One of the great benefits of social media is the ability to connect with people you want to know. Most people recognize this benefit but don't know how to leverage it. They either do nothing or they do too much and turn into a stalker or spammer. There's a happy medium between being "the ask" and "the wait" when you reach out. You need to take the first step to ask in order to connect, but then wait on them instead of pushing for a response. It takes some patience and restraint to do it the right way, but that's really the only way it works well.
Enter the Intern
Tess Feinberg gets this. She graduated from Michigan State University last year and moved to Nashville over the summer. She did some research online to look for internships with local companies. She discovered MicroExplosion Media and contacted me via Twitter to make an internship request. After a few email conversations it was done. Intern accepted. Tess became the first MicroExplosion intern using, as you might expect, social media. Seems fitting to me.
So, I'd like to introduce Tess to MicroExplosion readers. She's blogging and Tweeting as you would expect. She also wrote a post about how she contacted me. I think it's a great little case study for anyone looking for an internship or a job.