Social Media

Building Communities – Barack Obama and Politics 2.0

I recently read Time Magazine’s June 16 article by Karen Tumulty about how Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama won the nomination (overcoming a front runner) and changing American Politics forever.  The author shared how Obama put together by far the best political operation of either party by building a “rare, frictionless machine that runs with the energy of an insurgency and the efficiency of a corporation.”  How did he do it?  By embracing social media principles, Barack Obama grew a community of supporters that enabled him to steamroll his way to a Democratic nomination victory and it might very well bring him to the White House.

Running his campaign like a business, Obama made sure that the voter is king by providing human presence in all engagements with them.  A customer service center was setup to ensure a human voice would be at the end of their phone lines 24×7.  The normally closely guarded voters list was turned over to volunteers who used their laptops and mobile phones to contact these people and get them supporters.  In short, the power of word-of-mouth got people talking and got them interested with what Obama had to say and what he had to offer.

This resulted to a large turnout of supporters, both in the caucuses and rallies and in fundraising.  Wherever he will make a speech or have a meet-up, people showed up and listened.  This happened not just in the big donor activities but even in the small-dollar ones, which Obama didn’t ignore but in fact spent more time there.  And what people saw and heard, they shared and spread around to their networks, both offline and online.  Obama’s “chum stores” which sold election trinkets and stuff like key chains, t-shirts and hats were always sold out in events (it also provided them an opportunity to create a database of supporters from the people buying).  And online, people blogged about Obama, submitted his stories in Digg, Reddit and Buzz, and expressed their support for him in the various social networks and social media (remember Obama Girl?).

In the words of Mr. Obama, “As somebody who had been a community organizer, I was convinced that if you invited people to get engaged, if you weren’t trying to campaign like you were selling soap but instead said, ‘This is your campaign, you own it, and you can run with it,’ that people would respond and we could build a new electoral map.”  That sums up how he succeeded.  Instead of selling to your target market (whether that will be voters, consumers or users, it doesn’t really matter), it’s best to build a community and engage that community by connecting with them and involving them.  Why does it work?  Because in the end, our target markets are people and people would rather respond to people they trust rather than to a politician or a marketer for that matter.

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© 2008 Twikinomics by Jonas de los Reyes.