I don’t need to tell you why Barack Obama won the 41st United States presidency. But are you aware of the unique ways his campaign team commandeered the victory?
If you participated on my.barackobama.com, you helped the team be responsible for:
- Sending over 1 billion emails to over 13 million email addresses
- Signing up over 1 million SMS subscribers
- Planning over 200,000 offline events via the web
- Organizing 35,000 volunteer groups
- Viewing 14.5 million hours of YouTube content
- Raising $770 million in funds
As the second part of yesterday’s blog post to boost your business, I share with you six tips for success gleaned from President Obama at the Enterprise 2.0 conference I attended last month.
While Obama wasn’t there, Jascha Franklin-Hodge was. He’s the chief technology officer and founding partner of Blue State Digital, the web agency responsible for designing my.barackobama.com and future website iterations after his election.
With credit to Ben Kepes who summarized the notes I scribbled, here are six business lessons the President would tell you:
- Drive Action – be true to medium, think about the use case
- Be Authentic – don’t do press release to email, send email from a person within the organisation, ensure a consistent voice
- Create Ownership – turn users into advocates, crucial to turn people into active rather than passive participants, connect people with each other, solicit ideas from the community
- Be Relevant
- Create a Strong, Open brand – consistent, professional, polished
- Measure Everything – emails, online advertising, engagement, fundraising
Chad Capellman elaborates with quotes and reflections.
Of note, do you remember Sarah Palin’s Republican National Committee speech? After two hours, the campaign team emailed their network with a call for contributions. Within 24 hours, $11 million was raised, indicating the relevance of quick responsiveness.
If you’re a business, how quickly do you respond to actions undertaken by your competition? Shall I remind you of the Motrin campaign gone wrong? Did Advil have nothing to say?
Photo credit: Alex Dunne
Related posts:
- How Obama Ordering a Hamburger is a Lesson and a Warning for Every Chief Executive
- Take Your Business to New Heights, Part 1
- Do You Care That @BarackObama Doesn’t Tweet?
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ari – thanks for the shout out – always happy to chat and chew the fat – it seems we have some common interests. Cheers!
pardon my ignorance, but isn’t it the 44th presidency?
Just curious how you came up with 41st. Thanks for the clarification – I’m a huge fan.
Great post, I was truly astonished at how well the Obama campaign utilized the internet. They really hired key people that knew what they were doing and capitalized on all that the internet had to offer… I am a republican, I must say that Obama’s & his campaign managers are very intelligent when it comes to campaigning and produced impressive results. I actually was semi won over by Obama by election time.