Update from the Obama Answer Center - Web 2.0 and US Elections

I have written about the Obama Answer center before (see Barack Obama’s Answer Center - Campaign CRM from RightNow and this update, More on the Obama Campaign’s Use of the Web with RightNow). I recently received an update from RightNow on what is happening there. I made sure that the Obama campaign has approved sharing this information before sharing it. As a discloser, I am a supporter of Barack Obama and have done canvassing for him in my neighboring state of New Hampshire. I go under the name, Bill the blogger:)

RightNow was chosen at the beginning of the campaign to run the Obama Answer Center. It is a place where voters can go and get information about the campaign or Barack. This also allowed the Obama campaign to better server voter questions and requests, as well as better track donors and people looking to join the campaign.

Below are some recent figures and updates from the Obama Campaign:

The current top questions selected in the answer center are:

- Is Obama a Christian?

- Asking about him saying the pledge of allegiance.

- What is his position on women’s issues?

Interestingly, there is nothing about the economy or war within the top questions selected. I am not a political analyst so I will not interpret these results but I am sure that is the type of data that a campaign would find useful. I heard a recent poll in Texas said that 23% of voters thought Obama was a Muslim. Now that should be not be a problem since it is one of the world’s largest religions, except that it is not true. He is a Christian. So the Answer Center can see that this is one of the top questions people are asking.

Some more interesting facts:

Since the August Democratic Primary Convention, Obama’s Answer Center has seen a 700% increase in visitors to the website in October translating into 1,290,000 page views, and not once has the site had issues dealing with this surge in visits.

Also, 684,000 email questions have been submitted in this time frame. Marking the highest number of email questions submitted since the start of the campaign, this is a 70% increase in October compared to August (312,000 emails submitted).

Also new this month is the Obama campaigns usage of RightNow’s webform. In the answer center: you can choose the second tab “contact us” and now fill out a RightNow designed “ask a question form” which contains pre-fields that allows the Obama campaign to streamline workflow sending the questions to the appropriate Obama campaign subject expert, increasing response times.

Also, the campaign can track this form within the same system with the answer knowledge foundation to reference information, making response times faster and answers consistent. So far they have received 85,000 web form submissions just this month.

In my last post in September, I wrote that it will be great if the US government adopts these practices to better connect with citizens. Perhaps lessons learned during the campaign on such issues as effective web practices to increase citizen engagement can be adopted by the government. There is great potential here. I think it is demonstrates some of the ways the new web can be used to increase engagement and the innovation evidenced by this campaign.

For more on Obama’s use of the web see these other posts:

How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop

Rolling Stone Magazine and More on Obama’s Use of the New Web

Post script. Here is an interesting article from today's NY Times, Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World. It said "Given the profound change in the media landscape in just four years, in 2012, voters will be following the election through news sites that have not been invented on platforms that cannot be anticipated." I look forward to these discoveries.

Comments

[Rex Lee]

Thanks Bill for this and your series of posts covering the use of 2.0 within Obama's campaign.

[any]

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