The Byline: PR and Marketing Insights from Eiler Communications

Background
Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign was historic not just politically but also because of his use of the Internet to promote awareness and create a loyal following. Obama and his campaign strategists realized that on top of public appearances, rallies and speeches the Internet was another effective medium to connect with the people of the United States. President Obama’s use of social media in his Presidential campaign will be the template to inspire future Presidential campaigns and be a beacon for how businesses can use the multiples of new media to reach customers on the Internet.

Obama was successful in realizing the true potential of the Internet as a way to raise $750 million dollars and support for his Presidential campaign. The youth vote played a major role in his landslide victory. Obama was able to earn the support of many first time voters largely because of his use of social media.

Situation
Obama needed to raise money and bring awareness to the people of the United States that he was running for President. The message to get across was that America needed a change and for this to happen, Americans needed to elect Obama as President.

Strategy
To reach every demographic with the one message, “In order for change, you must elect Barack Obama.” AND if you want him to win-you must join the campaign and donate. The initial strategy was to reach the audience by using technology and reaching the donation goal by the majority of donations being under $200.

Tactics
My.BarackObama.com
The site was created with help of Chris Hughes, one of the three Harvard students who founded Facebook. This site allowed Obama’s team to take the use of the Internet to a whole different level by allowing masses of volunteers to self-organize and communicate through their own social networking site. The site enlisted thousands of supporters for his blog, to get the word out about voting in elections and to get “buzz” going throughout the campaign.

By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 2 million profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages.

Obama’s Blog
The blog was updated frequently to keep members coming back, interested and engaged. The blog was fun and encouraged feedback.

Obama on Flickr
The campaign constantly took pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. Pictures were from throughout the campaign including the 82 posted that showed Obama and his family awaiting the election result and celebrating the victory. Most of the pictures were not staged and allowed people to feel like Barack was a “real” person- not just a political figure.

Obama’s YouTube Channel
Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. These videos are said to be more effective because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of their TV show being interrupted.

The campaign’s official videos created for the site were watched for 14.5 million hours. To buy that much advertising time on TV would cost $47 million.

The most famous speech was “Yes, we can.” The video was viewed 1.8 million times on YouTube.

Barack Obama on LinkedIn
Obama’s presence on LinkedIn helped him connect to an older, professional and more politically motivated demographic. His homepage featured links to several web-based tools such as his YouTube videos and his Facebook profile.

Obama used the Q&A feature to pose a question to the LinkedIn audience: “How can the next President better help small businesses and entrepreneurs thrive?” The question generated over 1,500 responses from all types of small business owners and entrepreneurs. The Obama campaign then used the responses to formulate policy initiatives.

Twitter & Obama
Obama used Twitter to announce the various campaign stops and rallies throughout his campaign. His posts were encouraging and always contained a clear call to action.

He had his profile set up for whenever a person followed him he automatically followed them back. By Obama following supporters, he was sending the message that he wanted to communicate and he cared about what they had to say. This created a community and wasn’t limited to just getting others to see what he had to say.

Obama & Facebook
Facebook is home to more than 200 million users and is the most crowded place on the Internet today, making it an easy way to convey messages to millions in very little time.

Obama’s Facebook page listed his interests and provided supporters with interaction by giving them the ability to upload pictures & videos and post comments.

The campaign created an Obama application that supporters could add to their personal profiles. The application put a box in their profile and published stories to their news feed. There was also a plug in that asked users to pledge to vote for Obama and invite their friends to do the same.

Results
Barack’s campaign was everywhere in social media networking sites. Everyone was included: faith based, race based, age based and even event based social networks.

Ultimately, Obama won the Presidency and raised $750 million dollars, primarily through the Internet.

Amanda Deluca

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