Elizabeth Poeschl

President, Cal Poly PRSSA

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93405

Lindsay Holloway
Associate Editor
Entrepreneur Magazine
2445 McCabe Way, Ste. 400
Irvine, CA 92614
(949) 261-2325

March 18, 2009

Dear Lindsay:

Enclosed is a proposal for small businesses to use social media tools to advance their public
relations campaigns. The proposal is titled How Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign Will
Change Your Small Business.

Statistics and data used in the proposal are from multiple credible sources that include case
studies by leading public relations agencies and information taken directly from Barack Obama’s
website. The combined use of sources help build upon the proposals thesis: In order for
businesses’ public relations campaigns to be successful in 2009, they must engage with their
audiences online.

Thank you for taking the time to review my proposal. I welcome any questions or comments you
may have.

Cordially,

Elizabeth Poeschl
President, Cal Poly PRSSA
650.218.9022
epoeschl@calpoly.edu
www.calpoly.edu/~prssa
http://ElizabethPoeschl.wordpress.com
 Table of Contents
Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1

Elements of the Campaign That Worked Well ............................................................................................. 2

Elements of the Campaign Your Business Can Use ..................................................................................... 8

Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................ 12

Table of Figures
Figure 1 ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Figure 2 (Krempasky) ................................................................................................................................... 6

Figure 3 (BarackObama.com) ....................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 4 (Krempasky) ................................................................................................................................... 9

 Poeschl 1

How Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign Will Change Your Small Business

Introduction

The year 2005 gave rise to the term and practice of sustainability. Businesses and

politicians quickly jumped on the sustainable bandwagon, showing that they cared what their

customers and constituents believed. Just as sustainability became a household name, so too has

social media. According to Wikipedia (which would never be cited normally, but is actually a

perfect resource in this instance) “social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for

sharing and discussing information among human beings.” Social media and sustainability may

have nothing to do with each other, but like the sustainability trend, social media is reaching

heights unforeseen after its climb during the past few years.

There are many reasons why social media has become so popular recently, and one of the

main reasons can be credited to the Internet population increase worldwide and nationally since

2000. An estimated 6,710,029,070 original users worldwide went online in 2008, a 336.1%

increase since 2000 (Internet Usage Statistics: The Internet Big Picture). In the United States –

which has a population of 303,824,646 – 220,141,969 people or 72.5% of the general population

were internet users (Internet Usage Statistics: The Internet Big Picture). Understanding the

increased use of the Internet, businesses, organizations, and politicians took advantage of the

online population growth and targeted many of their advertising, marketing, and public relations

campaigns toward their Internet audiences. After all, with 72.5% of the American population

using the Internet, it was difficult to argue that their primary or secondary audiences were not

using it.
 Poeschl 2

But, Internet users were using the Internet differently than they had before; they were

communicating with people worldwide through various social media outlets that included

Facebook, MySpace, and blogs just to name a few. Social media users demanded that businesses,

organization, and politicians engage in conversations with them, inevitably increasing the need

for public relations. Old forms of Internet advertisements such as the “pop-up” advertisements

that were once popular years ago, were no longer popularly used in 2008 once it was discovered

that they were ineffective, alienating audiences, and continuously blocked by pop-up blockers. In

order to gain customer trust, companies needed to know where their audiences’ conversations

were taking place in order to know what was being said about their company. In other words, if

customers talked about a company in a blog, the company needed to read that blog and comment

on the blog or comment about the blog in the company’s own blog or website. While many

companies did a good job communicating with their customers, none utilized social media

resources better than President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. By the end of this paper,

you will understand how Obama’s campaign can benefit your business.

Elements of the Campaign That Worked Well

Obama’s presidential campaign included an intricate combination of social media: social

networks on his website as well as involvement with popularly used websites, text messages,

emails, RSS feeds, blogs, cellular phone applications, photo and video sharing, widgets, and

micro blogs. With social media alone, Obama’s campaign engaged over six million people

through 15 social networking websites (Krempasky). Table 1 includes statistics for a few of the

top social media tools that were used during the 2008 Obama and McCain presidential

campaigns; the information was compiled from various sources (Krempasky) (Owyang) (van

Veenendaal and Igor) (Hartman). It is apparent from Table 1 that Obama had considerably more
 Poeschl 3

supporters than McCain overall on the Internet. And since an estimated 46% of the American

population “used the Internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the 2008

presidential campaign, share their views and mobilize others,” garnering support through the

Internet was extremely important (Smith and Rainie).

