It’s always nice to get confirmation that we’re doing the right thing when it comes to social media.

Last night, a group of Laughlin social media staff and I attended the ‘Obama For President: Interactive Strategy’ event hosted by MIMA (Milwaukee’s Interactive Marketing Association). Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, shared his insights, strategies, and lessons learned from executing Obama’s social media campaign.

Although I am standing by the notion that social media is not a campaign – I will refer to it as that for the purpose of this blog.

After hearing the genius that went into creating Obama’s social media strategy, I learned that no matter the campaign size, big or small, the key to success lies in the targeting of the message. So, whether it’s email, video, photos, or an interactive platform, each social media channel should harness a different message.

Take for example Obama’s email marketing strategy. Although email marketing doesn’t necessarily fall under social media, the lessons learned from this example can be applied to any two-way conversation.

Obama’s team knew that they couldn’t send out one, mass email to all of his supporters. They knew that the message needed to cater to each specific person, their interests, and their behavioral data. Hours of research went into making sense of this data and the results came back with an interesting insight.

Out of 13 million email subscribers, there were 300 segmented groups of people with similar interests. Obama’s personalized approach raised millions of dollars for the campaign because they were targeting the right person at the right time.

Now, if the notion of customized messages, delivered at the right time, to the right person, makes sense for a campaign as large as the Presidential election, imagine it for your corporate social media strategy…