The document outlines 10 lessons from the Obama presidential campaign's use of social media: 1) Have clear campaign objectives, 2) Drive supporters to take action, 3) Allow various levels of engagement, 4) Identify and empower highly engaged supporters, 5) Engage supporters where they are online, 6) Stay relevant to discussions, 7) Combine online and offline supporter activities, 8) Ensure campaign content is easy to find online, 9) Closely measure the effectiveness of social media efforts, and 10) Assemble a dedicated social media team integrated with the overall campaign.
3. Driving Innovation 1.0 Have clear objectives for your campaign Mission - To become president Key Objective - To raise funds for the campaign Key Objective - To engage the wider community to raise money and get other people to vote 3
4. Driving Innovation 2.0 Drive action Email is still king and stimulates most action Ensure low barriers to action Focus on making things happen Action delivers objectives 4
5. Driving Innovation 3.0 Allow people to engage at all levels Different levels of engagement Opportunities for most casual supports to stay involved Drive up commitment by offering more value 5
6. Driving Innovation 4.0 Identifying and empowering superusers - manage the community Identify connectors early Empower committed advocates Give super users tools to activate others - Social and fundraising groups, event organising on MyBo community site. Connections not just left to chance 6
7. Driving Innovation 5.0 Fish where the fish are Go where the people are Objective to make sure that each supporter online regardless of where they are, has a connection with Obama. Used other social spaces to drive conversation back to MyBO community site. MyBO focused on more specific activities - raising finance, campaigning 7
9. Driving Innovation 6.0 Be relevant No.1 Obama Fundraiser Listen to what is being said Identify touchpoints (where are people already talking about you and what are they saying) Be ready to react Engage and add value to existing conversations Sarah Palin - Obama campaign most successful fundraiser - $11 million raised in one day following Sarah Palin speech - Campaign reacted community via email. Giving the cynical speech as a reason the to donate money to ensure Palin could not succeed 9
10. Driving Innovation 7.0 Combine online and offline Get people to act offline - using online to facilitate offline line activities Maximise offline activity by sharing the experiences in the online space Both totally compliment each other 10
11. Driving Innovation 8.0 Ensure people can find your content 90% of people find content through a search engine click (Source Google) You have to be on the first page of search results of you won’t be found. Create simple websites with the URLs of popular search terms. People use You Tube related videos so mimic original critique tags in the Obama response (don’t do a habitat!) 1/3 of people don’t distinguish between organic search results and paid results so they aggressively purchased search ads and adwords. 11
12. Driving Innovation 9.0 Measure everything Track the success of every email Very cheap to track effectiveness Use the users to test Subject of email has probably biggest impact on whether it is opened or not. Campaign found open rate could be doubled from 15% to 30% by just changing the subject line - why not test before you send Campaign developed more than 7000 customised emails tailored to individual prospects making real time improvements Conversion rates improved through the campaign 12
13. Driving Innovation 10.0 Choosing the right team Online was not an add on - online team were pulled together early Team of 11 with the time and skills to deliver. Team had worked on the Dean campaign. Team/advisors of experts - Chris Hughes - co founder of Facebook and Eric Schmidt to name a few. Head of social media reported directly to the campaign manager - integrated social media across the whole organisation 13
14. Driving Innovation 10+ Culture Social media central to the campaign - not a sideline Agile approach to responding Accepting some chaos No room for command and control Open and transparent Set ground rules 14