Below is a link to our final B2.0 update:

It is now official - President-elect Barack Obama has authored the most successful Internet marketing campaign ever. He and his campaign have gone from the longest of long-shots, to the presidency in less than two years. And his campaign's embrace of technology has played a key role in spreading his message of hope and change to millions of people - people looking to be a part of that change.

David Bullock and I have had the pleasure of watching this unfold, and sharing some of things that piqued our curiosity with respect to just how Obama and his team utilized a dizzying array of tools and strategies. We've learned a great deal in studying the campaign, and we hope you learned along with us. In fact we know you did, based on the many comments you've shared with us.

We are greatly appreciative of all of you who've visited the site. We've been consistently surprised by all the interest people have shown in the business lessons coming out of this historical campaign. And we're glad to have learned with you and from you.

Although this is the last B2.0 update, this is not the last you will hear from us, as we have some exciting things we'll be announcing in the near future - so please stay tuned!

Thanks again for all of your support. David and I appreciate you all.

The reports for the campaign are being published. There will be much “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” on how these online fund raising results were achieved.

As Brent Leary and I have been following this story from the very beginning, we have seen how these numbers grew week by week.

Per the story run by the Washington Post, this is a brief summary of the Obama Campaign online operations stats:

     - 3 million online donors

     - 6.5 million online donations adding up to more than $500 million.

     - Of the 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in amounts of $100 or less.

     - Upwards of 13 million addresses were captured

     - More than 1 billion e-mails sent during the campaign

     - Approximately 1 million mobile phone numbers collected

     - 2 million profiles created on the My.BarackObama.com social network

     - 5 million supporters on other social networking and multimedia sharing sites.

These are the fantastic results of the campaign, no doubt this will a topic of conversation for years to come.

The question is…

Now that you have seen power of traditional, social and internet marketing, what actions will you take to learn and use these available tools and concepts to successfully promote your business?

There are many lessons here hidden within this ultra successful campaign, if you have the distinctions to see them. Personally, I have learned more about marketing within the last 18 months than I have in the last 10 years. Experiencing the power of a well executed multi-channel campaign can change the way that you approach the promotion of your business.

– David Bullock

By David Bullock

The first presidential campaign to fully embrace the ideas and practices of social media has met with a successful end. Senator Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

This punctuates the successful use of social media for the promotion of a message into the marketplace. Communications has evolved.

It is not days to get a message via pony express. Now it is in an instant.

This is what social media is all about. This campaign is the product of superior multi-channel audio, video and text content distribution using new and traditional media platforms.

• Getting the message out.
• Keeping the message fresh.
• Sticking to the story.
• Tracking and staying in touch with the interested visitor.
• Developing a worthwhile engaging relationship with those who can support you and your concerns.

These are just a few of the (many) lessons illustrated with this successful campaign. To all those that have taken the time to visit and comment as we moved with this case study - Thank You. We have learned much from this experience.

David Bullock

Director Of Online Research
Barack20.com

We present the final two weekly updates before the election:

Update Ten:

Update Eleven:

The first podcast above we talk about a few the unique ways Obama's campaign targeted the gaming community by advertising on the billboard of Burnout Paradise - a popular game on the X-Box platform. We also touch on the strategy behind the campaign's Tax Calculator page, as a creative piece of content to reinforce his message to those he's trying to engage. To learn more about these particular moves you may want to check out my blog entry over at Inc.com's technology blog - Barack 2.0.

The second podcast is the last one before the election. David and I cover a lot of ground here, as well as take a look back at the last three months of doing these weekly updates. We discuss the impact of Michelle Obama's blogging on BlogHer.org, and how the campaign is still marrying offline/online activities. Also David and I each share our personal observations as to what was the most important lesson to take away from analyzing Obama's campaign - a campaign that led Ad Age to name Obama as their marketer of the year. It was also one of the driving factors in me writing a white-paper you may want to read, entitled Social CRM - Customer Relationship Management in the Age of the Socially-Empowered Customer.

We'll have one final weekly update after the election to conclude the story that is Barack 2.0.

David and I are also pleased to let you know that the Barack 2.0 site was featured in the November issue of Black Enterprise as part of an article discussing the Obama campaign's use of technology.

Thank you all for your great interest and support. David and I are extremely appreciative to for your kind words and comments.

Below is this week's B2.0 update:

This week is a different kind of update. As host of Technology For Business Sake (TFBS) I have the great pleasure of having excellent guests on with me to discuss how technology can help small businesses compete, thrive and survive in a "web-enhanced" world.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Jascha Franklin-Hodge, co-founder and chief technology of Blue State Digital. BSD is the technology partner the Obama campaign turned to build and manage their web presence. This includes the creation of the BSD-powered sites BarackObama.com, and the social networking component My.BarackObama.com.

These sites have been responsible for:

• Capturing 1.4M email addresses
• Creating over 1M user accounts
• Promoting over 75,000 campaign events
• Supporting donation efforts that helped raise over $250M

Jascha shares how BSD got started with the campaign and built the BarackObama.com site in less than a week, the strategy behind the campaign's web presence and the way it has fostered a wildly active community. He also discusses what small businesses can take away from the campaign with respect to using technology to engage people.

Please enjoy this TFBS "re-broadcast"!

Below is this week's Barack 2.0 Weekly Update:

If you can find captivating ways to express your ideas to the world, the world will help you spread that vision in ways you may never have dreamed of. If you share your vision with the world, the world may help bring perspective to it, and make it better.

This week we look at how the Obama campaign embraced the above philosophy and create an environment where people, inspired by their message, invested their own time and money to create compelling content that literally has reached millions of people. Content that extends the ideas and vision put forth by the campaign, but powered by the creativity of individuals inspired by the original idea.

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Below is this week's B2.0 update:

As this site is closing in on its two month birthday, and this being the seventh weekly update, we thought we'd take a few minutes to touch on how we've been using the social media lessons being taught by Senator Obama's campaign. It's important to us for you to know that we're learning along with you, and that we are putting these strategies to use with this site.

We touch on how this series got started with an online article, a conversation, a powerpoint presentation and a webinar. It then turned into a website and weekly podcast. We've tweeted about it, and created content in different forms - text, audio and video. And we've shared it with people in our social networks - both online and offline.

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Below is this week's update:

When most people think of social media they think of sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and a few others. These sites have millions of active members, so it makes total sense to have a presence on one or more of them. The Obama campaign has active presences on each of these sites. On Facebook, for example, he has over one million fans. And he's the most followed person on Twitter.

As Important as it is to get involved with the big-name social sites, there are many other lesser-known sites that can be just as important in helping you connect with the kind of people you're looking to build business relationships with.

Below are a few sites the Obama used in addition to the big guys that may be able to help you as well.

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