caught my eye: rahm emanuel’s mayoral campaign

For many reasons, I find Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff and current front runner in Chicago’s mayoral race, to be a fascinating dude. He’s very good at what he does; he’s got two genius brothers who are very good at what they do; he curses like a sailor and he used to do ballet. Fascinating. Anyway, I was reading an article about him in Time magazine when something about his strategy caught my eye:

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Emanuel employs the most cutting-edge techniques. A focus on social networking and demographically targeted e-mails is part of “using the Internet in ways not previously used in a municipal campaign,” says Chicago-based Democratic consultant Eric Adelstein. Emanuel is harnessing Google Analytics to micro-target voters based on their Web surfing. “So you look for ‘Chicago Bears’ and there may be an Emanuel message that might interest you, a sports fan between the ages of 40 and 60,” Adelstein says.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2049794,00.html#ixzz1EcwVXo5C

So, I checked out his blog, which has a good blend of stories and calls to action; his Facebook page, which is a pretty typical (but still well-run) candidate page; and his Twitter page, which looks standard and consistent.

I can’t wait to read a post-mortem of his campaign. In the meantime, here are a few links about the way Emanuel is using social media to win the hearts and votes of Chicagoans (with a shoutout to Fake Rahm!).

Nick’s Take on Rahm Emanuel’s Use of Social Media in His Mayoral Campaign

Real Rahm Thinks Fake Rahm is Hilarious

Making the (Twitter) Grade

AKPD Message and Media (David Axlerod’s company; it’s running Rahm’s campaign)

Thoughts?