A Brief Social Media Case Study of Obama

This was originally posted on my blog on Better Networker, titled How Obama Crushed Clinton with Social Media:

(Sept. 18, 2008) I just read some amazing articles and information on the revolutionary way, Barack Obama has used the power of social media to come inches away from becoming our first black president.

Now, whether you like him or not, there is no denying that he’s revolutionizing internet marketing and anyone serious about social marketing should be studying everything Obama does.

Here are a list of articles and posts, which tell the story:

Social Media Forum Post
How Obama Really Did It – MIT’s Tech Review
Video Interview with Obama’s Web Guy
Facebook Founder Helps Build MyBarackObama.com Community

All this is pretty incredible, but check this out:
http://twitter.com/BarackObama
http://twitter.com/hillaryclinton
http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain2008

Notice the difference in followers. In fact, Barack has the largest following on Twitter period, with over 80,000 followers.

This should get the gears in your head turning.

These were originally posted on the Better Networker Forum post titled, How Obama REALLY Did It:

(Oct. 15, 2008) As part of my ongoing study and fascination with the social media strategy the Obama campaign has implemented, it is absolutely essential that all online business owners, breakdown and understand how exactly he did it.

A friend of Charles Hefline and top marketer, David Bullock, has made an awesome resource available which is an interview his partner did with Co-founder of Blue State Digital, Jascha Franklin-Hodge. Blue State Digital is the company that built Obama’s social community and has been largely responsible for the 390+ million dollars the campaign has been able to raise, mostly online.

Check out this awesome interview:
http://www.davidbullock.com/163/barack-obama-social-media-technology-team-interview/

Regardless of what political affiliations you have, you’d be doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t study up as much as you can on how Obama REALLY did it…

I want to thank my bud Charles Heflin for turning me on to the case study that Mr. Bullock has going on.

(Oct. 18th, 2008) What I find particularly interesting about the Obama social media initiative is the fact that he only participates in a handful of networks and then uses the leveraging power of communities to syndicate his content to the farthest reaches of the Internet.

Anyone can follow his strategy to achieve networking success because his strategy follows fundamental laws of human nature that never change. I look forward to immersing myself in back engineering Barack Obama and sharing my findings here.

I believe Ferny is on the same page with me here.

- Charles Heflin

(Nov. 8th, 2008) Wow. Looks like our next president will be the first president to head a social network while in office:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/chrishughesatthecampaign/gGxZvh

The genius of having setup a social community for his campaign might now transfer to how he might govern and influence activity among the American populace during his presidency.

Given that these are critical economic times and it is very likely to get much, much worse, it will be very interesting to see this play out.

I’m reminded of how FDR held the country together during the Great Depression and kept people from going into a panic. When FDR requested that people put their money back in the bank to keep the banking system from collapsing, people lined up the next morning to put their money back in the bank. They were looking for instructions from their leader and they got it.

Regardless of political philosophy, this is the first president who has the potential to influence a population the same way FDR did and social media will play a huge factor in doing this.

You have to pay attention to what Obama’s team is doing for the sake of your business. But also, if you are affiliated with another political party, you’ll definitely want to learn from what Obama is doing and implement to level the playing field in future elections.