I was having some trouble recently with deciding what to get my family members for Christmas. I asked around, trolled Amazon and even asked kids their age. But I still came up with nothing.
Then it hit me! If I’m a social media manager, why haven’t I checked Facebook or Twitter to see what Santa has to offer? So I went in search of his pages to see if he could help. I was shocked to find that Santa wasn’t online. How is it that Santa doesn’t have a social media presence?
I decided to find out. After some serious Googling, I found a number for the North Pole. I was determined to get to the bottom of this and maybe snag a new client for Success Agency in the process. After talking to a whole lot of elves, I finally got through to the Big Guy himself.
Turns out, it’s a good thing I called. I asked him why he’s not on Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube, or anything. Santa admitted he’s struggled to keep up with the times and said he’s more than a little frustrated.
“These young’ns today,” he bemoaned, “they don’t want dolls and wooden rocking horses. They want iPads or iPhones or iPods! And what’s with all the I’s? Why does everything start with an I?”
We talked about how the change in demand has caused an uproar in the elves’ workshop.
“We had to really rework the flow at the shop,” he said. “We’re even in talks about getting an Apple genius bar. At first, I was really excited about that. Then I learned it had nothing to do with actual fruit.”
After talking with him a bit, I realized the problem is worse than I first thought. His lack of tech-savvy was having an effect on his reputation.
“Oh yeah, we had quite the PR nightmare last year,” Santa explained. “We’d noticed a significant drop in the amount of letters we received through the mail. Didn’t think much more of it until after Christmas, when we learned those missing letters were actually coming in via Twitter.”
When #SantaMIA blew up the Twittersphere on Christmas morning, Santa said that’s when he knew he had a problem. “That’s also when I found out hashtags have nothing to do with potatoes,” he said.
“The fallout from the ignored wishes was even ‘trending,’” he continued. “One of the elves tried to explain that to me but finally just said, ‘It’s bad, Santa. It’s really, really bad.’”
And with that, we had a new client. While it’s too late for this year, we’ll begin work soon for the launch of Christmas 2013’s “Santa on the Social Scene.” Catchy, huh?
But in our preliminary brainstorming sessions, I quickly realized this will be harder than I thought. Normally, I would throw out the idea of doing a social media contest to stir up some engagement, but that won’t work in this case. What prize could we offer? If you wanted the prize, you were guaranteed to get it without participating in the contest. All you had to do was just ask Santa for it, right? Isn’t that how it works?
And we’re really going to struggle to make his fans active throughout the year and not just in November and December. July is kind of a gimme, but how do you make Santa relevant and engaging in March? An idea we had was to tweet updates on how the workshop conversion was going, and then post lots of photos on Facebook.
We’re really excited to launch his Google+ page. Parents can digitally swing by his Google+ hangout instead of hauling the kids to crowded department stores and standing in line. They can just fire up their iPad and visit with him instantly.
So, while we’ve got our work cut out for us over the next year, we’re super pumped for Christmas 2013. But until then, #merrychristmas.
