Congratulations to Barack Obama on his election. It is historic and meaningful in many ways. One of them was his tremendous, and I mean TREMENDOUS success in building a highly productive community. This is Web 2.0 to the max. He leveraged the community to gain funding (sometimes five dollars at a time) he then used to further build community. In the span of 18 months he built a global brand and a multimillion person community. Estimates on his community numbers are impressive with over 2M facebook supporters, 800k MySpace friends, 100k YouTube subscribers and 100k Twitter followers.
The big question now is what should he do with this community. It would be absolutely foolish to squander that community with the mindset that it, “Has done its job.” It is very difficult to build community and I always advise clients that when they do, never to let it subside but continuously evolve it into more or different levels of productivity.
So let’s turn this blog into some recommendations for President Elect Obama on how he can gain more value from the community he so successfully built. I’ll start first with one.
Create a 1 million+ strong presidential sounding board. Post issues and questions to the sounding board for mass feedback. Here are some benefits:
- Build tighter bonds with the people by giving them a voice in presidential decisions.
- Keep a better read on the pulse of how policy is playing in certain demographics and who supports what.
- Hear first hand what the populous really cares about.
- Mobilize their action and support to push issues forward.
- No need to rely on the popularity polls that poll what, 1500 people think
This is but one idea. What do you think? Help a new President out here.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Anthony Bradley // Nov 7, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I agree. This is what I meant by “social circles” can evolve within the community around particular issues. Community participants may join several social circles. However, social circles do not preclude other goals that may apply to the entire community. I never said that gaining win-win value from the community would be easy
but it will be that much more difficult without a plan and concerted effort. There is much value in the community. My question was how should he mine this value? Sounds like you are a proponent of creating issue based social cirlces in which community members can participate. I like that idea 
2 More Excitement About Social Networks in Government: Obama’s Fault? // Nov 12, 2008 at 7:08 pm
[...] Do the same success factors apply? Can the lessons learned by a candidate’s network be applied as such in a government context? The jury is still out and even within Gartner we have differerent views. [...]
3 The OBAMA Administration Gets The Social Movement // Jan 28, 2009 at 10:13 am
[...] I had expected (and hoped), President Elect Obama is employing social software to get the people involved in government. They [...]
Leave a Comment