Post on 09-May-2015
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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