By Jon Norris from Crunch Accounting in Hove

There has been a lot of discussion around unpaid internships recently. Be it Sussex University refusing to advertise them or the Conservative Party (with a self-awareness shortage only it could muster) auctioning them off to the Camerons and Osbornes of tomorrow.

There are passionate opinions on both sides of the argument, although there’s one thing I think proponents and opponents alike would agree on: when it comes to unpaid internships, context is key.

You wouldn’t want an unpaid intern, for example, in a prominent customer-facing position.A lack of experience dealing with customers and little knowledge of the business would doubtless lead to errors, unhappy customers and more work for everyone.

Similarly, you wouldn’t want an unpaid intern making adverts for your business - that would be a recipe for disaster, surely?

Working in content and social media – an exploding industry in our fair city – I get plenty of job alerts for vacancies in the sector and, given the increasing importance of social media and content. It baffles me how many of these positions are underpaid or entirely unpaid internships.

Is positioning an unpaid intern, with little or no experience, at the very forefront of your customer service and social media marketing a good strategy?

You can see howit happens. A marketing manager, unsure what to do with a company Twitter account and Facebook page, throws up an ad for an intern and a graduate with inappropriately tight jeans turns up and goes to work.

Not only is this dangerous to a company’s reputation and marketing, it totally misses the point of an internship. The definition of an internship is “supervised practical training”.

If you hire an intern to take care of some work you don’t fancy doing yourself, what are they gaining from it?

Think of your social media as your online receptionist – it needs to be approachable, professional and knowledgeable. An internship is a great way to get started in this business, provided there’s someone to offer guidance.

It’s time that more Brighton businesses realised that the road to a useful social media presence is littered with the bodies of those who have failed.

The Chrysler employee who complained on the corporate account that nobody in Detroit could drive or theHMVstaffers who live-tweeted their sacking.

Hiring someone who knows their stuff will spare your business this fate – and any interns they decide to take on will be able to learn from an expert, instead of being handed the keys to a Facebook page and left to their own devices.