Barack Obama, The Social Web, and the

Future of User-Generated Governance

By Brian Solis, blogger at PR 2.0 and principal of FutureWorks PR, Co-author Putting
the Public Back in Public Relations and Now Is Gone

Source: Barack Obama's flickr stream

Where there’s victory, there’s also opportunity…

America voted while the entire world watched and listened. Whether you
supported Obama or McCain, we equally shared the hope for positive change
and a new beginning towards a brighter future. This Presidential election was the
first in 50 years, in which there was no incumbent President or Vice President
from either party competing for the Presidential nomination. On Tuesday
November 4th, 2008, history was made and America is now poised to break new
ground as it continues to define and document unwritten history as we work
together over the next four years.
Close to 65% of the American population voted in this election, its highest turnout
since the election of 1908.

By all means, this election was profound in its results. While I’m not an avid
proponent of the Electoral College system for electing our President, the
numbers were absolute and decisive. Obama won both the Electoral College
vote 364 to 163 and the popular vote 53% to 46% with roughly 127,000,000
votes cast.

Credit: CNN

With Obama’s wins in key “swing states” including Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and
Pennsylvania, this election is considered a monumental victory that
fundamentally redrew America's political dynamics. A Democrat had not won
Virginia and Indiana in a generation.

Obama’s victory is deeply symbolic. It is a justifying, magnificent, and powerful

testament and redemption to those who have struggled for national and personal
freedom throughout the history of the United States.

Congratulations is the very least I can send to Mr. Obama and his campaign
team.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s examine the election another way, one that
may bring to life a different picture of how Obama earned his place in history, and
in doing so, his campaign both redrew political lines and also forever changed
the political ecosystem.

Over 46% of American voters and 22 states sided with John McCain. Either way
you look at it, it’s still a significant portion of America who didn’t believe #change
or #hope were attributes of the Obama campaign. These voters believed their
future lay with another candidate.

Politics aside, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent or member

of the Green Party, we can not overlook the power of real world community
relations combined with the reach and engagement of online social communities
and networks.

Again, almost half the country was split with a noteworthy percentage heading
into the election undecided.

Online tools such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter contributed to the netting
of record-breaking campaign funding and the staggering galvanization of a
younger generation of first-time voters who truly made an impact and a
difference. The Obama campaign, for example, outspent McCain nearly three-to-
one on TV ads toward the tail end of the campaign, which many credit the
technology and the corresponding impact of sociology in of itself. The Obama
campaign leveraged multiple technology platforms, social immersion strategies
and good old fashioned door-to-door relationship building to engage constituents
directly, raising an astounding $600 million in campaign contributions.
They went directly to the people online and in the real world.

The Obama team, for example befriended almost 130,000 friends on Twitter with
an almost equal amount following him.

On Facebook, the Obama page boasted over three million fans compared to
McCain’s 618,000.

YouTube also swayed towards Obama with a network of 358,000 to 191,000 with
the Obama camp posting over 1,800 videos compared to McCain’s 330. These
videos accounted for millions of views.

If you compare the other social networks and communities from FriendFeed to
MySpace to Flickr, the stats are asymmetrical in Obama’s partiality.
Many of these two-way tools however, were simply used as broadcast
mechanisms to send updates, solicit contributions, provide updates, and to also
rally and unite supporters, albeit successfully.

Reaching the Other 46%

My question is, what if these same social media tools where deployed to not only
communicate “to” constituents, but also to listen and interact with supporters as
well as those who don’t currently endorse the President-elect?

I argue that if Obama dedicates a team aside from the outbound crew that
"pushed" content through social channels in order to strategically reach, listen to,
and embrace the 46 % that voted against him, he might be able to run a truly
democratic term and head into the next election with a record-breaking approval
rating – curtailing the necessity to campaign while in office in order to focus on
the issues we elected him to fix – while also cultivating the country for greater
future prosperity.

Winning over, conservatively estimating, 5% of voters who were on the fence but
ultimately voted for McCain, accounts for almost three million votes.

