Pete Quily just saved me a few hours of work by publishing a fantastic Presidential Election/social media scorecard that outlines how the Obama campaign took advantage of social media and the internet to supercharge his grassroots movement all the way to victory. Remember the jokes about his having been a “community organizer?” It appears that the ability to create, organize and engage communities is a pretty useful skill after all. Combine it with social media, and you can work some serious magic – both in the political world AND the business world. If the Obama campaign’s success with social media strategies don’t convince CEOs and CMOs across the US that this “search”, Facebook and Twitter stuff is serious business, I don’t know what will.
Here are the numbers:
Barack Obama Vs. John McCain Search Engine and Social Media Showdown
| Internet Presence |
Barack Obama
|
John McCain
|
% Difference
|
Leading
|
| Google Pagerank |
8
|
8
|
0
|
|
| Pages in Google’s Index |
1,820,000
|
30,700
|
5828 |
Obama
|
| Links to Website in Yahoo – Pages |
643,416
|
513,665
|
25 |
Obama
|
| Links to Website in Yahoo – Inlinks |
255,334
|
165,296
|
54 |
Obama
|
Search Engine Results for Candidates Names in Quotes & Social Media Presence
|
56,200,000
|
42,800,000
|
31 |
Obama
|
|
| Google News |
136,000
|
371,620
|
173 |
McCain
|
| Google Blog |
4,633,997
|
3,094,453
|
50 |
Obama
|
| Technorati |
412,219
|
313,497
|
31 |
Obama
|
| WordPress.com |
19,692
|
14,468
|
36 |
Obama
|
| Google Image |
24,200,000
|
8,620,000
|
181 |
Obama
|
| Flickr |
73,076
|
15,168
|
382 |
Obama
|
| Flickr Photostream* | 50,218 | No Profile | 50,218 |
Obama
|
| Flickr Contacts* | 7,148 | No Profile | 7,148 |
Obama
|
| Google Video |
136,000
|
89,800
|
51 |
Obama
|
| Youtube |
358,000
|
191,000
|
87 |
Obama
|
| Youtube Videos Posted* |
1,819
|
330
|
451 |
Obama
|
| Youtube Subscribers* |
117,873
|
none listed
|
117,873 |
Obama
|
| Youtube Friends* |
25,226
|
none listed
|
25,226 |
Obama
|
|
567,000
|
18,700
|
2932 |
Obama
|
|
| Facebook Supporters* |
2,444,384
|
627,459
|
290 |
Obama
|
| Facebook Wall Posts* |
495,320
|
132,802
|
273 |
Obama
|
| Facebook Notes* |
1,669
|
125
|
1235 |
Obama
|
| MySpace |
859,000
|
319,000
|
169 |
Obama
|
| MySpace Friends* |
844,781
|
219,463
|
285 |
Obama
|
| MySpace Comments* |
147,630
|
none listed
|
147,630 |
Obama
|
|
506,000
|
44,800
|
1129 |
Obama
|
|
| Twitter Followers* |
121,314
|
4,911 |
2470 |
Obama
|
| Twitter Updates* |
262
|
25 |
1048 |
Obama
|
| Friend Feed |
34,300
|
27,400
|
25
|
Obama
|
The statistic that should sum it all up: John McCain’s social network page has only 3 suggested sites, Obama’s suggests 16. One side understood how to seed social media channels to foster grass roots movements while the other had absolutely no idea what to do with social media beyond the obvious (using YouTube as a broadcast channel, and probing the value of Facebook/MySpace communities).
The Twitter Factor
Take a look at the Twitter numbers (in blue): Only 25 updates for @JohnMcCain vs. 262 updates for @BarackObama.
Less than 5,000 followers for John McCain vs. 121,300 followers for Barack Obama.
Boiled down to the basics: 10x more updates for Obama = almost 25x more followers for Obama.
