As you are studying how to use technology to promote your business, be mindful that the technology and the platforms already exist. The question is how are you going to use what is already there to promote your message effectively into the marketplace.

These tools can allow you to “see” what your visitors are doing (or not).

Web analytics is a well worn subject. But do you really know how to pragmatically utilize the data that you are gathering to create the effect that you want? Are you visitors finding what they want on your website? Is your content captivating, compelling and valuable?

These are the questions that analytics can answer…

In the video, we discuss the use of web analytics, bounce rate specifically, as a tool to gauge visitor interest.

Enjoy,

David Bullock
Advanced Research – Barack 2.0 Project

The business landscape is changing quickly. Pay attention. Keep up. Or you will be left behind.

We are back with updates for the Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons For Business project. We have been very busy since the book launch in January. Check out the Barack 2.0 event schedule.

From ideation to transaction is our theme these days. The landscape of social media has changed the face of politics and business. Now, “Social Media” has gone mainstream.

What does that mean for your business?

Simple, your prospects and future customers are using social media. If you are not there, they will not find you. And, you have no chance to engage them.

Check out our Year One Social Media For Business Video Update. Here we discuss the changes in the space that we have observed since undertaking this project…

There is still the ongoing argument about the “ROI of social media”.  For the pundits, this is an argument worth having. It takes up plenty of airtime. Talking is not doing.

For the business owner who is looking to increase revenue and reduce customer acquisition and retention cost. Why argue? Using social media works well and will continue to work well. Try the platforms and find out what works for your business.

There is no magic formula.  Success using social media to grow your business takes time, effort and creativity.

Speaking of creativity… As you can see, we are trying other media as we communicate with you. Let us know what you think.

Until next time,

David Bullock
Co-founder Barack 2.0 Project

*** Barack Obama Social Media Strategies For Business – Brent Leary & David Bullock from David Bullock on Vimeo.

The Book – Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons For Business Is Available Below.

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

[media:http://www.box.net/shared/static/orcps7o2lq.mp3]

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.

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

Barack Obama Social Media Update

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.

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.

We look at the following for examples of user-generated content inspired by the ideals of the Obama campaign and how they have worked as unofficial surrogates:

Dipdive.com (also check out it’s sister site HopeActChange.com)

Yes We Can Grassroots CD

Election.Twitter.com

As you will hear, these are a few interesting examples of how great ideas, expressed in captivating ways, can inspire people to help us spread our message. Now these examples are on a much broader scale and scope than any small business could really expect to function on. But we really don’t need this scale in order to find success with these strategies. Great comments left on blogs are examples of effective impactful user-generated content. Tweets from customers can be as well. The thing to remember is to concentrate on sharing your ideas and vision in ways that move people to act – on your behalf!

Below is this week’s B2.0 update:

This week we’re glad to have a conversation with James Andrews. James is Vice President at Ketchum Interactive, specializing in the creation of online media/blogger strategy, web/application development, and content production. James is also Founder of TheKeyinfluencer.com. Additionally James is an Expert Blogger for FastCompany.com.

With his unique perspective as a social media expert, James shares with us his professional and personal experiences attending last week’s Democratic National Convention. James fills us in on how social media infused the event, how the Democrats embraced the blogger community, and how he used Twitter and Facebook to connect with people while at the convention. He also shares lessons he wants small businesses to learn from the Obama campaign’s strategic use of mobile messaging as well as social media.

We also had the honor of having our original Barack 2.0 slide presentation featured on the homepage of SlideShare.net last week. Here it is below. Please feel free to download at your convenience:

On last week’s update we pointed out that Barack was about 500 followers short of becoming the most followed person on Twitter. It didn’t take long for him to jump into the number one spot, as many media outlets pointed out – even TechCrunch covered it the day he took the top spot. Obama now has more than 59,000 followers – over 2,000 more followers than the number two person on the list, Digg’s Kevin Rose.

While much has been made of Obama’s following on Twitter, Facebook and other “mainstream” social networking sites, there are other lesser known sites he is participating in just as actively. MiGente.com is a great example of a social site Obama is a member of that doesn’t have the hype of the larger social networking sites.

MiGente.com is a social site dedicate to serving the Latino community. It’s a great looking site with all the functionality of the bigger-name sites. But what it has that the other sites lack is the singular focus on the Latino community, the issues of importance to them, and content that appeals to their community. And with the Latino vote being critical in the upcoming election, it makes a great deal of sense to reach out to them – where they are, in ways that are comfortable to them.

So while TechCrunch heralded Obama’s rise to the top of Twitter with over 59,000 followers, they didn’t report that he has almost as many friends (almost 54,000) on MiGente.com. To us this is equally as noteworthy as the Twitter news, and maybe even more interesting from a small business perspective. Because we as small business people need to participate in social networks that fit the niches our customers and prospects participate in. In many cases these more focused sites can provide deeper, more meaningful interactions that could accelerate relationship building. So while you work Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other major social networks, don’t ignore the MiGente.com’s of the world that represent niche’s in your field/industry. Barack didn’t.

The Book – Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons For Business can be purchased below.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign used Twitter to inform followers that their VP pick would be announced sometime between now and the start of the Democratic convention.

The way that this is being handled is causing significant buzz in the marketplace…

http://my.barackobama.com/vp

The interesting thing here is the offer the campaign is making. If you want to be among the first to hear who Obama’s tapping to be his vice president, you can sign up to receive a text message or email notification. Below is the sign up for to receive an email notification:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow

There are a few takeaways here. The use of text messaging to instantly communicate information of value to those you wish to engage creates opportunities to learn more about them. And by giving people the option of whether to email or text them, you learn which method of communication they prefer.

And just as the Obama campaign offered people interested in being the “first to know” that opportunity if they provided contact information, you can do this as well. A good business example of this is what Borders has done. You can sign up for their free Borders Rewards club by providing some basic contact information. By doing this they send out emails with discount coupons of up to 40% off. That was nice but it was still inconvenient having to print the coupon off and bring it into the store. Sometimes I’d be in the store when I would receive the email and had no way to use it. But then Borders started offering text message coupons, and all you have to do is show the text message to the cashier and they would immediately apply the discount. I went with the text message offer, while I’m sure those who prefer email stuck with that.

So you may want to think of ways you can entice customers and prospects to let you communicate with them via text messages and/or email. It’s cost effective and keeps you instantly connected. And more and more people will initially read their messages on mobile devices. But it’s important to let them make the call on how they want to be reached, which is why the Obama campaign was smart to let people sign up for either text or email option.

Also capturing contact information is as easy as creating a basic web page that is integrated into a service like Zoho CRM or Microsoft Office Live Small Business. For example Zoho, free for the first three users in a company, has a function that allows you to generate a contact form that pushes the information submitted on your web page directly into your Zoho CRM account. So you’ll have a central location for the contact information you’ll collect, which is critically important. You can also set up auto-responders to let people know you received their information.

One last thing, don’t let typing stop you from sending text messages and using sites like Twitter. You can use a free service like Jott, that will actually let you create and send text messages by creating a voice message. Your voice message will get translated into a text message and will be sent out on your behalf.

You can preview and purchase the Barack 2.0 : Social Media Lessons For Business Below.