I had explored Barack Obama’s web strategy which was very well implemented and executed.  The success of his campaign was not only due to his website but his social media strategy which made his team connect with people and share information.

Barack Obama had some tough challenges to face as a candidate, he was relatively unknown and inexperienced in the political scene.  So how were voters going to pay attention to him?

He thought grassroots and made sure he appealed to the individual by establishing a connection with them.

The three major goals of the campaign that the social media strategy was build upon were

• Fifty State Strategy
• Targeted the dissaffected center
• Focused on small donations

These goals were tied into the web strategy, new media strategy, traditional media and all three were interlinked very well.

Barack Obama had a presence on many social networks, this way he was able to reach a wide range of individuals that participate in these spaces.

A common look and feel was maintained in these spaces that tied in with the branding of his website.

Each site was updated with the latest on where Barack was going to be, what his platform was and updates from the campaign trail, this went a long way to engage and motivate potential voters.

Videos of off line activities were posted instantly to YouTube, Facebook etc.. and cross linked on all these sites as well as back to the Blog.

This gave potential voters in these spaces the opportunity to communicate their views, issues and their personal campaign stories.

The best part was that communication from the campaign team was maintained consistently and constantly during the election especially on the voting day.

The team was also very open and encouraged people to take the logos and customize them towards their own causes and promoted their causes.  This openmindness was also part of their viral success.

The call to action buttons to link back to the website, raise funds and vote were easily accessible through each of these networks.

Here are some brief stats and facts from some of these social spaces.

Custom MyBarackObama.com social network

2 million profiles, 200000 offline events planned on this site.  4000000 blog posts, 35000 volunteer groups, 70000 people raised $30million on their personal fundraising pages.

The official facebook page had over 3 million supporters hence one update was easily accessible by this group.  These people were also able to comment and give their feedback.

There were more than 500 groups and more than 300 applications.

Barack Obama channel with the latest videos from speeches, meetings, rallys etc.

148304 subscribers, 25024 friends,

1827 official videos, 139,000 related clips.  The Yes We Can music video was viewed more than 14 million times.

Photos from every possible campaign office etc…

7127 contacts, testimonials from around the world

Following 167849 and had about 162425 followers.

Here are some special Barack Obama and Obama or McCain tweets

1088437 friends.

Linked in is a social network for professionals.

He had 500 connections here.

Connect, connect, connect

Having friends, fans, connections etc… with people in these spaces Barack Obama was able to connect with over 5million people online.  Inspire them to raise funds and finally vote.

Through this mesh of social networks there were over 1billion emails sent, 7000 different messages targeted to specific audiences.

The basis of a good social media strategy is to use on line tools to make real-world connections between people. That is exactly what was achieved by Barack Obama’s campaign.

As a social media consultant I am very excited to see the future developments on barackobama.com.  For now Change.gov has been launched and it’s g0al is to get the people of the US to share their stories and goals.

If you want to share in the inauguration ride then check out TripVerde-Obama.

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This post only covered a few of the many social networks that Barack Obama had a presence.  Here are a few more to explore on your own.

Enjoy.

Mark Jaquith came all the way from Florida to share his view of Wordpress Security.

Tips for better security with Wordpress

• Update to new release
• Use popular plugin
• Add this code to wp config
• Good password – has to be criptic, use shift key, different password for different sites, no personal info.. Check out Passwordone. Wytopia
• Use Subversion
• wp_specialchars()
• CSRF
• wp_nonce_field()

Great news, Wordpress is getting more secure with each new release.

My camera did not have batteries yesterday so I had a lot of short video clips that I will post once I have edited them. Today I have put the video aside and will share pictures with you.

Walking in …….

Who’s that?…

Mathieu ….

Another day of great presentations and discussions.

One of the biggest questions I was hoping to have answered this weekend at Word Camp Toronto is the advantage of using wordpress over Joomla.

I don’t have a clear answer as of yet and hope to find the answer by the end of this weekend.

Any thoughts on this?