Bonnie Shea (left) is the VP of Marketing and Storytelling at Making Waves Education Foundation. Giovanna Barragan (center) is the Lead Marketing and Storytelling Intern at Making Waves and a third-year student double majoring in NGOs and social change and communications at USC.
Interns run our brand’s Instagram account. Here’s why and how you can make the most of peer-to-peer marketing.
One aspect of our new talent philosophy at Making Waves Education Foundation is to “lead through context, not control.” And on the Marketing and Storytelling team we are embracing this concept – especially when it comes to interns and social media.
In fact, about a year ago interns got the keys to our Instagram account, now led by Giovanna Barragan, lead marketing and storytelling intern: digital and social media, and Leslie Quiroz-Pineda, multimedia and video intern. Partnering with other interns and our Content Creator and Storytelling Fellows, they run the Instagram content calendar, they take the lead on student-facing content creation, they publish 90% of all our Instagram posts, Reels, and Stories, and they lead community management like responding to comments and messages.
Handing over your brand’s Instagram account to interns shouldn’t happen overnight, but depending on your goals, letting go of full control could save you time and lead to better results.
▪️ At Making Waves, this approach leads to more creativity, authenticity, and following and engagement with our audiences.
▪️ In the past year, our Instagram following has increased 30%, also contributing to our LinkedIn following increasing 45% (exceeding our 20% goal).
▪️ We’re more focused. Interns have been able to focus on student-facing marketing and storytelling, and full-time staff have been able to focus more on fundraising and partnership marketing and storytelling.
▪️ Plus, Making Waves interns are getting real-world, paid social media and leadership experience in a supportive environment.
Here are our tips on how to set your interns and your team up for success when it comes to social media.
1. Look for curiosity, trust, and transferable skills in the internship hiring process
Successful interns don’t need to be marketing majors or have direct experience managing a brand’s social media account. Instead, here is what to look for when interviewing and hiring marketing, communications, multimedia, and social media interns:
Curiosity and openness to feedback
Even if a student is in a related major or has related experience, they still need to learn about your organization, your brand, your strategy, your goals, and your audiences. The most important qualities for interns are being driven by curiosity, having a willingness to learn and grow, and being eager to give and receive feedback.
Organization and collaboration skills
Marketing and social media are the best mix of brainstorming and executing. Interns need to live in both worlds – being open to working with others on concepts, brainstorming, and co-created content while also staying organized and having the ability to coordinate assignments, reviews, approvals, publishing, and analytics.
Willingness to try new things
Social media, content creation, and video editing are constantly changing. Interns and your team should be open to learning on the job, trying new approaches, and seeing what works.
Leadership and judgement
An intern’s ability to listen, learn, communicate, ask questions, take direction, make decisions in their role, and lead others goes a long way. This can be more valuable than technical skills, which interns can always learn on the job.
At Making Waves, there have been highly successful marketing and storytelling interns with majors and minors from business and economics to social change and sociology – many with no previous internship or paid marketing experience. But they had transferable skills and displayed the ability to learn, openness to feedback, and willingness to take ownership in their role.
If you are looking for these qualities in your interns, replace the traditional interview process with a project simulation.
▪️ For example, based on your internship role, ask them to bring a related project they are proud of and to share how they came up with the concept, what steps they took to complete the project, and what the results were.
▪️ Then ask questions, provide feedback, and engage in discussion about the project. Or provide a 15-minute assignment that can be completed without much context. Ask them to share how they went about the project, what they learned, and provide feedback.
▪️ Adding a project simulation also removes inequities for students who might not yet know the unwritten rules of interviewing but do have transferrable skills for the job.
2. Start with strategy, structure, and guidelines for interns
Interns are amazing. They bring new perspectives, they know the latest social media trends, they have specialized skills in video storyboarding, producing, and editing. And they are eager to learn, grow, and make an impact.
This doesn’t mean they should be expected or asked to fulfill the role of a full-time social media manager. Here’s how to set the strategy and structure that will set them up for success.
▪️ Set the strategy: Provide interns with the overall strategy for social media, with room for their input and ideas.
▪️ Get clear on branding: Train interns on your brand guide, editorial guide, and any other resources or tools, like brand kits in Canva or shared accounts with Adobe products.
▪️ Get organized: Invest in a project management tool, like Asana, where there can be transparency and tracking for social media projects and your content calendar.
