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Yes we can, Obama declared - and yes, indeed they did as the US Election ended with an Obama victory. In a post I wrote last week - Barack Obama Winning On The Web, I looked at how statistics on the Internet suggested that Obama was winning the race for attention and possibly, engagement, on the web.

The statistics seemed to give Obama the edge with numbers for YouTube views, Facebook friends, Blog mentions etc much larger than those of his opposition, John McCain. I suggested it would be fascinating to see analysis surface about the effect of Obama’s on-line campaign, if Obama was to win the election. Well, he did, and there has.

ReadWriteWeb have posted an article which references some data collected by Trendrr (I think that 2 ‘r’s at the end of the name future proofs them, ready for web 3.0!). The article - Obama’s Social Media Advantage - although it’s no proof that Obama’s on-line engagement helped him win the election, it does show that Obama had some 500 million mentions on the Blogosphere in the last 10 weeks or so, compared to McCain’s 150 million (although these mentions may have been positive or negative). The data also points to a huge amount of extra engagement in the days leading up to the polls - with Obama gaining more than 10,000 new followers on Twitter, and McCain just 924 (OK, I know that’s 920 more than I have in total, but still!!)

Again, it’s difficult to see how much impact the campaigns had on these figures, but it is clear that Obama managed to cause many, many more conversations, and I’d be very, very surprised if his on-line activity didn’t feed this. I’m sure that by using on-line engagement, a greater web visibility, and the ability to create a story worth talking about, Obama has managed to drive conversations.

The article finishes with a statement which should resonate with all organisations which deal with the public - not just election campaigns:

…looking forward to the next campaign cycle, it seems clear that all political campaigns, especially at this level, will start ignoring social media trends at their own peril.

I’ll keep an eye (or an RSS net) out for any further analysis on the Obama campaign, and any more direct correlation between his on-line engagement and his election win. How much impact did the on-line campaign have and how much will this trend change for the next election, or elections in other countries?

What do you think about Obama’s on-line campaign: how much of the success can be attributed to social media, and more importantly for social marketing in business: how can this be measured?

UPDATE: Several other websites have recently posted summaries of Obama’s on-line campaign, most notably the BBC.co.uk - with Online lessons for UK in Obama win, and Guardian.co.uk - with Obama’s win means future elections must be fought online.

Tags: barack obama, social media, Social Networks, US election