I attended a virtual tradeshow a few months ago, hosted by MarketingProfs. One of the most interesting white papers available at this event was The Obama Playbook. This fantastic guide covers how the Obama campaign embraced new media to build awareness, engage prospects and start a movement. 
Obama's campaign did more than just motivate people to vote, it inspired them to encourage other people to vote. This playbook makes some recommendations on how businesses can use the lessons learned from the Obama campaign to mobilize their own customers and partners to be company evangelists. The key points on this are:
- Simple, crisp and clear messaging that resonates with customers and is intergrated across all marketing activities
- Identify brand advocates, customers who are highly satisfied and would go out of their way to recommend you, almost every company has some.
- Provide Feedback Mechanism - this could be as simple as adding a blog or contact us mechanism to your website
- Try Video - go beyond email communication. There are many tools available to add video email or video conferencing to reach out to customers, such as JiveSystems, EyeJot and TokBox
- Mobilise your internal social media network - start getting your employees involved first, then add customers and partners.
