I suppose I could wax lyrical about the amazingly well received digital campaign that backed President Obama during the US elections, but I’m sure everyone has already read many articles about that. Maybe lesser known to the general public, is the man and his team behind the digital campaign – Scott Goodstein, whom we got to meet!

Strategy, Strategy

One of the things that stuck to me was how Scott detailed that they didn’t roll out onto 50 sites at once. That is also why I like parts of this post about 3 common social media mistakes and the “shiny new object” syndrome.

It’s true. Just because the tools/sites are out there, doesn’t mean you have to use all of them at once or all of them, ever. He was also about figuring out what metrics made sense for each of the
channels, and using those to measure ROI, instead of sticking to the
traditional definitions of success.

“… make certain that the social media strategy is right for your
particular company, not because everyone else is doing it. One size
doesn’t fit all.“

He mentioned how the team figured out that when rolling out a Youtube video, the critical point was really in the first 24 hours. Once a video made Top video of the Day, it was more likely to ride on a wave of viewership.

“You don’t stop doing radio because you can’t tell which radio ad got you the sale.”
It was also interesting that Scott didn’t quite seem to focus on the distinction between the traditional and new media. Again, at the end of the day, the focus was on delivering a consistent, strong message across the various networks- SMS, email, websites and the lot. It wasn’t quite the struggle between “Should we channel our funds to traditional print ads or a digital campaign?“. “Good old fashioned online stores work too”, quipped Scott, on their Tshirts sold on Myspace.

Other takeaway snippets:

• The message + messenger are key

This paragraph highlights this nicely.

” and for the multi-channel, hyper-connected, user-generated,
co-created, always-on world we now live in — a world where the good
gets what it deserves and so does the bad? What if we stopped getting
all hot and heavy over the latest new media success stories du jour,
and starting realizing that the real triumph of, say, the Obama
campaign was the product and the story, not the channel used for
storytelling?”

• Customer service is now two-way communication
  
• Every organization must set online goals
• Be willing to experiment
• Engage your audience.

I hadn’t realized that Scott had come out of the music industry, having experienced and watched young artists trying to find a new tool (Myspace) to sell their records. He shared how he had been watching the trends through young artists, and trying to figure out how to tap into this.

Well, he must have done something right!

Credit goes to Bernard for the group pic, and shoutout to Anubha from Upstream Asia for the invite to this session!

More Link Love: Some other posts on the Goodstein Bloggers’ Session….

Bernard, Shalabh ,  Mohan, Saurabh , Daniel