Teens, Skills, Digital Natives and How They Can Power Small Businesses in the UK

Finding a Perfect Social Media Manager: DigitalTeens

Discord, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. For a small business owner this digital world can feel like a minefield to navigate and that’s even before we start talking about the Metaverse! It’s time consuming and simply out of the comfort zone. Yet, as the world is becoming even more digital with 4.9bn or 67% of the population online (even two years ago we did not imagine it was going to happen so quickly!), social media know-how is an absolute must to advertise your products and services and being a user of Facebook (as many of my generation are) is just not enough. According to a recent article in the Independent about research on the use of digital marketing, a staggering 40% of businesses are completely unaware of how to advertise their business on social media.

But specialist agencies, offering social media management service, are often expensive, come with long lock-in periods and operate, it appears, on a “best efforts” basis. Sometimes it is not clear what you are paying for - and I am talking as a start-up owner having interviewed a number of agencies to help us to run our own social media accounts. This was until we stumbled on a solution … DigitalTeens! 

How to hire talented but affordable social media managers for your small business?

The logic was that many GenZs are social media savvy and often tech savvy, being the first truly mobile first generation (although inequality still plays a part), some are studying digital marketing or a similar discipline and can provide affordable help and a personable service (and tons of enthusiasm). We hired a few to act as our brand ambassadors and it worked a treat! So, we extended that thinking and launched a new business line to supplement our existing TeenTutors (where young people tutor kids or their own peer group in academic subjects, music, chess and more).

We launched DigitalTeens in November - weighing carefully all the arguments around young people running and managing a social media account, designing logos, creating content and planning social media strategies … And there is a lot of excitement at MyPocketSkill Towers. We have been inundated with requests from small businesses - from a small yoga studio, to up and coming artists, new coffee brand distributors, to doctor opening an aesthetics clinic, someone running a crochet business and anti-natal classes, just to name a few. The list is long and exciting!

It turns out that the pain we experienced was not just our pain. And age is definitely not a barrier to providing this service, as one of our clients wrote about the service she received on our platform “it is never too late but very often not too early to start.” And It is clearly a win-win, did you know that being a social media manager is the #1 on teens’ jobs wish list!

Can young people really help to grow my social media followers?

In general, before we launched MyPocketSkill we saw a lot of scepticism about young’s people ability and willingness to do things. Sadly while this is anecdotal evidence, coupled with well documented impact on GenZs of the fallout from the pandemic means that unemployment rates are still very high at 11% vs 4% for the general population (see Resolution foundation research and government youth unemployment statistics). When we scoped our platform, ran focus groups and went round speaking to investors and customers one of the key responses was “teens will be flaky, it will never work”. But when we launched our first offering, TeenTutors – it very soon transpired the teens are not the flaky ones and definitely a lot less flaky than some of the parents who book tutoring (sorry! I am one of them).

On our platform, teens are often specialists in what they choose to do already and just require a bit of structure and guidance. A year in, we know TeenTutors really work - the reviews on our site are glowing, and customers having tried one session, book in blocks. What they get goes beyond just being an affordable service - they get a very individual and personable experience, lots of enthusiasm and relatability to younger kids.

As for DigitalTeens, while it is still early days, we are developing our service and it is clear that “upskilling” is an important part. We start by pointing to learning resources (Google Garage is fab and free resource) and emphasising that consistence is key with social media. We mandate DigitalTeens to have an initial call to set up specific business goals, look at business-related functions of different platforms, including analytics and some dive even deeper looking at how to optimise accounts and post for SEO and the best strategies to help grow more followers. We provide templates to help DigitalTeens manage their work and we are currently working behind the scenes to introduce some other fantastic enhancements.

But, with the reviews we receive and the volume of requests, we already know that it is going to be huge and we have a host of excellent partnerships and support in mind to get young people to practise what they love and are already good at. 

So read the reviews below, tell your teens, tell your friends, tell any small business you know – help is at hand, DigitalTeens are coming!

• Going very well Harrison is going about the ask in a very professional way - Nick B

• Fantastic and multi-talented. I love working with Christine who is great at communication, timely and always super positive. Highly recommended! - Jacqui C

• Extremely pleased with the work Muheez has done for me. From editing photos and videos to suit including new logo and branding. Everything he did was great and I was quite undecided yet specific about what I wanted done. So he would change things he had done to suit the changes in my head and ended up with a fantastic product. Nothing was ever an issue and will be sure to go back for more help in the very near future. Thanks again Muheez - Stewart S

• The project went very smooth with Humaira with excellent communication throughout. She definitely went beyond expectations by designing and crafting four different options for my company logo. I would highly recommend her graphic design service. - William M 

• I booked Nazifa to help me with some social media posts and some market research. I would highly recommend Nazifa to anyone who is looking for help with social media. Nazifa was polite and professional at all times and seemed very enthusiastic. I was very impressed with how quickly she worked, and the quality of work was also great. I would have no hesitation in booking Nazifa again or recommending her to anyone - Karen S ​

Zara Ransley is co-founder of MyPocketSkill, a technology company with a mission to financially empower Gen-Z by connecting them to paid opportunities with households and businesses to help them earn, save and learn about money.