Tequila Tonics, Presidential Politics & Social Networking

An Inside Look at the Disarray of the Clinton Campaign, the Power of Social Media Marketing and the Goldmine That's Right Under Your Nose...

Ok, I’ll admit it… I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton during the primary season.

In fact, someone very close to me had a high level position within the campaign. Aside from me wanting to support my friend, I did believe that Clinton was the best candidate for the job, considering the other choices (i.e. Obama and McCain).

And yes, I even volunteered for the campaign. (“Burn Ferny at the Stake!”) Ok, ok… I get that some of you may not be pleased and it’s not common for a marketer to reveal their political affiliations, but you’ll see in a second why it is I’m revealing this (despite it possibly destroying my street cred among fellow capitalist).

You see, being that I was so close to the campaign, I got to visit the campaign headquarters on more than one occasion, (I even put together some AMF marketing pieces using Hillary’s internet connection), met Hillary Clinton and was in both Nevada and Texas for the primaries and caucuses there…

I got to observe a lot of things that others probably don’t’ know about. And I even joined civil rights legend Dolores Huerta for a ‘tequila tonic’ in Vegas! (Look up ‘United Farm Workers Union’ on Wikipedia if you don’t know who she is.)

But more importantly, it was what I learned about how Hillary and Obama mobilized people, which was most interesting. Now there’s no question that Obama had the advantage when it came to getting people off their couch potato butts and moving them with speeches on ‘hope’ and ‘change’.

But no one has ever answered the question as to why he’s able to mobilize people so easily and efficiently. People try to argue that it’s because of his charisma and great speeches. That helped, but that really wasn’t it.

You see, it was when I was in Texas for the primaries when things finally clicked… While Clinton staffers were waiting for paper lists of Texas voter info so they could send people knocking on doors during the primary & caucus there, Barack Obama had mobilized over 104,000 “boots on the ground” to overwhelm the caucus sites and knock on the doors of undecided voters, compared to the 20,000 boots Clinton had.

While the Clinton folks were waiting for an audio commercial to be approved by headquarters to run a radio ad one day before the day of the primary & caucus, Barack Obama had been running radio ads every 15 minutes for 2 weeks on every station and was all over the Banner Advertising networks, including CNN.com.

So again, let me ask the question: How is it that Obama is able to mobilize both his staff, volunteers and recruit advertising specialists from every possible kind of marketing medium in existence? The answer is pretty simple…

How Obama Used Social Media to Crush a Political Dynasty

Obama’s team had completely and totally mastered every single advertising medium, but none was more powerful than Social Media.

I recently read an article from MIT’s magazine, the Technology Review called ‘How He Really Did It’, which broke down exactly how it is that Obama went from a political newbie to possibly being our next president. And the incredible thing is that the main stream media hardly ever explores how Obama raises money online, (mainly because they don’t understand it).

So while “lipstick on a pig” gets most of the airtime on Fox News, Obama is getting hog stinkin’ rich on the internet. Obama’s team has setup shop in every major social network in the world, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Not only that, on the day Barack Obama announced his candidacy, he launched his own social network, MyBO (MyBarackObama.com).

Today, the estimated size of the network is about 1 million people and rising. On the day before the Texas primary/caucus when I was at the San Antonio Clinton headquarters dialing undecided voters (yes I did this too), Obama had mobilized over 100,000 Texans via his social network and told each one of them exactly where the undecided voters on their city block lived and to go persuade them to vote Obama’s way.

With the click of a mouse, Obama’s team was able to command the troops and pass on exact info on the demographics, contact info and address of any particular MyBO member (including undecided voters).

While at the San Antonio office, it was clear that the Clinton’s staff was overmatched and the only reason they pulled off a victory in the primary was because of Clinton’s strong latino support (non-internet users) in Texas and sheer grit on the part of the campaign staff.

However, social networking proved to be the deciding factor in the caucus results in the state. In caucuses, people are actually required to show up for 1-2 hours to participate and get their vote counted. In this type of match up, all that mattered was the strength of a motivated network and clearly, MyBO gave Obama the advantage.

Clinton ended up losing the state over all (counting primary and caucus results) and ultimately lost the election. And today, McCain faces a similar handicap.

In fact, McCain doesn’t even know how to use email, so good luck trying to explain social networking to him. ;) It’s pretty embarrassing when Obama’s Twitter account has over 80,000 people following his ‘tweets’, while McCain’s Twitter account has a little over 1,000 people following.

