Loy Okezie

It is no doubt that the U.S President, Barack Obama effectively used social media tools, which resulted in a successful campaign and gave him a landslide victory in the Presidential elections last year.

Here are a few social media lessons from Barack Obama that can help you connect with your audience, build your brand and generate more revenue than you can ever imagine.

1. Obama loved his audience first and showed that they mattered most in the campaign and that’s one of the reasons he raise as much money as he did throughout the campaign. He often said that his campaign was about the American people and he focused on their problems and sought ways to solve them.

Lesson: Know your audience and strive to reach them. Focus on your customers and show them love (because love makes the world go round). Give them value, because they are going to pay you more money for value.

2. Obama surrounded himself with smart people, even people smarter than he is. Even though he’s a highly intelligent man, he’s also a humble servant and is willing to acknowledge other people’s viewpoint.

Lesson: Borrow brains. You aren’t smart enough to succeed on your own. Look for people smarter than you are. If you are good at internet technology, find someone good at internet marketing to partner with.

3. Obama marketed himself and his campaign both online and offline using tools and techniques that appealed to a larger audience. He connected with his audience via his speeches and effectively used social media sites such as Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, Friendster, Youtube, etc to network with his audience.

Lesson: Communicate with your audience. Let them see you as a real person who is interested in their needs and wants to fill those needs. Establish relationships with the social media and use it to create awareness about your startup.

4. Obama adopted advertising strategies and mediums that reached his audience wherever they were via Tv ads, radio ads, etc His goal was to effectively overscore the importance of his campaign as well as his programs and plans for the American people. Though some of those ads were considered as attacks against his opponents, they were mostly in response to his opponents ads.

Lesson: Create an advertising strategy that would out-compete your competitors. Use a far reaching advertising medium to target your audience. Press releases and interviews in local newspapers as well as web-savvy publications can sell your start-up very well.

Obama enjoyed recreation and had fun even during the toughest times in the campaign. He played basketball and did bowling (even if he thinks his bowling sucks…Lol) and worked out to keep fit.

Lesson: Don’t overwork yourself. Enjoy reasonable recreation and just have fun sometimes.

Note: These lessons are by no means exhaustive, so I’ll be adding more to the list soon. In the future, I’ll be writing about how companies and organizations can use these social nedia lessons. If you learned any lesson from Barack Obama’s use of social media, please tell let us know.

Tags: barack obama, digg, facebook, flickr, linkedin, myspace, Social Media, Twitter, youtube