Nov

Barack Obama is president so what?

Filed Under (Social Marketing, Tips) by admin on 04-11-2008

This political campaign and the 2008 election has garnered more attention, controversy and buzz than any election I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.

Many of you have been asking me my thoughts on the election, who I voted for, and where this is all headed.

I will give you my thoughts on the election and where I believe it’s headed. However, since voting is a personal thing I’m not going to divulge that to you.

I definitely believe and we’re already seeing Barack Obama’s election having a massive positive affect and triggering celebrations around the world.

It’s no secret George W. Bush’s presidency was highly loathed in the international community.

So it’s fairly certain at least at the start of his presidency America will have much better diplomatic relations with every country in the world. Even Iran’s president Ahmadinejad came out and offered congratulations to Obama on his election.

No Iraninan leader has done this since the tensions between the US and Iran started over 20 years ago.

And so all of these things are good for America.

There’s no question there’s going to have to be a new policy direction back to a more balanced budget and eliminating this ridiculous deficit spending of the last eight years.

The disastrous financial policies have almost doubled our national debt and caused the highest inflation we’ve seen since the early 80s and the Jimmy Carter years.

So brace yourselves. Because no one likes increased taxes, a balanced budget is going to have to come from government spending cuts.

This means lots of the social programs that you may have come to know and love will be cut or eliminated altogether. This has to happen to get America’s balance sheet back into the positive and going in the right direction.

Since this is a business blog I’m now going to talk a bit about the use of social media and technology in this campaign.

Since you’re a reader of this blog about social media and social media marketing I know you keep up with what’s going on in the social space.

So remember back to this time in 2007 (Oct-Nov ‘07) when Ron Paul was dominating Digg, Propeller and the other social media sites. He got massive buzz and was having tremendous success in fund raising by capitalizing on his social media buzz.

For a couple of months there I remember seeing numbers where he had generated over $5 million per month in donations mainly from this Internet buzz.

He was also all over YouTube getting massive video views and comments.

Unfortunately, his shooting star and the buzz which went along with it quickly faded. And then there was a lull.

Obviously, the results of the election would lead you to believe Barack Obama did a much better job filling this void in the social media space than did John McCain.

Obama’s people were definitely better and for the last three to six months before the election it seemed like every other story on the front page of Digg and Propeller was about Obama or some story bashing John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin was especially chided and ridiculed on a lot of the stories for her various gaffes and perceived gaffes.

I didn’t watch the vice presidential debates. And only watched part of one of the presidential debates since I was up at the gym working out and that’s all they had on the TVs.

I get most of my news and stay up to date via the Internet because I read faster than I can watch a one-hour TV program. And I prefer to take in my information via reading.

But I do know Twitter was used during these debates for you to tweet various questions and comments for the candidates.

And there were lots of twitter users posting all kinds of stuff the night of the election. I don’t know Twitter’s numbers but I’m sure it was probably the highest usage time in the history of the Twitter company.

Apparently their servers were able to handle it because I did not experience any outage in my Twitter service during this time.

Clearly Barack Obama and his campaign managers used technology far better than John McCain and his camp did.

One of the biggest things Obama did was use it to get real-time feedback and see what issues were top of the mind consciousness for the electorate.

And he highlighted those issues most relevant and pressing on people’s minds and therefore the people galvanized behind him. Also, at his website he set up a continuity program where he was taking credit card donations.

He added a setup where you could make a monthly donation to his campaign and it auto bills your credit card.

Much has been said lately in the business space and especially the Internet marketing space about having recurring monthly subscription programs as the way to wealth. Ryan Deiss just released his Continuity Blueprint system and I’m sure was very proud to see Barack Obama already using the techniques he’s teaching.

No other candidate has ever done this and I’ve never seen it in a political setting. And it was brilliant

Clearly you see the power of ongoing recurring income streams because Obama raised more money than any candidate in history.

He was able to buy $6 million (I believe that’s the correct figure) worth of TV time over the three major networks when he bought that 30 minute infomercial which aired like three nights before the election. No other presidential candidate has done that except for Ross Perot.

But Ross didn’t buy based on funds raised for his campaign he just spent out of his own personal and business war chest.

Last I heard Obama had raised over $500 million for his campaign. I don’t know if that was true or just an exaggeration on the news channel I was watching but the power of the Internet and monthly subscription plans was definitely proven in this presidential campaign.

Obama’s fund-raising did cause some controversy but clearly his use of technology and his Website’s fundraising success were critical to his victory.

I highly recommend you start your own continuity program and at least devote some time to these tools like Twitter, Facebook Connect, Digg, Propeller and other big social media sites because they’re a huge part of the Internet and growing in importance in people’s lives.

I’m sure you have your own data and theories on the use of technology in this campaign to sound off on. Go ahead and do so in the comments section and I’ll look forward to a lively and may be even controversial conversation.

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