Note: John McCain’s social networking site sadly makes zero reference to Twitter. Missed opportunity? Probably: One of the most notable effects of the McCain campaigns lack of focus on Twitter was obvious during the final few weeks of the campaign: A significant pro-Obama bias which left many McCain supporters alienated on the exploding live micro-blogging service. Instead of feeding John McCain’s social-media savvy army of supporters on Twitter, his campaign left them with little to do but huddle together and stand fast against a deluge of pro-Obama chatter. Imagine what YOU could do with 5,000 organized followers/customer/fans rooting for you on Twitter. Not understanding the value of these channels most certainly cost the McCain campaign dearly in the final weeks of leading to the Nov. 4 elections.
Why should anyone care about Twitter? One word: Numbers. According to stats provided by compete.com last month, Twitter’s year-over-year growth clocked at 573% in September 2008 vs. Facebook’s very respectable 84% YoY growth and MySpace’s negative 15% YoY growth. (Yep, MySpace’s unique visits are apparently shrinking.) Twitter’s growth is staggering.
At this rate, it may take less than 3 years for Twitter’s estimated 2.5 million* visitors to reach Facebook’s current 100 million* mark. When you consider that presidential elections can be won or lost by just a few thousand votes, it doesn’t take a social media expert to understand the extent to which Twitter WILL play a vital role in the 2012 presidential race.
* Worldwide numbers. Not US numbers. It is estimated that approximately 40% of Twitter users are in the United States.
Below: Twitter demographics (usage by age and gender). If you’re a student looking for a cool project involving social media, overlay this data with voter demographics and see what you find out.
To understand the full extent of the Obama campaign’s digital and social media strategies in these historic elections click here: Blue State Digital’s case study on the Obama online campaign is pretty comprehensive. (Political science, communications and marketing students will be studying this for years to come.)
Read Pete’s full post here. Great stuff.
Have a great Friday, everyone! 🙂
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
This is a stellar look!!!
I’ve blogged it on my marketing site, http://fiercelystrategic.blogspot.com
I also *must* share this great page with my Tweeter pals.
Good work!
Viqi
Great stuff but I have a thought. Seems to me before and even without social media that Obama would have been big on the ‘net because of the crowd that are active internet users. The series of tubes that are the Internets still only connect a little over 50% of the adult population at faster than dialup speeds (and we all know how much browsing we get done at dialup speed). So we know that at least 50% of the population is less active on the Internet. We also know that in most states the margin was only a few percentage points. That being said, the younger generation tends to be much more connected via the Internet and my guess is that stats would show a very high percentage of those voting for Obama are the younger generation. So it is possible without the Internet and social media support that Obama might not have won (despite the media bias towards him).
Also the numbers don’t show positive or negative mentions. I have a feeling that McCain and Obama are mentioned often in the same articles and blogs but with different emphasis….
PS we should really talk about getting you a real wordpress blog so you can have all the cool plugins 😉
@nullvariable
This election will go down in the history books because of Social Media Now Being On The Scene! For anyone that wants to continue to think that social media is not a factor will just have to sit on the sidelines and watch the world pass them by! These new social media platforms will continue to reshape the internet as we know it.
Steven Barchetti
http://www.KingOfLeverage.com
Thanks for the comments, Guys.
Doug, you make some very good points: The Obama campaign understood its audience and used tools it knew would work with that audience towards very specific ends. Kudos to them for understanding who they wanted to reach, and figuring out exactly what medium to use to reach them. Likewise, the Obama campaign went out to neighborhoods and did offline what it was doing online: It got communities involved. It networked. It reached out and leveraged the power of word-of-mouth and relationships as opposed to relying solely on “message” and “media.”
Had the Obama campaign failed to do this, perhaps the elections would have turned out differently.
There are plenty of young conservatives/Republicans on the internets as well, so McCain’s campaign could have just as easily reached them via social media channels as well. They failed to understand both that portion of their audience and the power of these tools. I imagine the 2012 campaign will look very different on the Republican side. I hope that the Elephant sheds old world strategists like Rove (message, message, message) in favor of community-savvy peeps.
These elections are won by single percentage points. No one can afford to blow off tens of thousands of voters.