Larry Grisolano from the Obama Campaign Talks About Gen-Y

Back at MPlanet in January, I was asked as one of a select group of bloggers to submit a question to Obama's head of Communication, Larry Grisolano. It took a little longer than expected, but here is the video from that sit down and his response to young people and young voter's influence on brands in 2009 (my question comes in at 13:33)

Thanks again to the MPlanet folks for showing me a great time and Bryan Blaise from Fleishman-Hillard for keeping me updated on happenings.

Enjoy!

-Greg Rollett

Why Obama is Smarter Than Your Company

photo by 416style

Obama and the Change.gov team understand that people like information. They also understand that they like information on their own terms, timeline and in their underwear (personal preference I suppose).

As of this weekend, the content on Change.gov has been licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. From their copyright page:

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Content includes all materials posted by the Obama-Biden Transition project. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Change.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

What does this mean.

• It means that companies like Cerado Ventana can make really cool iPhone and widget applications that people can take with them with the message from Obama and his transition team.
• It means that the man that is going to lead this country for at least the next 4 years is more hip that most Fortune 500 companies.
• It means that Obama is not scared to share information for the benefit of the country. (Obviously not counting Intelligence and all that good stuff, come on now haters)
• It means that we are free to share this information freely, talk about it and hold someone accountable for their actions in office
  

What Obama realized in his campaign is that he wanted everyone to be able to share in his message and he is carrying it across in his adventure to the White House. He knew that one 19-year old girl would better connect on Facebook to his beliefs than the 25 year old gamer who ventures through YouTube and differs from the 40-year old lawyer who reads the Washington Post online to the 33-year old engineer who gets his news on the iPhone.

Information is no longer yours.
Information is in an abundance on the Internet. Hell, everything is in abundance on the Internet. If you are not bringing your message in as many places as possible, someone else will find your competitor.

You may have videos on YouTube that get 100,000 views and choose not to use Viddler or Vimeo due to their smaller traffic. But someone does, and they may be your biggest fan in the waiting. If you knew about TubeMogul, you would know that with one upload you can have that video on every site imaginable for video with the same great descriptive text, tags and title as the one you spend so much time prepping for YouTube. This is just one example people!

Stop pretending that traffic to YOUR site is king. Traffic to your INFORMATION is king. Get your information everywhere and you can be the Obama of your industry. He called it Change for a reason.

-Greg Rollett
(hattip to the Social Customer Manifesto)

P.S. Bonus, hot track from Asher Roth, B.o.B. and Charles Hamilton - Change Gunna Come

• Change Gonna Come (feat. Charles Hamilton and Asher Roth) by B.o.B

Social Media Giving Thanks

It's Thanksgiving Eve and while the kids are ready for a 4 day vacation, many organizations are using the power of the internet to make change for people this holiday season.

Epic Change
I first started chatting with Stacey Monk a few weeks back while working on Creating Magic. She helped share the story of a volunteer, Zoe Flanagan, a student at Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon. Yesterday I saw a flurry of Tweets about Tweetsgiving. Honestly I thought it was another Chris Brogan move, but come to find out its powered by Epic Change. The premise of Tweetsgiving is to to

demonstrate the power of the social web by raising $10,000 in 48 hours to build a classroom in Tanzania.

I think this is awesome. As of 10:30am on Wednesday, the site had already generated over $5,000 in donations. The Tweetsgiving fundraising is powered by ChipIn, a simple Flash application that allows you to keep people up-to-date on ChipIn events you organize to collect money. The power of this is that anyone who feels passionately about the cause can grab the embed code and put the widget up anywhere they want from Mysapce to their Blogs or websites.

Rock For Hunger
Using the power of some blog posts and the new Ning community, Rock For Hunger was able to organize an amazing Thanksgiving Breakfast for the homeless. They have organized over 60 local volunteers, oatmeal, eggs, fruit, OJ, plates, cups, utensils, socks, clothing and many other items via a forum post, a blog post and some email exchanges.

In fact, the SEO and search engine traffic to the post was so successful, they had to make 2 new volunteer opportunities to include all the volunteers.

