Not only can we see the potentials of groundswell, but also
the trend of groundswell that is getting stronger than ever turns out in
reality. According to a report by
Statistics from eMarketer.com in 2013, American adults have spent more time everyday on using
digital media than watching TV as we can see the chart below.
This means that
Americans have enjoyed more engagements rather than the traditional one-way information gathering, such as TV, Radio and Newspapers.
Clearly, The White House has seen this trend as well and realized the need
for new media. In last year, there were only 33.5 million viewers on Obama’s State
of the Union address, which has reached the lowest audience since 2000. Fortunately, Obama changed the game this year
by using various social media to promote his SOTU address.
The lists below show his strategies on social media:
Instagram: a mobile device application for people who would like to share photos and videos on various network services by applying digital filters, as well as its original website. On September 9, 2013, the company has announced that there were more than 150 million monthly active users.
The White House staffs used Instagram to share photos and videos of their preparation for the address.
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| Instagram photo |
 |
| Click here for Instagram video |
Youtube:
Youtube can reach a lot of people while they were watching other video, SOTU used a long time ban advertisement to draw attention.
Twitter:
a microblogging enables people to interact online
The
staffs also use Hashtag #InsideSOTU to give the sense of the address
Vines:
President Obama used Vines to record short
videos for advertising the address
 |
| Click here to see President Obama Vine video |
Web live: White House
enhanced web live speech by playing slides with charts and graphics
illustration.
 |
| Click here to see White House web live address |
Google
Hangouts: a platform developed by Google for an instant messaging and video
chat of two or more users’ conversations.
President
Obama held a “virtual roadtrip” to discuss and answer questions on Google+
Hangout about the issues told in the address with the Hashtag #AskObama2014.
Politician is always trying all they can to reach everyone, to tell everyone that they are willing to help, the massive usage of social media of the White house this year, shows that they find out how to listen to groundswell.
This is very interesting Yolanda! You can find a lot of politicians on things like snapchat, twitter and facebook. I think few years back I heard Obama is one of the most followed on twitter. I'm not sure whether that is still the case.
ReplyDeleteHi Long,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting use of many social media platforms to promote the SOTU address, I might have to copy this model for my work as well. Thank you!