FreshNetworks Blog

The Wall Street Journal blog had a post last week about The Secret Behind Obama’s Nomination (it was social networks). Even though I’m not totally convinced by how much of a secret it was, I did enjoy the article and agree that Obama more than Clinton (and more than McCain) has made great use of social media.

The WSJ post discusses a lot Obama’s tactics and use of both his own site (www.my.barackobama.com) and on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. However, I want to dwell on a simple but incredibly effective aspect of Obama’s own site: it is very easy to get started. In fact it’s hard not to get started. Obama’s site is a model of how to engage people and why calls to action really work in online communities.

One issue we spend a lot of time working on when building online  communities at FreshNetworks is how to ensure and encourage participation. How do you design and build a community site which will make your target audience want to take part and then take the step to actually take part, contributing something or adding to the community in some way. The best and simplest solution is just to make it really easy for the community members to do things and to make it very clear to them what the benefits are. Obama’s site is a textbook example of how to do this and, I believe, this good online strategy and design has led to the impressive online community and support that is being spoken of.

When you first visit Obama’s website, there are two features on the landing page that power this community:

1. Calls to action: A list of very clear but very direct ways in which you can get involved in the campaign by registering to vote, hosting an event, volunteering, taking action. Whatever I might want to do, big or small, I can do from the homepage. They make no pretence that the purpose of the page is to point you in the direction of all the ways in which you can help the Obama campaign. But this makes absolute sense. If you visit the site, the chances are that you want to know more and may want to contribute in some way. By placing these very direct calls to action in such a prominent position on the homepage, they are actually making it very easy for the visitor to do exactly what they want to do on the site, without having to hunt around. It’s easy, it’s simple and best of all it’s effective.
2. Replaying my own activities: Once signed in the homepage changes. Rather than just a set of calls to action, the site lists all the activities that I could be involved in (attending a rally, hosting an event, knocking on doors, raising money) and then tells me how much of each I’ve done in the last week and the last month. This information is also available to the other members of the community. Different communities have different purposes and work for different reasons. Obama’s is a community of purpose, one where people have a common goal (to get him elected) and are working together to achieve this. In such a community, information on what individuals and the community collectively are doing to achieve this purpose is critical. And by playing it back to me on my homepage it will remind me first of what I can do to support this purpose and secondly of how I am performing.

So Obama’s site is effective because it makes it very clear how I can take part and add to the campaign. Once I’m signed up it tracks what I do and reminds me how I can help. It’s simple and it works. Calls to action are perhaps the single most important element to make sure you get right in your community. You need to sign-post how people can take part. Let them know what they can do and the kind of activities that you expect the community members to want to do. Links and headings should be powerful, telling you what to do and the benefits. Sites who have a strong strategy of engagement usually get this right. Those without such a strategy don’t.

Some more reading

• On the Convention: New Media Stream Into an Old Tradition
• The politics of social media
• Online Social Networks in Politics: Promise, Frustration and…
• Close Encounters Of The Republican Kind: McCainSpace Relaunches
• Survey: Record number of Americans following election via Web
• McCain Lags Behind Obama in Online Fundraising, Social Networking Popularity
• Online Community Numbers that Don’t Add Up