Since 1954, the approval rating of each President has been actively tracked and
published as a reflection of sentiment among the American people:

Among those Presidents with the worst all-time approval rating, our current
President holds the dubious honor of ranking at the top:

- George W. Bush – 76% (in a report published 11/10)

- Truman – 67%
- Nixon – 66%
- George Bush – 60%
Perhaps even most concerning is that each President has historically
disregarded these numbers so that they could focus on the issues at hand. If the
Whitehouse were a business, many of these Presidents would have filed for
political bankruptcy.

All signs and words emanating from the Obama camp and Mr. Obama himself,
point to a strategy of leveraging today’s powerful, two-way bridges of
communication.

In a text message sent to supporters on the eve of the election, he reaffirmed

that they will be part of Presidency moving forward, “We have a lot of work to do
to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes
next.”

But perhaps the most revealing promise that revealed Mr. Obama will run his
office for the “people” of the United States, not just those who voted for him, was
shared through his inspirational words on November 4th:

I will listen to you, especially when we disagree…and to those Americans whose

support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your
voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

His first step to bring the vision of running a cross party campaign is the launch of
Change.gov, a portal for transparency and interaction during, and hopefully post
the transition.

In a sense, Change.gov is a simple and engaging site, but also highly intricate in
its goals to give voters a voice. It is resource center for sharing information,
updates, jobs, and also provides a channel for people who share their vision,
concern, and ideas with the President and his advisors through text, an uploaded
image or video.

Mr. Obama offers a message to visitors:

I ask you to believe - not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. I
know this change is possible…because in this campaign, I have had the privilege
to witness what is best in America.

Change.gov is the first step in a long road of reshaping the dynamics of politics
and communication with voters.

They’re on the right track however.

Obama’s history-making campaign that fused community relations with social

sciences, after all, carried him to the Democratic nomination and also the Oval
Office. Mr. Obama and his team have cultivated and collaborated with a
database of millions of people that spans a sophisticated contact relationship
management infrastructure that spans across the real world to all popular social
networks.
With an elaborate and revolutionary channel that will only grow with his
Presidency, Obama takes office with a powerful new medium that may eclipse
the reach and drive of traditional broadcast media.

Transforming Voters into Customers, While Potentially Erasing Party Lines

But, what about those who voted against him?

What’s the channel for Obama to ask, “Why didn’t I get your vote?” Is it
Change.gov or is it through the combination of inbound and outbound
engagement that will unearth the concerns that offer genuine potential for not just
listening, also but response and earned support?

Most successful businesses around the world place customers at the center of
everything. Before the Web, Nordstrom built its engendering foundation on world-
class, and now world famous, customer care. In today’s Social Web, Zappos is
growing its business by engaging with customers and creating a public and
transparent customer-focused culture that is quickly building the company into a
global brand that will make it easy for the company to extend its business beyond
shoes.

There’s an extraordinary opportunity here for the Whitehouse to leverage these

new and influential channels of conversation to embrace and cultivate voters as if
they were customers, winning market share, one person at a time.

This is era where information was and is democratized. It is also a live and
unfiltered looking glass into the office of the Presidency and also the thoughts,
insights, support, satisfaction, and grievances of the American People.
It’s a Two Way Street

This isn’t just about broadcasting content through new channels or merely
soliciting feedback, participating in popular networks or actively listening, it’s the
ability to identify and internalize themes to precipitate change and earn support
through action – not just words.

For the first time, the U.S. President can simultaneously cultivate communities
through traditional door-to-door interaction and also directly where people create,
discover, and share information online.

Shortly after completing the first draft of this post, the Washington Post ran an
article announcing that Mr. Obama will record the weekly Democratic address on
the radio and also on Youtube. The videos will be hosted on Change.gov and the
official YouTube video channel, with the first one already recorded.

Other opportunities include:

- Launch a social network at Change.gov and/or whitehouse.gov

- Create a citizen feedback and collaboration page at GetSatisfaction

- Solicit policy proposals that people can vote up or down on Change For Us.

- Open the blog to comments on Change.gov (with community moderation).

- Address the country on YouTube and all other video networks with updates,
polls, and also address issues in between official State of the Union broadcasts.

