This past week I wrote about how employers are looking for young people with social networking expertise and how teens are including their MySpace or Facebook profiles on their business cards on Ypulse. If you have a business or a library or organization and are hoping to attract younger customers, members or patrons, hire a teen to build your social media strategy! The best way to reach teens is where they're hanging out...online. And the only way to do this is with an authentic voice they can relate to (think: their peers!).

Hiring a teen to create your MySpace or Facebook profile, maintain a blog about what you're doing, record and post video, etc. is not only excellent work experience for them (and very empowering), it will help you, too! Of course you need to supervise them, approve and edit what they write or produce, but it's really a win-win for everyone. With less teens joining the workforce and taking summer jobs, and more employers looking to capitalize on young people's experience using social media, this seems like an obvious solution to me. Oh...and there are lots of teens who are amazing web designers as well. One of them just turned her passion for design into a $1 million plus business called Whateverlife...