Do you follow Santa on Twitter? I don’t, but I imagine him tweeting his way across a city’s rooftops on December 24th like so many metropolitan food trucks. He could use foursquare to check-in for valuable chimney-descending tips or to know what kinds of cookies to expect, but that might ruin the element of surprise.
Regardless, Santa is no different than most of us – save a red jumpsuit and diminutive slave labor – in that he has been changed by social media. If the millennium-old character can keep up with the times, clearly there’s an opportunity for most organizations’ communications to evolve. In fact, social media Santa – or, if you prefer, Rudolph (@RudolphHoHo) or the horrifying Krampus (@MisterKrampus) – can teach brands of any size an important lesson about enrichment through social media.
Enrichment, in this context, is a concept that organizations can add communications dimensions through providing entertainment, information, and other value-adding layers. Enrichment could entail a number of techniques, and @santaNORAD demonstrated how social media can be used in a unique way to enrich a folkloric figure.
Santa tweeted from the rooftops in 2010 with help from NORAD
Why is enrichment important? It’s an opportunity for brands, organizations, retail outlets, entrepreneurs, and others to flesh-out their digital presences. A website may have clever copy or colloquial terms of service agreements (browse around Moosejaw.com for a nice example), but they’re generally static and most often one-way expressions of “personality.” Social media can be two-way enrichment on a daily, hourly, or real-time basis.
Enrichment isn’t a complicated concept – in fact, it’s dead obvious – but it isn’t easy. Just as firms struggle to “add value” through social media, enrichment is no different and no less vague. It might be helpful to review a few diverse examples:
Backcountry.com (@backcountrycom) – the outdoor sports outfitter uses Facebook and Twitter accounts to give audiences updates on snow fall in mountain towns and promote fans’ photos of death-defying conquests. Promotional messages occur regularly, but only to the benefit of its customers:
Comedian, actor, writer, and podcaster Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) – with nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter and more than 11,000 Facebook fans/friends, Tompkins uses social media channels as witty extensions of his profession, not simply for promoting his gigs or products:
The ONE Campaign (@ONECampaign) – the “grassroots campaign” aims to galvanize more than 460,000 Twitter followers and 150,000+ Facebook fans by providing cause-related information to those interested in its mission. This includes info driven by those same fans and followers:
Of course, I will acknowledge that the use of colloquialisms and engagement is inherently more difficult for certain types of organizations (see: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), but value-adding through enrichment is never impossible. Think about it: Santa isn’t even real and yet he has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter – almost 50 times more than I do and I’m totally real! Yet, NORAD was able to tap into a notion that would enrich an audience member’s experience with its mission through the use of Santa.
That’s a pretty creative use of social media in my book. Can you think of other organizations that use social media for enrichment? Get back to me – I’m off see if NORAD can track down that mischievous New Year’s Baby so I can get a few more things done in 2010.
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