As President Obama and Mitt Romney can tell you, it’s getting harder every day to win public attention — thus, the billions they spent on this year’s presidential campaign. Overall, the election of 2012 has shown that we’re at a liminal moment in how ideas and brands spread — and the winners have to thread the needle between the declining (but still powerful) broadcast era and the nimble, fragmented ways of digital communication. In the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama won media glory for his effective use of social media. But in this election cycle, the person who best leveraged all communication platforms — both online and off — wasn’t even a candidate. My vote goes to Nate Silver, creator of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight.

Silver, who has written for the Times since 2010, has become ubiquitous in recent months. The day before the election, a full 20% of the Times‘ online traffic went to his blog. He’s amassed nearly 343,000 Twitter followers as of this writing, and recently published a widely reviewed book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t.

So — to use his metaphor — how is it that Silver himself has broken through the noise? He’s built a powerful brand through a savvy mix of old and new media strategies, which holds lessons for any leader.

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Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. She is the author of the forthcoming Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press 2013). You can follow her on Twitter at @dorieclark. To read more of Dorie’s blog posts, please click here.