Figure 1

Social Media Barack Obama John McCain

Platform
Facebook 2,379,102 supporters 620,359 supporters
380% more supporters than McCain

Myspace 833,161 friends 217,811 friends

380% more friends than McCain
Youtube 1,792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007
149,258 subscribers 28,343 subscribers
4 uploads per day 2 uploads per day
120,479,084 Channel Views 25,995,773 Channel Views
Twitter 112,474 followers 4,603 followers
Text 1 million subscribers
Messages 20 text messages sent per month on N/A
average
MyBO 2 million profiles created
(Barack 35,000 volunteer groups N/A
Obama social 400,000 blog posts
networking)
Emails 13 million email addresses collected Unreported

The number of supporters on a social media website is important, but the number of

active supporters is even more important. Active supporters help to spread the word by passing

along viral videos, uploading their own videos, bookmarking Obama’s website through social

bookmarking, and writing blog posts just to name a few actions of active supporters. Obama’s

supporters were active. According to a study conducted by Edelman, a leading public relations

agency, Obama supporters uploaded 442,000 user-generated videos on YouTube, which were

nearly four times more user-generated videos than McCain videos were uploaded (Krempasky).
 Poeschl 4

On del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website, (a website that enables users to upload and share

url bookmarks) 232,587 bookmarked websites tagged Obama, whereas only 72,931 bookmarked

websites tagged McCain (Krempasky).

Obama was also successful with generating support through micro-blogging, “a form of

multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates [typically 140 characters or

fewer] or micromedia such as photos or audio clips,” (Micro-blogging). The most popular

micro-blogging website is Twitter (Micro-blogging), which was started in March 2006 and

although an exact number of registered users is not officially reported by twitter, there were an

estimated 3.5 million users in November 2008 (there are currently an estimated 6 million users)

(Twitter Site Analytics Unique Visitors). Of the one million users, Obama had 112,474 people

following his account compared to McCain’s 4,603 followers (Owyang). Obama’s 112,474

followers were able to reach millions. Say one of his followers has 200 of their own followers.

When an Obama follower “tweets” (twitter lingo for writing a status update) a link to Obama’s

website, his or her 200 followers will see that tweet and possibly click on the link to go to

Obama’s website. A few of the followers may even “re-tweet” (or re-send) the message to their

followers and so on.

A good example of twitter’s fast and broad reach is the twitter news that was generated

about the US Airways plane crash in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009. The first public

news about the event was submitted by Janis Krums or @jkrums who uploaded a twitpic from

his iPhone and this message, “There’s a plane crash in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick

up people. Crazy.” Krums became an instant celebrity and “Thirty-four minutes after Janis

posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV as a witness,” (Frommer).

 Poeschl 5

Twitter was an important element of Obama’s social media campaign, but another

important and essential element was Obama’s use of Facebook. With approximately 175,000,000

active Facebook users who are primarily between the ages of 18 and 34, building a strong

presence on Facebook is essential to any business’ public relations plan or political campaign

(Facebook Advertising). Facebook had the largest numbers of supporters for either candidate on

any other website. At the time of the election, McCain had 613,515 Facebook supporters and

Obama had 3,150,000 Facebook supporters, approximately 380% more supporters than McCain

(Hartman). Because Obama knew how important Facebook was for his campaign, he hired Chris

Hughes (24), the co-founder of Facebook to develop the social networking aspect of his

campaign (Stelter). Hiring Hughes, a 24-year-old man whose background was in computer

science and not in politics was a big leap for Obama, but one that he felt confident in making.

“One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change

comes from the bottom up,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “And there’s no more powerful tool

for grass-roots organizing than the Internet,” (Stelter).

