Real Estate SEO and Technology Blog

Ever wonder who did the best job of marketing themselves or others online this year? Well before I tell you, it shouldn’t be a real stretch to come up with it. In fact most of you probably won’t guess who it is, and most of you will not recognize the name of marketer, but you will know who hired him.

To start this off, you have to know that the consensus was made by a national group study looking over all the major companies and players in the industry. The individual that is our top marketing person did so by making the entire “social marketing” field his own tool.

Our winning marketer’s name is Chris Hughes. Recognize him? I didn’t think so. Maybe you would recognize the company he co-founded . . . Facebook. But that is not how he won this award. This marketing savvy actually was built off of the knowledge of Facebook and then used all the other Web 2.0 tools to rally millions of others.

The quest was a campaign. A particular Presidential Campaign. Okay, now you know. The historic victory of president elect Barak Obama is the largest event of 2008, and perhaps the century. Mr. Obama ran such a successful campaign because he relied on connecting with normal people by any means possible. The campaign relied heavily on “social media” outlets to reach out to potential voters, increase their knowledge of Mr. Obama and rally their votes. Chris Hughes was at the heart of that campaign.  Of course it didn’t hurt that the demographics by now used not only youth but voters in their 30’s and 40’s being savvy to “social media”.

Chris took his intimate knowledge of social media to create My.BarackObama.com, The Obama’s campaign’s official online social networking website. The Guardian discusses Mr. Obama’s online strategy:

“Obama’s campaign team is everywhere online: YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, whose co-founder Chris Hughes worked for the campaign from early last year. They mobilized supporters and organised communities, registering 1.5 million volunteers through My.BarackObama.com and raising $600 million from 3 million people. Obama’s campaign also built a consensual database of 3 million mobile numbers by promising that in return, supporters would get campaign news before the media. And so they did almost immediately with the announcement of Joe Biden as vice-presidential candidate. ”

The interesting thing is that Obama even managed to pull off intimate discussions with major donors over dinner, posted to the campaign’s YouTube account. “He’s just a fantastic political communicator. There’s no sense of artifice – just a melding of the candidate and the human being,” says Flanagan.”

These tools used to elect the nation’s first African-American President can be used to market you as well. Done on the right scale, anything is possible. Currently, there are many agents proving just this. Now is the time to learn more about “social marketing”. Get your toe in the water by opening accounts in LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. But just start one community at a time. Get your feet wet and learn to swim.

Come on in . . . the water’s fine!

Randy Eagar, CRS
WebsTarget SEO
www.WebsTarget.com
(800) 277-1316