One thing you have to hand to the Obama campaign they knew how to use Social Media effectively during the campaign. The Republicans can learn some lessons from this and so can some companies.
Many of the things the Obama camp did cost them nothing but one of their staffers time to make sure they were engaged. One instance was the utilization of Ustream.tv
As many of you know I have been using Ustream for the live portion of my podcast and while I draw small crowd in the middle of the night. The Obama team would put a live Ustream Channel at ever speaking event he went to and thousands would tune in.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, they used blog commenters and bloggers effectively to neutralize negative commentary. With a dedicated group of staffers watching blogs they would pounce on sites almost instantly when someone had a negative thing to say and used blogs to essentially blast the competition.
Very effective use of technology was key. It made the McCain campaign look weaker as they did not use the tools that many people of all ages use today to communicate. The next person to run for president is going to have to get their social media game on.
Oh and what both camps missed, political podcasters could have been running ads as well in their podcast as they could have had a new message each day.
It’s pretty obvious that the Ustream people did not promote it as the only thing I ever saw on there front page was Obama streams??