Since the 2008 presidential campaigns, people have followed Obama’s advice and have

used the Internet, and more specifically Facebook, for grassroots campaigning. Nick Shalosky, a

21-year-old student at the College of Charleston and the first openly-gay elected official in South

Carolina gives credit to his Facebook campaign for winning a seat on the Charleston County

District 20 Constituent School Board (Shalosky). “I've found a practical use for Facebook. It got

me elected,” said Shalosky “My political science professor was quoted in our local paper as

saying that my model of organizing was ‘an indication of the direction of future campaigns’”

(Shalosky).
 Poeschl 6

Obama’s campaign took the use of Facebook and social networking one step further, by

creating a social networking site on BarackObama.com called My Barack Obama, or MyBO. My

MyBO allowed “users to join groups, connect with other users, plan events, raise money, write

own blogs and volunteer,” (van Veenendaal and Igor). All of the tools that made up MyBO were

elements of traditional grassroots campaigning, but in a new form. Obama supporters could help

Obama from the comfort of their computers. No longer were phone banks necessary (although

there were still many Obama phone banks) since all of the information for making supportive

phone calls was online. To to the “Make Calls” webpage in your MyBO account, click the “make

call” button, and a list of instructions popped up on your screen, even a script that allowed you to

easily fill in the callers’ answers online (van Veenedaal and Igor).

Figure 2 (Krempasky)

MyBO also included a social medium element that was essential in 2008: an iPhone application.

The iPhone application allowed supporters to stay connected around the clock, receiving updates,

blogging, and making supportive phone calls all from their iPhone.
 Poeschl 7

Figure 3 (BarackObama.com)

The results of MyBO were astounding: 2 million profiles were created; 200,000 offline

events were planned; 400,000 blog posts were written; and more than 35,000 volunteer groups

were created (van Veenedaal and Igor). But, MyBO was only successful because it was not

Obama’s only use of social networking. Obama was active on the social networking websites

that his constituent’s used, showing that he was interested in and willing to participate in their

home field. After presenting himself and building a following on already established social
 Poeschl 8

networks, Obama was then able to create MyBO and drive traffic to it from the already

established social networks.

Elements of the Campaign Your Business Can Use

While the social media campaign worked well for Obama, you may be wondering

whether or not it will work for you and your business. Undoubtedly, the first thing that comes to

mind after reading about Obama’s social media campaign is money. You may be thinking that all

of the social media that Obama was engaged in must have been expensive, but it wasn’t. In fact,

Obama only spent less than 2% of his campaign funds on the Internet, which was less than what

McCain spent on the Internet aspect of his campaign (Hartman); and Nick Shalosky, the South

Carolina public official, spent nothing on his grassroots campaign. According to the case study,

Obamanomics, “McCain actually outspent Obama in online Paid Search by 22 to 1” (Hartman)!

However, BarackObama.com attracted millions of more people on average per month than

JohnMcCain.com attracted (Steaprok). So if McCain outspent Obama with his online campaign,

why did Obama have more traffic on his website? The answer is Obama generated traffic to his

website from free social media websites, and once there, visitors stayed and clicked around

because there was a lot to see. BarackObama.com kept the interest of its visitors through MyBO,

widgets, videos, and many other interactive tools.

McCain’s failure on the Internet was his lack of social media attention. In other words,

McCain’s traditional campaign did not take time to personally reach out to and engage with

McCain’s constituents Online. Social media are conversations that take place with anywhere

from two people to millions, but you cannot expect to have people participate in a conversation

that you start if you do not participate in the already existing conversations. And because 72.5%
 Poeschl 9

of the American population used the Internet in 2008, McCain made a big mistake by not

participating in already existing conversations and generating more online support.

Although the online campaign was inexpensive, it was time consuming. For a business

your size, you probably cannot afford to devote the time or the resources to social media

campaigning, and you shouldn’t have to. Keep in mind that Obama’s audience was 303,824,646

people, or every single American of voting age. Your campaign on the other hand will most

likely be much smaller. But, before you start joining every social network or blogging on every

single forum, you should stop and figure out who are your primary, secondary, and tertiary

audiences. If you need help with this first step, I suggest reading The New Rules of Marketing

and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to

Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott. After you discover who your audiences are, the

process of engaging with them is slow. When it comes to establishing your business online, The

Social Pulpit case study suggests four stages: crawl, walk, run, and fly (Krempasky). The

following stages were created loosely based off of the previously suggested steps.

