In the 2008 Presidential election, Barack Obama won the presidency by nearly 8.5 million votes, and a landslide victory in the electoral college.

There is little doubt that a key part of this success was the campaign’s wholesale adoption of social media tools and ideas: by the time of the election the campaign had amassed an e-mail list of 13 million supporters, as well as three million mobile users subscribed to the team’s SMS service.

However, these members were not simply passive recipients of campaign information notices.  They formed a crucial part of the campaign’s ground force.  Using a variety of online tools including Facebook, Twitter, and the campaign’s bespoke myobama.com social networking, users were empowered to become an extension of the campaign: raising money (with personal metrics and targets), arranging their own campaign events, creating viral videos, and recruiting more and more to the cause.

The success of the Obama online campaign has surely had an indelible effect on campaign strategy for the foreseeable future.  Its implications, though, go beyond politics.  Advocacy groups, businesses, governing bodies, social movements — all should now consider how such approaches can be used to mobilise and grow their own constituencies, gain allies, and advance their agenda.

“The Obama campaign leveraged all the tools of social media to give ordinary Americans access to resources usually reserved for professional campaign operatives.  Compared with both his Democratic primary challengers and the McCain campaign, his operation was cycles ahead.”

- Edelman Communications