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Social Networking and Your Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama

Perhaps we can turn to one of the most famous men in the world to educate us about the merits of Social Networking and business: Barack Obama. Obama’s campaign was able to market its brand through Social Networking to gain a sizable and distinct advantage over its political opponents during the 2008 presidential campaign.

At an early stage in 2007, Obama sought the advice of Netscape founder and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen about how to best take advantage of Social Networking. The consultation prompted the Obama machine to tap into more than 200 social sites to reign over the competition when it came to Social Networking campaigning.

For one of the giant Social Networking sites, MySpace, Barack Obama’s main profile generated over a  million friends compared with John McCain’s 200,000+. (Article Available for Subscribed Marketingprofs.com Members) But the effort did not stop there, the campaign created individual Obama groups according to targeted demographics to increase the likelihood that their message would reach its intended audience. For example, groups such as NYC4Obama, African Americans for Obama, and Veterans & Military Families for Obama were all designed and managed for maximum exposure and generated thousands upon thousands of members in addition to the members on his main profile.

Barack Obama’s own website, barackobama.com, also has a strong Social Networking component to it. Visitors are prompted to become members of a community where they can donate to Obama, organize Obama events and fundraisers, share all kinds of information, learn about get-togethers, interact with Obama emails and video feeds and review speeches. The campaign has gone so far as to turn to Social Networking to enact future programs for the 2008-12’ presidency such as creating the “Social Investment Fund Network.” This Network will, “use federal seed money to leverage private sector funding to improve local innovation, test the impact of new ideas and expand successful programs to scale.”

The presidential campaign is a business and Obama is its sale. By using online marketing and intelligently leveraging the exposure of Social Networking, Barack Obama was able to gain leaps and bounds against the competition who did not have the same success with Social Networking sites.

With a plethora of online marketing knowledge resulting from the presidential campaign, Obama will continue to use Social Networking as a way to push his agenda, and in essence, expand his business.

Now do you think he’ll be my friend?