Figure 4 (Krempasky)
 Poeschl 10

Once you know who you top three audiences are, the second stage is to get to know them:

know where they congregate, know what they say about you or your company (if they are even

talking about you), and know how they interact with each other. Why is it important to

understand your audiences before engaging with them? Let us use an offline example. You are

talking with a friend at a dinner party about your favorite topic: politics, when a second friend

enters the conversation midway. “I agree that Clinton’s healthcare plan is great,” you say, “but

her knowledge of foreign affairs is subpar.” Your friend who entered the conversation says, “I

can’t believe Hilary stayed with Bill. What was she thinking?” While your friend did not realize

it at the time, that comment completely stopped your original conversation and probably

frustrated you a little. The same goes with social media. The conversations that are taking place

online have the same societal rules as conversations that take place offline. You cannot engage in

a conversation if you do not understand the topic or if you do not know what is being said during

a specific conversation.

After you get to know your audiences, the third stage is to identify a manageable list of

the top websites, social media, or social networks where they congregate. You may find that you

only have the time and resources to manage one account, which is fine. However, you may

discover that you can manage ten accounts. However many accounts and profiles you create, you

need to remember to keep fully updated on all of your accounts. If you do not stay updated, then

drop that account and focus on the ones that are manageable for you.

The fourth stage is to slowly wade your way into your audiences’ conversations. Over

time, you will get to know your audiences better, and they will get to know you. Your audiences

will talk to their friends about your conversations and soon you will be talking directly with their
 Poeschl 11

friends. The fifth and final stage is to completely jump into your audiences spaces and by this

point, you can probably even begin conversation on your home field, your website or blog.

So although you will most likely not be able to have a public relations plan for your

company that is exactly the same as Obama’s campaign, you can use elements of his campaign

for your own public relations plan that will give you proportionately successful results. While

2007 was the year of sustainability, 2009 is the year of social media. In order to have the most

successful business that you can in 2009, you must be engaged with your audiences online.
 Poeschl 12

Works Cited

Arrington, Michael. "End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers." 29 April 2008.

TechCrunch. 4 March 2009 <http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-

the-real-twitter-usage-numbers/>.

"Facebook Advertising." No Date. Facebook. 4 March 2009

<http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=pf>.

Frommer, Dan. "U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work." 15

January 2009. The Business Insider. 24 February 2009

<http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/us-airways-crash-rescue-picture-citizen-

jouralism-twitter-at-work>.

Hartman, Jalali. "Obamanomics: A Study in Social Velocity." 3 November 2008. Yovia. 24

February 2009 <http://www.yovia.com/Obamanomics.pdf>.

"Internet Usage Statistics: The Internet Big Picture ." 1 December 2008. Internet World Stats:

Usage and Population Statistics. 25 February 2009

<http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>.

Krempasky, Michael. "The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama's Social Media Toolkit." Unknown

2009. Edelman Public Relations. 12 February 2009

<http://www.edelman.com/image/insights/content/Social%20Pulpit%20-

%20Barack%20Obamas%20Social%20Media%20Toolkit%201.09.pdf>.
 Poeschl 13

"Micro-blogging." 4 March 2009. Wikipedia. 4 March 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-

blogging>.

Shalosky, Nick. "Facebook Got Me Elected: How the New Media Helped Make Me the the First

Openly-Gay Official in South Carolina." 18 February 2009. The Bilerico Project: Daily

Experiments in LGBTQ. 18 February 2009

<http://www.bilerico.com/2009/02/facebook_got_me_elected_how_the_new_medi.php>.

Steaprok. "Barack Obama & John Mccain: A 2008 Presidential Election Search and Social

Marketing Analysis." 3 November 2008. Subliminal Pixels. 4 March 2009

<http://www.subliminalpixels.com/2008/11/03/barack-obama-john-mccain-2008-

presidential-election-search-social-marketing-analysis/>.

Stelter, Brian. "The Facebooker Who Friended Obama." 7 July 2008. New York Times . 4 March

2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html>.

"Twitter Site Analytics Unique Visitors." Compete.

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/twitter.com/>.

van Veenendaal, Paul and Beuker Igor. "Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy." 29 January

2009. Slideshare. 10 February 2009 <http://www.slideshare.net/socialmedia8/case-study-

the-barack-obama-strategy?type=powerpoint>.