Obama and Social Media: The Medium Is the Message

Well before the November election, it was clear that both search and social media would be powerful forces in shaping the election's outcome.

In the Spring of 2008, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported the following Social Networking usage comparing Obama and McCain supporters:

The Obama campaign clearly acted on this and similar research.

As David Erickson of e-Strategy recently pointed out, Obama "set up shop at all the major centers of gravity but also at the major niche networks that cater to specific demographics. Within Facebook itself, they segmented audiences by creating fan pages for various demographic groups.
They even created a presence where you wouldn’t expect to find them, such as at Faithbase. While Democrats have typically not fared very among people who attend church regularly, their mere presence there speaks volumes. People will often give you credit for merely being there; they may not vote for you in the end, but you’ve earned a measure of good will for trying."

The Medium is the Message.

Thanks to David for this list of social networking sites that Obama used to reach voters in 2008.

Facebook
Michelle Obama
Joe Biden
Obama Action Wire - Rapid response page
Students for Barack Obama
Veterans for Obama
First Americans for Obama
Latinos for Obama
African Americans for Obama
Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders for Obama
Women for Obama
Obama Pride
MySpace
YouTube
Flickr
Digg
Twitter
Eventful
LinkedIn
Black Planet
Faithbase
Eons
Glee
MiGente
MyBatanga
AsianAve

Social Media Search Tools

Since Twitter just re-launched it's People Search Tool, now's a good time to take a quick look at some of the other social media search tools now available. In aggregate, these tools help you dig deeper into the Twitter landscape, connect with influential people, monitor conversation trends, and alert you via email when your name or brand (or any word) is mentioned on Twitter.


Tweetbeep is basically like Google Alerts for Twitter. It's a free web-based service that lets you get notified via e-mail whenever someone mentions a word, name or phrase on Twitter. Find out immediately when someone tweets (posts) your name, company, or website address on Twitter, even if they use a URL-shortening service like TinyURL.

Note: they are growing very fast and the site has been offline as of late.


MrTweet helps you find and connect with the most influential people in your industry based on who you already follow on Twitter.
https://www.mrtweet.net/

Twitstat shows the most popular words of the last 500 tweets of people tracked by @twitstat. Get automatic hourly updates of the Top 10 by following @twitgeistr
www.Twitstat.com



Of course, if you haven't already heard, Twitter just re-launched their Twitter People Search Tool which finally allows you to find people by name even when their Twitter account username is an alias.

I recommend you check out all of the above, but so far, I still find Twitter's search tool to be the best search tool at finding the most relevant social media conversations related to my clients' brands and my own fields of interest.