Clinton is not much better, with just over 4,000 followers. In fact, Obama’s Twitter account is the #1 most followed in the world.

How You Can 'Swipe' Obama's Marketing to Grow Your Business

So how exactly does this information pertain to you? Well if you look at the overall blueprint for Obama’s social media campaign, you’ll notice that all of his accounts on the major social networks point back to one place – his website.

In fact, Obama actually employs capture pages to get basic voter info, then back-ends them with his MyBarackObama.com social community, where new members fill in more detailed information about themselves. And aside from his social media campaigns, his banner ad buys, Google Ads, TV ads, radio ads, etc. all point back to one place – his website.

Like any good marketing campaign, Obama is comprehensive, yet very focused about the end goal… which is to capture precise voter data, use that data to send micro-targeted personalized messages, send instructions to supporters, and build a relationship with his community members.

So now you may be thinking, “well, I have my YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts, and I have my capture page, but I certainly don’t have the resources to create my own social network, so how does this help me?”

Well, when you understand the purpose of Obama’s social network, beyond just data collection you’ll see where I’m going with this… This entire time that you’ve been on our list, we’ve been stressing the importance of building a PERSONAL relationship with your prospects.

It’s very hard for Obama to connect with folks on MySpace, where spammers, porn ads and teenage girls run the show. So by bringing people into a community where the theme and focus revolves around his message, he eliminates the noise and incubates his ‘prospect’ from negative influences.

He also has the power of social influence within the network, because members will interact and keep each other motivated and positive. He uses the major social networks (and other advertising mediums) as feeder sites to MyBarackObama.com community, since he has limited control on how he can communicate with his followers on the major networks.

Your Own Social Network...

Well, you’ll be shocked to discover that you do indeed have a social network available to you, which allows you to form a personal relationship with business prospects, in an environment which is conducive to forming business relationships…

If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that Raymond and I made a name for ourselves using BetterNetworker.com (formerly MagneticSponsoring.com), built a huge following and subsequently became financially independent.

Our most important business partnerships came from our active participation in this community, including an ongoing working relationship with Mike Dillard, our mentor and friend. It’s been really amazing how easily we’ve been able to utilize this community to speak to precisely the people who are most open to our message.

And just like Obama, our MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts are used to feed people into our capture pages, then we send folks over to Better Networker. Now you may be wondering why I would send my subscribers to BN.com and potentially be exposed to other people in the industry who can ‘steal’ them from me.

Well, if you’ve seen all the great content we’ve published on the site and our active participation in the forums, you’d know that by continuing to add value to the community, the community in turn provides us a great deal of social proof as leaders through their praise, public feedback, thank you’s and not to mention the sheer quality of our content.

This in turn legitimizes us as industry leaders, and they get to see firsthand how we are able to impact the lives of other entrepreneurs. We aren’t hiding behind an autoresponder anymore… they get to see us in action LIVE!

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised... The Revolution is Here.

There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do the same.

If you’ve grown a list, send them over to Better Networker and allow your subscribers to see you perform in front of a real community of knowledge hungry entrepreneurs. Be their guide through the world’s #1 social community for entrepreneurs.

If you haven’t grown a list, use Better Networker to grow one. Add value to the community, and people will flock to you and join your email newsletter. (Trust me on this one!)

And I’m not going to mince words here, it is critically important that you get involved with Better Networker NOW, since the community is still in its infancy. Right now BN.com has a little over 19,500+ members and Mike has personally told me that the goal is to grow it beyond the 100,000 member mark within 3 months.

What this means is that there is going to be a flood of new likeminded entrepreneurs who will be looking to you for leadership. And I guarantee you that if you aren’t there to lead them, someone else will take on that role.

So now you know the social networking secret, which allows Barack Obama to maintain a strong loyal following, despite his lack of experience, youth, race and religious baggage.

Everyday, his community members get a perfectly crafted message, they are educated, persuaded to take action, make new friends and become a part of something bigger than themselves.

You can make this available to your prospects as well, and they will be forever indebted to you for introducing them to such a powerful opportunity.

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Ferny Ceballos got lucky with social networking and SEO thus became an "expert" or "guru". In 2008, he went from the miserable confines of a cushy corporate job, to retiring into the wild and crazy world of network marketing. If you'd like to harass Ferny, go to the AMF training site Attraction Marketing Formula or visit him at the Coffee House Manifesto.