▪️ Limit barriers: Get clear on the approval process. What needs approval? What doesn’t? How much time is needed for approvals?
▪️ Maintain guidelines: Co-create a specific guide with interns for day-to-day dos and don’ts for social media and peer-to-peer marketing content.
▪️ Have regular check-ins: The best teams still need regular check-ins and communication, chances for feedback, and opportunities to try new things. And the best interns still need guidance, a space for questions and ideas, and mentorship.
3. Once the direction is set, let intern creativity shine
Here’s the part where you release control. Remember, interns bring creativity and specialized skills, and in our case at Making Waves, they are a part of the Gen Z (and soon Gen Alpha!) audience we are reaching on Instagram. This means they are best positioned to come up with new approaches to expand our brand’s voice and create content that is most helpful and relevant to our student audiences.
Here are some examples of peer-to-peer content that was intern-led. We took an approach of starting somewhere, testing and learning, rather than waiting for perfect conditions.
▪️ How to stay in budget as a college student by Giovanna Barragan
▪️ Day in the life as a Wave-Maker by Leslie Quiroz-Pineda
▪️ National Intern Day by Giovanna Barragan and Leslie Quiroz-Pineda
▪️ The summer I interned by Giovanna Barragan
▪️ Budget course promo video by Leslie Quiroz-Pineda
While results didn’t come overnight; over a year’s time, intern-led content has led to some incredible results on Instagram:
▪️Nearly 50,000 views on Class of 2025 graduation content
▪️Highest views ever with just under 5,000 views on this graduation Reel
▪️Highest engagement ever with nearly 250 engagements (including more than 100 shares) on this college decision day Reel
▪️30% increase in total followers on Instagram
▪️More than 6,000% (yes, 6,000!) increase in accounts reached
At Making Waves, this approach is possible because our talent philosophy calls for our nonprofit’s team to “clarify what success looks like, then relinquishes control to others.” This includes Making Waves’ senior leaders, who are also supportive of interns taking leadership in their roles. This transparency and trust at all levels of your nonprofit or company is critical.
Our approach is also focused more on the long game vs immediate success. This works if you’re ok with testing and learning, taking chances, building trust with your audience overtime, and celebrating small wins to reach the bigger ones.
4. Teamwork makes the dream work, especially when it comes to Gen Z marketing
At Making Waves, we follow an inclusive approach to storytelling, including many principles outlined in this Broke report from the Radical Communicators Network. This means being intentional in sharing the stories of our students and alums and lifting the voices of often underrepresented communities. It also means paying students and alums for their time and creative work.
This summer, in addition to our existing internship program, we launched a Content Creator and Storytelling Fellowship. This is a flexible, project-based opportunity for students and alums of our college and career success program to give back to their community, build their portfolio, grow their network, and get paid.
Formed like a micro internship, the fellowship brings several benefits:
▪️Accessible and paid opportunity for our students and alums to gain experience, share their story, and build community.
▪️Leadership opportunity for interns to co-create content with peers, lead brainstorming and reviews, and gain experience ‘on the other side’ of guidelines, reviews, and approvals.
▪️Relevant, helpful, and inspiring content creation at a very reasonable rate compared to traditional contractors or agencies.
5. Adjust your internship hiring plan based on the size of your team
You don’t need a big marketing and communications team to make this type of internship program work.
If you have an existing marketing leader or marketing team:
▪️Determine where your full-time team expertise and time is best spent and where intern expertise and time is best spent.
▪️Create the framework for support, including brand guidelines, mentorship, and room for experimentation.
▪️ Start small and grow from there. You could start with a micro internship or project-based internship, you could start with one semester or term, or with a limited set of hours per week to see what works and what needs adjusting before committing to more.
If you do not have an existing marketing leader or marketing team:
▪️This is your sign to hire one!
▪️But seriously, if you don’t, then consider hiring a more experienced intern. Look for the same qualities of trust, judgement, and responsibility, but also give more weight to direct social media and content creation experience. Look for an intern who has had previous experience and has the expertise and skills to work more independently.
▪️Create the framework for support, including brand guidelines and mentorship. And do your own high-level learning about social media so you are informed and trusting as a manager for this role.
Internships are a win for your organization, for your interns, and for your audiences. Remember to embrace progress over perfection, context over control, and learning over knowing. You’ve got this!
More career resources