Change.org + Myspace
Obama is not one to miss out on volunteers and an opportunity to get feedback from his fellow Americans. Change.org/ideas is a site where you can add your ideas to improve America and they can be voted on Digg style. The idea has also been replicated on Myspace to get teens and young adults involved in the new administration. Obama is really using this Social Media power to stay in touch with every American that wants to have a voice.

Do you know of any other organizations that are getting involved with Social Media this Thanksgiving to give back? Please let me know and I will be sure to add them to the post.

Happy Thanksgiving, be safe and keep rocking!

-Greg Rollett

Barack's Real Change is Happening Now

Yes he can.
He can hire the best minds in Social Media and Internet Marketing and they can make a difference. And he did. With former Facebook employees, CNN producer's and more, the Social Media All-Star Team was put to the test.

The Washington Post has a great article on the collective and how they used the Web, a Social Network, leveraged other Social Networks, text messages and online video to take a guy many never heard of and turned him into a superstar and one of 2 people that has the opportunity to become the next president of the United States.

Why this matters?
It matters because it shows that Social Media can be used and leveraged in a way to position and brand businesses that has never been done before. It shows that YouTube is not just a fad for teenagers and text messages are mainstream.

How did it happen?
They took chances. The article depicts how the text message plan came about even with heavy doubts from inside the camp. They tried it, it worked and now the Presidential running mate is going to be announced via text to the world any day now. This does 2 great things for the campaign:

1. Creates an enormous amount of press (Google Blog Search)
   
2. Gets a whole lot of new sign-ups for his text message alerts.

Not obsessing over results:
Everyone I know in Social Media and Internet Marketing is a "stat fiend." I used to be this way. Now I gauge stats by the level of engagement I have created in my campaign.

• If I Tweet a question, how many replies do I get?
• When I post a blog, how many comments do I get?
• How many links?
• Any Digg's, Stumbles?
• Are people talking about it on Twitter or FriendFeed?

The Obama campaign works in a somewhat similiar way. Kate Albright-Hanna, the head of the video team states in the article;

"Here, we don't worry about how many views our videos get. That's not the priority. One of our goals is to get people talking about what's going on in their lives and why they're supporting Barack -- and hopefully not only will they watch the videos but also comment on them and forward them to relatives and friends and co-workers."

While stats still play a major role, look at engagement and action as a factor to determine if a campaign is really working. I was always a fan of quality traffic over quantity of traffic and maybe that's why I don't write for Digg or the SERPS, but why I write for the readers and the reactions that I want to receive.

Leveraging off of your fans
By getting videos from supporters, and showcasing them on the Obama YouTube account, it is empowering the fans and letting them spread the message through their own network. Give your fans "your voice" and see what songs they come up with.

Leveraging off other Social Networks
Knowing how other Social Networks work and finding niche sites can be a huge boost. While some niche socnets might not have the numbers of Facebook or Myspace, they have dedicated users who are all interested in the subject of the site. Barack has made pages on sites ranging from AsianAve.com, MiGente.com and BlackPlanet.com. He has 50 profiles on BlackPlanet. One for each state. His team found a way to connect with the sites' users and now they have leveraged a whole army broken down by state. Way to go Barack.

How to put it all together
I won't say whether I support Barack or not (I really don't know the positions of either candidate, but I know we need a change) but I will say that his team of Social Media superstars and Internet Marketers are hitting a home run.

When putting together campaigns of your own, look to get on the level of the people that you are trying to break through to. Send your message and respond on their terms. By not using a certain medium, you are alienating people that can become advocates and with the affordability and easy of use of the Internet, there are no excuses not to be anywhere. Why sell on exclusively on iTunes when half of your fans buy from Amazon or BestBuy. Not having a Twitter account or mailing list or RSS feed is simply not excusable anymore.

When a Presidential nominee can get his head around using Twitter, YouTube and social networks and in real time, I think its time that everyone else joins the party.

-Greg Rollett
(for anyone into hip-hop, is the support of Jay-Z, Nas, Jeezy and others hurting his campaign? Check out an article from MTV to find out more)