight formatting, impressive-sounding titles, bullet points with powerful action verbs — it’s enough to make you crazy.

Resumes seem like a great idea.. until it’s time to actually hire someone. That way of sorting prospective workers may be effective for weeding out the careless (a-ha, a typo!) but it makes it extraordinarily difficult for companies to find standout employees. On paper, the clock-in-clock-out types look the same as the standouts — they have the same experiences, same job titles, and same responsibilities. It becomes impossible to distinguish between the passionate and indifferent, motivated and unmotivated, culture fits and rotten apples.

But those distinctions matter. My suggestion? Put down the polished resumes and try Googling your job applicants instead. You’ll get much more valuable information, and you’ll find it on your own terms.

Here’s exactly what you should be looking for:

Red Flags

There’s a reason 75% of HR departments are already required to search job applicants online. It’s a far more effective way to find those exceptional employees than a piece of paper. It’s also a more instructive method for finding red flags than a polished resume — 70% have rejected applicants based on info they find online.

The first page of search results are a great place to start. Take a quick skim and see if anything weird stands out. If you find a website and active social media properties, you can probably move on. But if you find any red flags — legal issues or negative press, perhaps — you might want to think twice. It’s not to say a bad search result is a reason to automatically reject an applicant, but it’s certainly worth looking into more.

Next, move on to images and public social media profiles. Do you find loads of drunk college photos and inappropriate pictures from Spring Break? Do they tweet, share and comment using offensive language? Do they bash their current employer, insult others and get involved in controversial topics?

Your employees represent your company online, so you’ll want to be careful before hiring someone with this kind of questionable material. Again, it’s not necessarily a reason to reject an applicant on the spot, but you’ll want to proceed with caution.

Unique Value

A job applicant’s online footprint is one of the easiest ways to locate their unique value-add for your company.

If they have their own website, that’s a great place to start. A personal website is a sign that your applicant takes their online presence, job search, and career growth seriously.

So take a quick look around. If they have a blog, read a few posts to get a feel for their writing style and thought process. If they have a portfolio, it could be the easiest way to gauge their skills and actual output on previous projects.

See what other nuggets of info you can dig up. Take a look at their press or awards page — if they have one — to see if anything stands out. Have they been published on top tier publications? Perhaps that’s a connection your company can leverage. Have they been mentioned in trade magazines? Have they published a book? That kind of credibility and expertise might be helpful to have on staff.

Next, explore their social media channels. A large and engaged audience could be a massive benefit for your company. The research shows that content shared by employees receives 8 times more engagement than content shared by brand channels. And brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when posted by an employee versus the brand’s social media channels.

Don’t underestimate the value of a huge and engaged social media following. That network and level of reach comes in handy when it’s time to spread the word about new job openings, important company updates, or that latest piece of press.

Personality and Culture Fit

Don’t wait until the interview to gauge your job applicant’s personality and potential fit with your company culture. An initial look through someone’s social media is often enough to give you a sense if someone is worth pursuing or not.

Look through visual mediums like Facebook and Instagram to get a snapshot into their personal life. Check out their Twitter and LinkedIn to see what articles they’re reading, what stories they’re sharing, and what thoughts pop into their heads.

And if you still feel like you’re missing some high-level chronological understanding of this person’s career experience, just check out LinkedIn. It’s the internet’s functional equivalent of a resume and has the added benefit of providing a full list of other eligible applicants if this one doesn’t work out.

Originally published on Forbes.com.

Stop Delegating Social Media to Your Interns

You know social media can be a valuable tool for your business -- you just haven’t found the time to prioritize it. But then it hits you.

“I’ll just get an intern to help!” After all, it’s a cheap solution and those college kids know everything about that social media thing. It sounds plausible, and yet, it could be one of the worst mistakes you make for your business.

Consider this: after a Google search, social media is often the very next place potential customers, investors and employees look before deciding to work with you.

An effective social media strategy earns you the attention of industry influencers, drives interested visitors back to your website and increases conversions. But an ineffective social media strategy will make your company look uneducated, impersonal or unhelpful. Poorly managed social media channels irritate customers, make employees second-guess their affiliation with your company and get people talking about you for all the wrong reasons.

In short, your social media presence is a digital window into your company and its operations. That’s a lot of responsibility for an intern who A) doesn’t have the experience to manage social media for a business and B) doesn’t know nearly enough about your business to represent you authentically online.

A good social media manager is not just someone who owns a smartphone and happens to enjoy social media in their personal life. Just because you watch TV doesn’t mean you can produce television ad campaigns, and the same is true for social media.

It’s far too easy to accidentally make your company look dumb online to delegate social media management to a newbie. Too much automation? You look impersonal. Using social media as a sales megaphone? You come across as spammy. To make matters worse, all it takes is one wrong tweet, one politically incorrect statement, one incorrectly used hashtag, to get your customers shaking their heads in frustration.

When your customers decide to use social media as an outlet to complain or ask questions, will your intern know enough to handle those problems? Will they know when to answer those queries directly and when to direct them to your customer service department? Or will your customers get ignored, and turn, frustrated, to your competitors. (“At least they answer my questions,” they’ll grumble.)

Interns are short term solutions. They work for a few months to get some entry-level experience in your industry. There a real risks having your social media manager just figuring it out along the way.

Perhaps you’ve delegated social media to an intern or are thinking of doing so. You aren’t putting many resources behind your social media presence, and think of it as something you “should be doing” rather than an opportunity to expand your company’s reach online.

Consider this a wake up call. As the business owner, you’re ultimately responsible for the success of your company. You’re responsible for putting the right pieces in place and supporting the initiatives that will help your company thrive.

If you haven’t really bought into the idea of social media for your business, then you’ll have a newbie managing your platforms and you’ll wonder why you can’t get social media to work for you. Instead, take social media seriously, as you would any other communication and marketing initiative.

Give social media the respect it deserves. Accept its pros and cons, its benefits and consequences. Understand its power to market your business, engage with customers, and influence public perception. Realize its opportunity to easily answer client questions and respond to customer complaints...or not. Get excited by the opportunity to rise above the noise and situate yourself as a go-to leader in the industry.

How you choose to use social media will have long-term consequences for your business, either good or bad. That’s not a job to be delegated to a short-term labor solution. There’s certainly nothing wrong with involving your interns in your social media activity, but do yourself a favor and leave management to the experts.