Oct
27
Barack Obama’s lesson in Social Media Internet Marketing for your business
Filed Under Online Marketing, Social Networking
Politics aside, no one can argue with one very significant way that Barack Obama is light years ahead of John McCain – his campaign has recognised the importance of social media Internet marketing and knows how to make the best use of it to energise the masses, rope in new participants and even collect millions of dollars. And the strategy that has really paid off big for Obama can work wonders for your business too!
As Barack 2.0 (a website that discusses how to apply Obama’s social media marketing strategies to small businesses) says:
The Obama campaign has fully utilized social media to change the way political campaigns are run. And there are many lessons small business people can learn from studying his campaign. Just as Obama has used tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to “win friends and influence” people, small business people cand do so as well. And finding enough new customers efficiently is one of the leading challenges small businesses face.
Social media Internet marketing is a relatively recent phenomenon that has the power to transform your business website from an unknown dot, lost in the Internet backwaters, to a prime piece of online real estate receiving thousands of visitors a day. The thing is that the social media enable total strangers to connect with like-minded people and to communicate, share ideas and establish trends faster than ever before.
Obama’s campaign goes way beyond a very professional looking interactive website and blog.
His YouTube account contains a vast collection of videos that is more than just about the campaign itself. For example, in one clip, his sister talks about their mother and Obama’s early life, allowing him to connect with voters in a personal way that is difficult to achieve in public rallies. With over 100,000 people subscribed to receive updates when a new video is added and many times that number in actual viewers, the social media Internet marketing potential is enormous. You see, whenever anyone comments on a video or shares it with a friend (which is happening all the time), that’s ordinary people doing marketing for Obama.
The same thing goes for his Flickr account, packed with photos of the campaign and his Facebook page with well over 2 million registered supporters, and you will also find Obama is active on several other social media platforms, including LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter.
So how do you get started with your social media Internet marketing campaign for your business? The easiest way is to start small with a few social platforms and work your way up. Take a look at what we have done for our client Pearly Grey Ocean Club.
The first thing we did was create a gmail account that is used to coordinate all the other social media features and keep track of passwords and other details using Google Docs (as well as providing access to Google Analytics for the main website and blog). This gmail account makes it easy to handle so many accounts that might have to be accessed by different members of a company’s staff and also acts as a marketing e-mail address.
Pearly Grey have been running their blog www.pearlygrey.info for some time now, so we built a Flickr account for them with photos of the tenerife resort and events and guests and incorporated it onto the blog. We also set up a YouTube account for them, and a FaceBook profile where they can keep guests and clients updated with more of the latest happenings, and which allow viewers to easily share videos, images and other information about Pearly Grey with their friends.
So, take the plunge and get started with your social media Internet marketing for your business. Get a LinkedIn account for your directors and possibly main staff, upload pictures of your products, offices, staff parties, and so on to your Flickr account, tap into the power of FaceBook, and upload some cool videos to YouTube. As you work at it, you develop a network of prospects and clients who are interested in what you’re selling and rope them in to spread the word among their friends as part of your extended team of marketers. Once you get started and begin seeing the results, you won’t look back!
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6 Responses to “Barack Obama’s lesson in Social Media Internet Marketing for your business”
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View John Beckley's profile
I think Obama have used Internet in a great way to promote himself. He understand how to reach people and how powerful Internet is.
We are only 4-6 weeks into embracing social internet marketing as a business tool, but already we can see the possibilities.
It’s really exciting to think where this new media can take our business.
Yes Dennis this is all new marketing territory and its exciting! I’m looking forward to seeing how your FaceBook business page evolves http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pearly-Grey-Ocean-Club/Pearly-Grey/39865552720
Definitely agree. Our company has definitely benefited from this social networking driven by Sorted Sites. Its almost created a family tree where everyone is part of it. This is the future and reality!
100% agree
Thanks for the post. I think its true that internet marketing has a big deal to play in these modern days of fast growing computer knowledge.