Obama online in '08, and how it's shaping 2012

Barack Obama was certainly not the first politician to use the internet as a part of his campaign strategy, but in 2008, he sure did set the bar higher for politicians in the future. Moving forward from Obama’s 2008 campaign, politicians and communications specialists have the opportunity to learn some valuable lessons and tips for using electronics to help win an election. Colin Delany discusses some of the take-aways from Obama ‘08’s strategy in his articles, Learning from Obama: Lessons for Online Communicators in 2009 and Beyond and Using the Internet to Win in 2010.

There were a few major themes discussed in both articles which I found to be interesting. Two of the broad ideas agree are important to keep in mind in using the internet for a campaign includes: 1. The online portion of the campaign must be a part of, and not separate from the whole campaign, and 2. It is not enough to just have an online aspect of the campaign, it needs to be maintained and managed regularly and effectively.

I think these two points are especially important. In 2008, the Obama campaign integrated his online presence into the rest of the campaign- it was not a separate entity. The website, emails, Facebook page, Twitter- everything that was online was on message and consistent with the rest of the campaign. This set the stage for the next point which I thought was important- being able to not only have these tools, but to use them successfully.

The Obama campaign did not just create a website and Facebook and Twitter accounts in order to leave them, idle. The campaign set “focused and measurable goals” as Delany points out, and stuck to those goals. This campaign used these tools to interact with the public in order to gain funds and support as well as to inform supporters and let supporters and organizers inform the campaign with what was working and what wasn’t.

In addition to these two broad concepts that Delany discussed, he also wrote about more specific details that the Obama team utilized and will notably be important for campaigners in the future to employ if they want to keep up. This ranged from which online tools to use, such as a website, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter accounts, and blogging, as well as how to use these, what their purposes are, and what to keep in mind throughout the campaign in regards to the online presence.

As the 2012 presidential election begins to heat up, it is likely that many of these campaigns will utilize (and many have already begun to use) these tools and tips to help their campaigns. It is still too soon to tell, but it will be interesting to observe as technology and peoples’ online creativity continue to evolve how the campaigns will move forward from 2008, and set the bar higher, once again.