I knew, I knew –you were going to say – yet another rehash of the first President ever elected thanks to social media story. My intention here is to see which lessons we can draw from that experience for personal and business purposes.
We cannot ignore the awesome demonstration of the power of social media in the hands of committed activist and their influence on social and political reality without some introspection. For me the core lesson lies in the ability of Barack Obama to draw the right lessons from the success and failures of the Clinton, Gore and and Kerry presidential campaigns and the novel use of new media to influence the political process.
No, he did not re-invent the wheel. As a consummate pragmatist he merely took a leave from “the recipe book of ingredients of a winning election process” masterminded for years with deadly efficacy by Republican strategists like Karl Rove and executed it flawlessly with today’s technologies.
He noted how whether you like it or not the Republican Party used “Swift boat” veterans and grassroots religious conservatives to frame the issues that determined the outcome of the election against John Kerry. He responded to that by organizing a countrywide armada of young grassroots evangelists (Colin Powel’s Theory of Overwhelming Force) armed with today’s digital age tools (Blackberries and laptops) .
The thousands of real life digital age foot soldiers dominated for months the media agenda by tweeting, sms’ing, emailing and posting away minute by minute to feed the hungry Facebook, MySpace, Twitter congregations about the plots, sub-plots and insider stories on the “royal succession battle” between Barack and Hillary.
The die was cast and the game over when the final stage arrived as McCain never prepared for nor could make up for lost ground in the few remaining weeks in a campaign where the cyberspace and not the campaign staff or the media dictated the day to day agenda.
What then are the lessons we can take home from this and other political uses of social media for our personal and business wellness. I can think of at least four reasons why it would be perilous for you or your business to ignore social media:
Social Media as a Brand Management Tool
In this day and age of digital media – the most powerful brand is your personal integrity as well as the ownership and control of your name. Therefore open an account and register without delay your name and your company name in all social marketing sites and domain name registers. Don’t repeat the mistakes of Barack Obama, Shaquille O’Neal, American Airlines or the Canadian politician in a local mayoral race who had their names registered by impostors – it could come with serious consequences. Barack could recover his MySpace page from a benevolent fan, but Shaquille had to create “The Real Shaq” to expose the reluctant Shaquille O’Neal impostor. It also took a while for American Airlines to reclaim ownership of its name and brand. Buying and trading in virtual real estate (that is the title given to digital properties like domain names, websites etc) is today a multi million business. Imprudence may cost you an arm and a leg.
Social Media as a Source of Information
During major catastrophes like the recent Mumbai attacks or the Chinese earthquakes user generated content through social media and especially SMS’s, CNN’s iReporters and Tweets by the Twitter hordes are the fastest prime raw source of information for major news organisations and the public alike. They are cheap to set-up and ensure that your target audiences receive your undiluted information whether personal or professional directly from the horse’s mouth and not some diluted 3rd grade interpretation from another source. Why do you think is Barack broadcasting his weekly address via the internet and setting up for the first time the position of a White House Chief IT Officer? Well you guessed correctly and you would be foolish not to have an in-house or outsourced Social Marketing Officer (SMO) for your business.
Social Media as a Tracking Tool
The whole idea of sharing links to bookmarking sites came from its usefulness for academics and researchers. There is so much information published out there which is good and relevant. But we don’t have the time, the connections and the good fortune to be everywhere. But what if I could link into the bookmarks of a view people whom I admire and respect and see what they read and save to their bookmarks, Stumble-Upon, Digg, Twitter, Newsvine etc.. Thus an entire new trend emerged to share links with friends, colleagues and business persons about important referenecs to books, articles, videos etc available on the web within their field of study. The rest as they say is history.
Social Media as a Networking Tool
Though social media were originally developed for dating sites their use today goes beyond that to organising digital spaces for interaction between people of all types of human activities. across the whole world Paid or free local or international membership sites focused on all niches is actually the fastest growing monetizing business model or trend on the internet at the moment. It is a way for you and your business to establish a continued relationship with your contacts and to build trust necessary for future business relations. Why? Because few people make impulsive buys. They need to interact at least 7 times with you and your brand before they develop the confidence to buy.
Social Media as an SEO Tool
If you own a Blog or Website then social media are invaluable search engine marketing tools. If you do not have Blog there is no longer any reason for excuses go to Blogger, WordPress, BuddyPress, WordPressDirect or Weebly and set up yours free today or check out one of many turnkey lazy blogging solutions like niches-in-a-box. Comments in social media provide backlinks to your Blog or website. Link Building plays beneficial role for providing search engine rankings and drive quality targeted traffic to your website from similar sources. If it is done correctly with thoughtful topic relevant comments and topic relevant anchor text the search engines will reward your site or Blog richly with good rankings.
The last but not the least, yes the crucial take away from Barack Obama’s social media lesson is, that for Barack -“Yes We can”- was not a mantra but a daily Call to Action? Daily Cal to Action to tweet, sms, emails, post and speak to someone and anyone about his campaign agenda. These little daily tweets, sms’, emails, article posts did as we now know create in the end create a momentum. Those incremental actions created the tidal wave that moved mountains and resulted in the defeat of Hilary Clinton and John McCain.
Now imagine what each one of us could accomplish in the coming year if we could develop in the same way our personal wellness strategy and deploy the lesson from Barack Obama’s social media strategy in small but consistent daily ways to our individual 2009 Agenda’s?
Start today and don’t stop investing that social marketing strategy. Just tweet it a little bit daily– tweet it and tweet it till it materialializes.
Don’t listen to anyone telling you otherwise – because YOU CAN tweet it – tweet it
360wellnessguy
PS. If you need help understanding the theory and the practice of this whole social media phenomenon from people I have a tremendous respect for and learn enormously from, please check out Charles Hefflin of SEO2020 fame and Vinod Thotapalli from SEOWebsitetraffic.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=642ccaf7-4c66-4bc6-9611-79af3e8867f7)
360wellnessguy