Posts Tagged ‘Social Networks’

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.

The New York Times published an interesting article last week - Obama still dominates in Web 2.0 world, Internet searches. The article compares some key statistics about the attention that both candidates are garnering over the web. It shows Obama is well ahead when it comes to Facebook connections (2,000,000 v 564,000), YouTube views (84,000,000 v 22,000,000), recent mentions in the blogosphere (10,291 v 3,924) and others. It shows Obama is quite clearly ahead when it comes to engaging with, and possibly gaining the attention of, his target web audience.

Obama and his team have leveraged a host of social tools to reach it’s audience, including: a Facebook page, MySpace page, Youtube channel, Twittering, Flickr, an iPhone application, a blog, and more.

Reaching your target audience is clearly important in a presidential campaign, and part of Obama’s target audience is obviously a demographic who engage in social media, so reaching out to them in their natural surroundings sounds like a good idea.

It’s interesting to see the importance that the election team is placing on engaging with people on the web - a web that is changing the way people communicate - and are using a variety of tools, networks, and communication platforms to reach out. It’s also interesting to see that they are obviously backing that importance with a reasonable resource - both in time and money -  investing in social and web tools to promote the cause.

What a great marketing effort.

It will be fascinating to see if any traffic analytics appear after the election, and if Obama wins, whether these new sources of engagement are attributed to his success. I wonder how much more we are going to see these types of tools and networks being used for a variety of promoting communication - if it’s good enough for presidential elections campaigns, then surely all tyes of organisations and campaigns will continue to rely more and more heavily on reaching out using the web.

You can read the New York Times article in full by clicking here.

Graham has been talking a lot about Social networks lately, and I can see why - it’s a massive part of the Internet’s appeal and a natural extension to how we enjoy interacting in the real world (well, that and the fact that Graham generally has a lot to say anyway). However, what is a Social Network?.

A social network is a collection of individuals who are, in some way, connected to one another. This connection usually takes the form of a current or past friendship, but can also take the form of a shared interest, shared vision, sexual preferences or anything else you care to imagine. The key component to a social network are these connections:

• Any individual can be connected to any number of other individuals,
• New connections can be found easily through existing connections,
• Your connections’ connections (?) can be easily seen.

The concept of Social Networks has been around for a long time, but the Internet has provided us with many powerful tools to connect networks and people far more easily than was ever possible before. The power of a social network is in allowing people to connect very, very easily, and then allowing those people to benefit from their network very, very easily (perhaps by introducing them to new friends, finding potential business opportunities or by finding new people to share and discuss your interests with).

These guys have done a great job of explaining social networks very clearly, it’s worth a quick look.

There are a huge number of social networks which have become very popular for connecting people. Some networks exist to connect people through friendship, other networks connect people through a niche, shared interest. some of the most popular networks are:

• Facebook
• Linkedin
• MySpace
• Bebo
• Twitter

(We’ll be taking a look at these sites in more detail soon. Promise.)

Now, you know where people are hanging out, who they are talking with and what they enjoy talking about. What would you like to talk to them about?