Presented examples from social media websites during the Obama Campaign.
Photo: Julie C Vincent / Calgary Journal
Campaigner’s work helped to create the “Obama Brand” online
Still think YouTube is just a place to get your jollies; that Twitter is ridiculous chatter; that Facebook is just somewhere to post your drunk-night-out photos? Think again.
Writer, researcher and new media expert, Rahaf Harfoush, exploded a raft of social media myths and misperceptions in her “Yes, We Did; An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, address to a packed Leacock theater on May 29.
Speaking on “New Media’s role in the groundswell effort that elected the world’s fist Digital President,” Harfoush outlined how her research into New Media led her to a full-time volunteer position with the Obama Campaign of 2008.
Harfoush describes herself as “A New Media Strategist who has a deep passion for exploring how technology is affecting the way we communicate, work and play.” She has worked as a researcher on three significant written works, consults with major initiatives, including the Obama campaign.
Her first book “Yes, We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand,” has its official release June 4th in Toronto. “Yes, We Did,” explores the unprecedented use of social media in building the Obama brand.
The Obama campaign and election made history in many respects, and not just a little in its commitment to and exploitation of social media to build and broadcast its brand.
The Obama campaign’s online strategy was so focused and targeted that the other players in that election drama were at an utter loss to keep up, certainly in terms of fund raising, an area where the Obama campaign consistently dominated.
Rahaf Harfoush, who worked as volunteer community manager on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, spoke at Mount Royal College May 29.
Photo: Julie C Vincent / Calgary Journal
According to Harfoush’s site, “Yes, We Did” reveals how the combination of an unwavering strategic vision and collaborative technologies including blogs, social networks, Twitter and SMS messaging, empowered a formidable online community.”
Harfoush noted in her speech that both the Clinton and McCain campaigns were blindsided by the reach of the Obama campaign’s broad use of social media and neither was able to keep up, let alone keep pace.
Dean of Mount Royal College’s Faculty of Communication Studies, Marc Chikinda, noted he continues to receive very personal emails addressed to “Dear Marc, I need your help,” (properly spelled the French way, he noted), and that the Obama campaign has not abandoned it’s successful on line strategy.
Harfoush began researching the Obama campaign in February of 2008 while working as Research and Writing Team Member on writer, Don Tapscott’s, Grown Up Digital (http://www.rahafharfoush.com/2007/02/grown-up-digital-how-the-net-generation-is-changing-your-world).
The opportunity to be a part of one of the largest online grassroots movements came along as a result of Harfoush’s research for Grown Up Digital, and presented her an opportunity to view from the inside an election campaign that would change everything. “I just couldn’t say no,” Harfoush said, about the opportunity to work as a full time volunteer at National Headquarters.
Working on the Obama campaign’s signature social media site, MyBO, Harfoush was the volunteer community manager. Her work was an immersion into the details of social networking including approving groups submitted by MyBO users, managing MyBO’s comments boards and running audits on the usability of online tools developed for the MyBO site.
The May 29 event at Mount Royal was attended by members of the communications department and by several public relations professions from the community looking to understand how they could put social networking and New Media to work in their own organizations.
It was evident from the questions asked to her that Harfoush is quickly becoming a celebrity in the world of social media strategy. At 25, she is a leader in an elite group of strategists to whom technology and social media are an extension of their brains. Harfoush is currently consulting at World Economic Forum in Geneva, “where she is exploring the intersection of people, technology and creativity.”
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