Saturday, November 8th, 2008...9:30 PM
President-Elect Obama Leveraged Social Media In Big Way
President-Elect Barrack Obama’s victory was the result of many factors but I really think he totally manhandled his rival Senator John McCain at fund raising, campaign organization and leveraging social media. In the 2008 Presidential race, President-Elect Obama leveraged all aspects of social media to not only raise funds, but he also leveraged the Internet to connect with voters on the issues, grow his base, stimulate conversation and debate, and deliver key messages and announcements. This was an effective use of social media for communication for voters and the media.
The data is now coming in on just how big Obama’s advantage was due to his commitment to social media. Check out this data from the online statistics and mash up tool Trendrr:
- While overall blog mentions of Obama and McCain varied greatly during the last year (and we can’t say if those were positive or negative posts), close to 500 million blog postings mentioned Obama since the beginning of the conventions at the end of August. During the same time period, only about 150 million blog posts mentioned McCain.
- Obama also held a clear lead, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared to McCain’s 219,404. Just between November 3rd and November 4th (election day), Obama gained over 10,000 new friends on MySpace, while McCain only gained about 964.
- On Twitter, Obama gained 2865 new followers between the 3rd and 4th (for a total of 118,107), while John McCain’s Twitter account only has a paltry 4942 followers in total.
There are, of course, a lot of reasons for why Barack Obama’s campaign gained a lot more traction on social networks and blogs than the McCain campaign. The demographics of social media users tend to fall in line more closely with those of today’s Democratic voters.
During the Primary season though, Ron Paul also took a commanding lead on Internet use and leveraging social media versus all of the Republican pack. If we harken back to the 2004 campaign former Governor Howard Dean was very innovative as well fund raising over the Internet. As we look forward I believe all future campaigns will take social media very seriously as a way to fund raise, communicate, expand the base and more.
Related info in Scott Kirsner’s Boston Globe Column
5 Comments
November 12th, 2008 at 3:10 AM
He sure did
November 16th, 2008 at 3:15 AM
Obama had redefined campaigning. What a model for companies to follow on how to tap the social networking opportunities of the web as well.
January 19th, 2009 at 7:42 AM
[...] and identified the significance of it’s increased use during the election. I have blogged about the incredible advantage President-elect Obama had with his campaign using social media in [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 3:45 PM
[...] groups we have been watching closely here at JeffBennett.Org lead the survey list: Zappos andthe Obama Presidential Campaign. The full list includes: 1. Zappos (online shopping site) 2. Obama (campaign and presidency) 3. [...]
March 19th, 2009 at 4:26 AM
big up mr social media
let the wanna be presidents now follow your lead
Leave a Reply