There can be little argument that Barack Obama was the first politician to truly leverage the power of social media and the Internet; no other public figure used the web so skillfully and strategically. From his multi-media campaign website, to his use of social networking websites to raise his online visibility, his campaign will be a case study in digital PR for years to come.

Beyond the essential campaign goal of generating publicity and growing grass-roots support, the Obama camp utilized digital communications to clearly disseminate its message; in the past ( and including McCain) political campaigns had to rely on traditional media vehicles to generate exposure and spread their message through strategic sound bytes; as any media relations pro will tell you, in spite of the most strategic messaging and best media relationships, little can be done to control the final outcome. In the end, reporters, editors, producers, and news executives filter messages based on their own biases and agendas. What?? Media have biases?? Yes they do- they are human beings (well except for Ann Coulter… she’s a demon).

For Obama, a primary vehicle for delivering that message was YouTube. In fact, I’d argue that his team rewrote the playbook on how to use YouTube (which has become the second-most used search engine following Google). Not only did they achieve impressive results, but they deployed strategic video messaging to cultivate a sense of community amongst Obama supporters.

The online brilliance of his campaign goes well beyond the powerful use of YouTube videos; the team was also smart about segmenting its supporters and crafting different methods of communication for each group. With younger voters, for example, heavy text messaging; for older voters they deployed short, concise emails. Early on the campaign used their supporters’ information judiciously- an email or a text every few days, at most- to keep people abreast of the latest news and talking points without the expense of TV ads or direct mailings. But the final days before the Election saw the Obama machine sending daily emails and texts, exhorting supporters to vote with friends, participate in phone drives, and volunteer at campaign events. They even offered a contest in which last-minute donors could be selected to attend Obama’s election-night party.

The Obama campaign also mastered the use of the Internet for reputation management and damage control. During the campaign, he launched a website called FightTheSmears, which focused on debunking rumors, correcting media coverage mistakes, and reiterating transparency.
An article in the Washington Post shared the Obama Campaign online operations stats:

• 3 million online donors
• 6.5 million online donations adding up to more than $500 million.
• Of the 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in amounts of $100 or less.
• Upwards of 13 million addresses were captured
• More than 1 billion e-mails sent during the campaign
• Approximately 1 million mobile phone numbers collected
• 2 million profiles created on the My.BarackObama.com social network
• 5 million supporters on other social networking and multimedia sharing sites.

These are the kind of results that make corporate marketers drool. So what was his secret sauce? Business Week looked for the answer but the reporter could only share that “Obama’s secret digital weapon” (the title of the story) is a small firm called Blue State Digital which was founded by four former members of Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2004. Business Week writes:

“The (Obama) campaign declined to discuss Blue State, but the firm says its handiwork and technology can be seen in the more than $200 million Obama has raised online, the 2 million phone calls made on the candidate’s behalf, and in barackobama.com’s social network of 850,000 users, who have organized 50,000 campaign events.”

Obama has created a new level of online communication between the public and the White House–the Web 2.0-era version of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “fireside chats.” Now in the Oval Office, President Obama has continued to leverage online outreach by completely revamping www.whitehouse.gov and the recent launch of recovery.org, which is intended to serve as a central clearinghouse for information related to the newly signed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

While the administration’s rhetoric on transparency is already being criticized (I’ll give you three guesses as to whom) it’s clear that this administration is doing far more than any in our history to communicate- truly communicate- with the American public, bypassing the traditional media’s filters and reaching out to directly to citizens for input. President Obama is using Web 2.0 to make Democracy work the way it’s supposed to: with two-way communication between the Government and the People. Give the President your feedback today at www.whitehouse.gov.

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