Barack Obama utilized social media effectively in his campaign for the presidential election. While Obama is a politician, not a businessman, there is still a lot that business people can learn from him about using social media and being authentic.
According to The New York Times, Obama teamed up with Marc Andreessen, a Netscape founder and Facebook board member, to help him use social networking in his campaign. Through social networking, Obama was able to raise money, organize locally, and get out the vote. After being elected he came into office with a database of supporters, that could be engaged instantly, an excellent source of support to help him govern.
John C. Havens’ “Tactical Transparency and Organized Authenticity” points out that not only did Obama use social media well, he knew how to connect with people through them. The people following him on Twitter or receiving his text messages felt like they were connecting to him on a personal level. Seeing that you have a text message from Obama can make you feel like you are actually a part of his message and mission.
In order to build trust in his campaign among his audience and voters he relied on authentic communication. For an example, check out this podcast of Obama talking about Father’s Day.
Obama is very open and down to earth when talking about his family, but he still ties it to his political messages. By talking openly about something personal, Obama bridges the gap between politician and regular human being. He does a good job of showing that he is just like us, he just happens to be a powerful politician. CEOs trying to be more transparent and authentic should follow Obama’s example. You can be authentic without giving away your strategies (whether in business or politics). People just want to be able to connect with you in some way.
I have to personally agree that Obama did a great job utilizing social media throughout his political campaign. He knew he had a younger generation of voters to look out for and I knew many people who were either connected to his newsletter, signed up to help on his site, or set up facebook accounts about him. He was even able to get advertising in some video games which I found to be brilliant. Obama’s use of social media will pave the way for future campaigns and will have candidates really reaching out to new Web 2.0 technologies to use as tools to broaden their reach. Very interesting topic. Good work!
Just another reason for me to love Obama:) I had heard he used a lot of social media like Twitter and Facebook (there were so many groups supporting him on Facebook!) and I really think this made an impact on his campaign. I feel like Obama has a knack for connecting personally with people, and social media is the perfect outlet for him. I really liked the podcast too! Even though the campaign is over, I hope Obama – and his crew – continue to use these technologies to keep in touch with America. I think this would help keep Americans in the loop and feel like our president really does care about us. This just goes to show CEOs, if our president can use social media and have it work in his favor, so can companies!
Great post! I really enjoyed it!
Elaine, this was such a great post! I feel that Obama did an excellent job of using new social media tools within his campaign, and, liked you mentioned, it helped him gain and foster so much online support with constituents that he may not have reached otherwise. With one of his big audiences of voters being college students, I also felt that he did a great job in using new social media within his campaign because he was reaching out to that specific public where they already existed, the Web, which was very smart of him. I also agree with your point that, no matter whether you are a businessman or a politician, transparency and authenticity are very important qualities to possess in your use of new social media.