The power of social media + Barack Obama.
I read a great article that gives a good inside look on the powerful effects of social media — specifically how the Barack Obama’s campaign staff has successfully utilized grasped leveraged new-media. Here are few things I didn’t know about www.My.BarakObama.com:
- One of the four founders of Facebook created/manages his online presence (Chris Hughes).
- Obama has raised over $2 million dollars online.
- MyBarakObama.com has over 900k members.
- The campaign has spent over $3 million in online advertising.
The growth strategy was positioned on a simple concept; “keep it real, and keep it local”. Similar to Facebook, his website is built around the concept of establishing “local networks” to make connections to other users. Supporters are more receptive because they are meaningful connections that literally “hit them at home” with familiar people they may or may not already know in their community.
In my own opinion, the big takeaway is the execution and strategy. Understanding how to market online in a “web 2.0″ world is no longer optional — it’s something you must address. Why should you care about social media and having a strategy? Well, five of the Top Ten most traffic’ed websites are social networking websites. YouTube is over 10% of all Internet traffic. Over 100 million blogs exist.
There’s more than a few reasons to care.
More importantly, “being everywhere” in which users visit on a daily basis is key. No longer can you just live in your own www.domain. Two way communication must occur across multiple touch points (online and offline).
MyBarakObama.com did does a good job of building a community and carrying the consistent “Change We Can Believe In” brand message — but what it really does well is provide tools to its supporters by leveraging the viral benefits of social media. Obama’s staff understands how to plan, build, evolve, and execute a communication strategy online that adds value to its supporters. This has resulted in a tightly nit loyal community online that wants to use it and finds it exciting.
While I’ve noted his site as a great case study of reference for my own clients, he does serve specifically as a political social media “road map” for several new campaigns to come.
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[...] The power of social media + Barack Obama. I read a great article that gives a good inside look on the power effects of social media — specifically how the Barack Obama’s campaign staff has successful utilized grasped leveraged new-media. Here are few things I didn’t know about … [...]
“The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.”