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This is a guest post from Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, the strategy and software company that spearheaded the Obama campaign’s web operation.

He has chosen PRMediaBlog to exclusively reveal his thoughts on how the PR industry can learn the lessons of Barack’s online success.

What can communication professionals learn from the Obama campaign?

The network is better than you are. 

Obama for America changed the economics of campaigns. Instead of seeing supporters as passive recipients of message, they were seen as an integral part of the team that would propel Obama to the Whitehouse. 

And it had a simple strategy behind it all - find your support, recruit them, give them something to do and then say thank you. And by repeating these steps, changing the calls to action, and monitoring how each user responds, the campaign quickly built an organization of unpredicted scale and commitment to Barack Obama. 

While much of Obama’s success came from his capacity to promote a message that authentically resonated with the American people, this connection was dramatically amplified by supporters willing to adopt his messages and then share this endorsement within their own peer groups.   

By focusing the campaign on this process, Obama’s message was strengthened through independent third party support - and then shared with an audience that Obama could never have reached without his networks support.  

They embraced the idea that in a world of communication divergence you can’t afford to be a single message campaign in a multi-message world - and accordingly provided groups and networks for traditional and non-traditional support alike. So what happens when other groups - firms, charities, unions – start talking directly to communities? 

Imagine neighbours, friends, and family members, colleagues uniting for a shared love or cause. And then imagine what’d happen if you asked for their help.   

The key concept of Obama’s campaign still applies; whose advocacy are you most likely to respond to - your best friend or a monolithic organisation’s centralized message? Digital strategists often become blinded by technology.  But the Obama campaign wasn’t about cheap gimmicks, short term tactical wins.

It was about people - and the awe-inspiring capacity of a huge number of individuals to take small actions which in turn generate a huge communal effect. $500 million dollars, 1.2 billion emails, 10 million phone calls, and 300,000 grassroots events later, Barack Obama won the Presidency. And it all started with a “do this now” call to action. 

The Internet did not win the election - it simply provided the capacity to release and develop the communities potential, and in a far more efficient and analytical manner then ever before. 

Stay with me on this!

I’ve spent the last two years advising brands, public sector, NGOs and individual politicians about social media strategy, web 2.0, e-pr, whatever you want to call it. Everybody has heard how powerful it is but there’s sometimes confusion about how and why to do it. ROI is an issue. How many people will see it? Should we be sending our press releases to these people?

The only way to make the case is to try a bit and get comfortable or to see case studies that you can relate to. The benefit of the Obama coverage-fest that we’ve had for the last few months, which is still at fever pitch, (PS how many people have the beeb had out there?!) is that there’s such detailed analysis of how he used new media to connect people, talk to them in their language and motivate them. There’s endless media case studies and experts stepping forward on mainstream media to talk about it.

Social media helped win the biggest competition in the World. Social media has grown up.

And the best bit is that this story keeps going. I posted last week about how Obama could take this into a whole new way of running the country. Within hours of his victory he’d launched this site. A clear indicator that social media will play some part in running the most powerful country on the globe.