It's a fact that companies wanting social media management, or "community management" more broadly, are increasingly outsourcing it with an ever more professional mindset. Because the "my daughter's on Facebook too" or "my cousin does social media as well" approach went out of date a long time ago.

Yet people and companies looking to commission social media work often waver over handing management and authority in this area to young people. Plenty of managers think, "are we really going to hand over such an important channel to mere kids?" Very young agencies calling themselves "social media experts" create a certain distrust for established, corporate companies.

These concerns aren't hard to understand at all. Every wrong step by the young people entrusted with corporate accounts can do serious damage to a brand's reputation. That's exactly why social media management should go to agencies that stand out through real expertise and competence — and, let's repeat it, they are young!

Because social media itself is still very young. Let's look at the founding dates of the social networks that reach millions of people today:

Facebook: 2004

Twitter: 2006

LinkedIn: 2002

YouTube: 2005

Instagram: 2010

Pinterest: 2010

Let's add that when these still-very-young social networks first appeared, they weren't used for corporate work the way they are today; most weren't well received by users at first because they had no Turkish-language support; and, more importantly, advertising agencies saw the whole thing as "simple" and didn't take it seriously.

So a Whole Creative Director Is Going to Do Posts?

That's exactly what happened at agencies when social media management first came onto the agenda. Who was going to do it? Seen as a chore by senior staff, social media management was treated as a moderation problem rather than something to be thought through properly, as part of strategic planning and organisational process. Seniors, unwilling to wade into this dark, unfamiliar water, left social media management to interns and stepped out of the arena. Young advertising professionals sometimes lost their way in these unfamiliar waters, but they developed themselves, kept up with global trends, and managed to build effective, productive marketing strategies on social networks. In short, it was the young who understood "the social media thing."

The kids who, as children, sat down at what was then a brand-new internet and chatted on Yahoo and mIRC, who set up the first blogs, went on to become the first influencers of social media too. More importantly, they came together with other people doing similar work in social media and produced genuinely serious projects. Today's social media teams have come to be made up of young advertising professionals, each well-equipped in their field and sharp in their instincts.

Young Social Media People Get the Job Done

Most of the people currently shaping social media are young, and while some brands and agencies may see it as a big mistake to give these people titles like expert, director or manager, it's an undeniable fact that in a channel this new, "expertise" has to be judged by experience rather than age. A team that also understands classic advertising technique, that treats social media work as part of a joined-up strategic plan, and that steers its social media work accordingly, can genuinely be considered expert in social media management. Any company that wants to make its mark in this field needs to get used to seeing "kids" sitting across the table from them. Because the "young ones" know what they're doing!