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Case study:Barack Obama

and Social Media

Module 01b:

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Social media and the banana leaf

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Digital banana leaf

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1st Social Media President

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Barack Obama: Yes We Can?

• A black guy…

• With a funny name…

• And that notorious middle name…

• Having serious inexperience problems…

• Wearing this outfit….

• Wants to be the next president?

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The stats

Source: Edelman

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Obama vs McCain

• Obama web team was led by Blue State Digital formerly from Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign who built the social network My.Barack.Obama.

• Key member who joined team was Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook

• Team posted more varied content in many more online sites. Eg: 1819 videos on YouTube compared to 330 on McCain’s channel.

• He followed everyone who followed him on Twitter.• His emails sounded personal and were crucial in raising over

US$300m of the US$650m he raised

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Connecting online• Easy: MyBO made it easy to recruit

others, create your own group, organize fundraisers, host an event and get updates.

• Familiar: Online tools used were similar to Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and other popular tools – learning curve was easy.

• Go to the people: Posted content on 15 social networks – fished where the fish were.

• Apps and widgets: Released free iPhone app that gave people up-to-date information on key events in their area.

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Blog

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Facebook and 14 other social networks

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1,800 YouTube videos

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Podcasts

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Staying connected in 2010

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Lessons from Obama 08• Fish where the fish are

• Be transparent and authentic

• Use social media tools that people are familiar with, don’t try to re-invent the wheel.

• Your constituents (fans, followers, readers, audience, advocates) expect you to react to their feedback

• Show up and engage with them in real life

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Media brands are increasingly defined more by the community

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hankins/

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist