Using Social Media For Political Campaigns

December 10, 2009 · Print this article, Visited 207 times, 1 so far today

There are a whole host of strategies that go into managing a major presidential campaign, from using social media to spread a message to developing analytics.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Dan Siroker, former Deputy New Media Director, Obama Presidential Transition and Founder of CarrotSticks spoke about his work on the campaign.

Dan-Siroker

Siroker was the head of the Obama analytics team during the campaign. He shares some social media stats about the candidates.

Facebook friends: Obama 2.4 million, McCain 600,000

YouTube: Obama 90 million, McCain 20 million

Unique visitors: 50 million for Obama and 30 million for McCain

When it came to money McCain raised $201 million and Obama raised $656 million. Obama raised over $500 million online and $156 million offline.

Lesson 1: Define quantifiable success

Success can be broken down by looking at CPC, website sign up rate, email sign up, and money raised per recipient.

Lesson 2:Question assumptions

 He tried different variations on buttons and media (sign up vs. join us now; media, family picture, change video, other images and videos). Siroker said they did various tests with Google Website Optimizer and utilized the data.

Lesson 3:Divide and conquer

He talks about the different donation buttons they experimented with such as Donate Now, Please Donate, Why Donate and Donate and Get a gift.

Lesson 4:Take advantage of circumstances

As an example Siroker shows a clip of Sarah Palin being critical of Obama's community organizer position. The campaign used the clip in an email to supporters and raised $10 million.

Lesson 5:Turn customers into evangelists

Siroker says you can use all this as a business model.  Supporters of the campaign were connected and easy to share. He calls it social affiliate marketing.
 

WebProNews Reporter/Anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

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