- Capture behind-the-scenes footage of the inner workings of the White House

and share across all video networks.
- Create a user-generated channel on Magnify.net that features content from
constituents.

-Create an @obamacares or @whitehousecares account on Twitter and other

micro-blogging communities to listen and respond directly within each network.

- Complement the Presidential radio show with a regular podcast or livecast on

uStream.tv or BlogTalkRadio and also interact with the people online, in real time.

- Publish speeches and important policy documents on document networks such

as Scribd and Docstoc to be shared and disseminated throughout blogs and
personal social profile pages.

(What other ideas do you have? Add them to comments).

This is how a President, or any politician or business for that matter, can
authentically connect with the people formerly known as the audience - in the
real world.

It creates the foundation for people to participate in a crowd-sourced Government

that doesn’t need Congressmen to share discontent or new ideas. The Web cuts
through political tape to spotlight real time threats and issues to expedite support
and response.

It’s through this collaboration that any public official, particularly the President,
can continually maintain a real-time pulse of the country to learn from the human
effects and responses to actions to run a more in-tune and effective campaign.

It’s the art and science of stripping down the politics to reveal truth. This is a
political ecology rooted in sociology and conversations. People shouldn’t only
have a voice during an election time; listening and responding should be an
ongoing practice and process of any office.

The President can't satisfy everyone, that’s just the reality. It’s human nature to
disagree. This President-elect is not purporting to be perfect, but it seems he’s
honestly willing to learn. With a national CTO in place combined with an informed
engagement team versed in social sciences and psychology, we can use
technology and two-way channels to not only increase economic efficiencies and
boost education and media literacy, but also "listen" to those influential beacons
in order to continue to redraw, or potentially erase, party lines.

My hope is that these incredible networks remain a constant source of

conversation to extend beyond campaigning, but also collaborative governance
that unite people across party lines.

It's not about being Republican or a Democrat, it's about representing the
majority of the people, their views, passions, ambitions and struggles, in order to
be a representative of the people for the people. This is Obama's opportunity to
use the tools and channels of today's emerging voter demographics to rewrite the
future of politics, while serving the best interests of the American People in the
process.

Sometimes the best advisors and cabinet members are the very people who
elected that person into office, and maybe, just maybe, also those who voted
against him in the first place.

If the Obama camp reads this, I’m more than happy to release @obamacares
and @whitehousecares on Twitter. I held them for you.

Special thanks to Drew Olanoff.

---
Recommended Reading on PR 2.0:

- Al Gore on the Social Revolution for Change

- Reinventing Crisis Communications for the Social Web
- The State of Social Media 2008
- In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Essential Guide to Social Media
- The Social Media Manifesto
- PR 2.0: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
- Introducing The Conversation Prism
Brian Solis is globally recognized for his views and insights on the convergence
of PR, Traditional Media and Social Media. He actively contributes his thoughts
and experiences through speaking appearances, books, articles and essays as a
way of helping the marketing industry understand and embrace the new
dynamics fueling new communications, marketing, and content creation.

Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR agency in Silicon Valley.

Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, TechCrunch, and BrandWeek. Solis is co-
founder of the Social Media Club, is an original member of the Media 2.0
Workgroup, and also is a contributor to the Social Media Collective.

Solis has been actively writing about new PR since the mid 90s to discuss how
the Web was redefining the communications industry – he coined PR 2.0 along
the way. Solis is considered an expert in traditional PR, media relations, and
Social Media. He has dedicated his free time to helping PR professionals adapt
to the new fusion of PR, Web marketing, and community relations. PR 2.0 is a
top 10,000 Technorati blog and is ranked in the Ad Age Power 150 index of
leading marketing bloggers.

Working with Geoff Livingston, Solis was co-author of “Now is Gone,” a new book
that helps businesses learn how to engage in Social Media. He has also written
several ebooks on the subjects of Social Media, New PR, and Blogger Relations.

His next book, co-author Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public back in Public
Relations,” will be released by Pearson by Q1 2009.

Connect with Solis on:

Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca,
BackType, Jaiku, Social Median, or Facebook

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