A few minutes before Obama took the podium in Chicago’s Grant Park, I got an e-mail from him thanking me for his support and telling me he was just about to take the stage to address the crowd with his victory speech. A few months earlier I received a text message from Obama giving me and other supporters first notice that Joe Biden had been selected as his VP candidate...even before the press broke the story.
"Obama's rise to the presidency will be studied for years to come as the textbook example of a new kind of electioneering driven by people and technology", says Ralph Benko, a principal of the political consulting firm Capital City Partners, in Washington, D.C. (AFP, Obama Surfs The Web To The White House)
This new kind of electioneering drew upon text book Online Community Management techniques to draw in supporters and grow their support through personalized messaging and the use of social media.
In the end, the innovative internet fundraising system attracted more than three million donors who contributed about $650m - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined. (BBC, Why Barack Won)
Online Community Management Was the Tipping Point
From the surface, both the McCain and Obama campaigns used the Web for fund-raising but no one will question that Obama had monumentally more success, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars more than McCain online.
What was the difference? Both campaigns had websites, cultivated bloggers and made heavy use of YouTube. But the Obama campaign took its efforts further by creating a massive grass-roots online network of volunteers.
Like me, you may have received emails and text messages about Obama's campaign. You might have even friended him on Facebook. This was novel. But, it was the sophisticated microtargeting in his campaigns that made it brilliant. The Obama campaign used personalized emails to communicate with people delivering messages relevant to their districts and the issues that they cared about. Beyond getting them to donate this also got them out to vote.
What Obama's campaign realized from the beginning was the power of the social graph and the tools that could spread ideas virally on the web. It wasn't just about informing participants in a passive way, though. It was also about getting them to do something...donating money, time etc. for the campaign. The tactics drew upon human nature...If you saw others doing it, shouldn't you get involved too?
The tactics were brilliant because the campaign tapped heavily into the college and post college crowd that were versed and comfortable with these techniques.
But Obama's electioneering is not new to the web. In fact, web companies have been using the same tactics for years now. The question I have for you is will the techniques ever achieve the level of success that was generated in this campaign? I'm assuming all campaigns will try to use these techniques in the future.
With that said, I want to leave you with an inspiring video...my first introduction to Obama online. It's Will.i.am's (of the Black Eyed Peas) Youtube video 'Yes We Can'. When I last looked, the video had over 11 million views and inspired many like myself to learn more about the man who is now the next President. This video wasn't generated by the Obama campaign but demonstrated the power of new media to lift a political campaign into the limelight. Yes We Can!
