What marketers can learn from Obama’s use of social media
Social media played an important role in Barack Obama’s victory in the US Democratic party nomination race. Let’s take a look at some of the things he did, and what marketers can learn from it.
The Obama campaign was able to engage more deeply with supporters by having a presence in the environments where they were already online. In other words, you didn’t have to go to Obama - Obama came to you, be that on Twitter, YouTube, or your RSS reader. By using social tools like these, the message could go viral because sharing facilities are built-in. For example, you could embed an Obama speech from YouTube onto your blog, or email it to a friend.
Obama reversed the usual trend of politicians constructing one single mainstream message to appeal to a mass audience. Instead, his campaign was able carefully create tailored messages for a large number of niche audiences, which he could reach via their online communities. Individually, these niches are small, and traditional publicity thinking would say that it’s too costly to reach them (better to focus on the mass market), but by creating a platform for supporters to mobilise into these niches, he was able to get his message out to every corner of the population. Whilst each niche was small, together they added up to a lot - the Long Tail in full effect.
Obama also understood that social media allows two-way dialogue, not just broadcast. This is perhaps best illustrated by the difference in how Obama and Hillary used Twitter. Obama has more followers on Twitter which perhaps you would expect given that he appeals more to the Twitter demographic, but it’s interesting to note that Obama also follows the updates of a huge number of people, whereas the number of people that Hillary follows is exactly zero. By using social media tools as just another form of broadcast, Hillary missed out on the potential for a much deeper level of engagement with supporters.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you read Umair Haque’s blog post about why Obama won, as it’s a perfect example of an Edge Strategy - the new Google-style approach to business that is going to define the post-industrial economy that we are now entering.
Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/seno/
Tom wrote this on 18.09.08 –
It's filed in the Social media, Strategy box
On September 18th, 2008 at 3:56 pm, Rob responded:
Nothing much to do with your post, but worth a mention perhaps that the image you’ve used isn’t owned by the guy on flickr - it’s an ‘obey’ image by Shep Fairey
http://obeygiant.com/post/party-for-change-sf-2
On September 18th, 2008 at 4:15 pm, Trevor May responded:
Although Obama is following a lot of people he, like Clinton, still doesn’t appear to be actively engaging them on a personal level. Our very own PM appears to be doing this a little better by actually listening and responding to other twitter users… Or at least appearing to.
On September 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 pm, Andy James responded:
Maybe it was something to do with Obama hiring Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook.
This was an interesting blog I read.
http://www.clickpogo.co.uk/blog/?author=3
On September 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm, Clive Andrews responded:
I know this much. Ever since I added Barack Obama as a Flickr contact (I can’t even remember why…) I’ve seen images appear on my home page virtually every day in my ‘Your Contacts’ stream.
I’ve rarely opened any of the photos beyond thumbnail size, but their very presence has been enough to convey an image of a guy out and about getting to meet the people.
Thinking about Twitter, the one shame is that the updates, be they McCain, Obama or Clinton, are put together by campaign workers, rather than from the figures themselves, so they don’t often appear at all personal. Of course it would be a big ask to get genuine tweets right from the horse’s mouth, but the first high-ranking politician to use social media to truly let us into their lives would really make an impact.
Are they brave enough?