Regardless of what you think of Barack Obama’s politics (and there are plenty of polls out there that say that you don’t like them), his campaigns have been some of the best run campaigns we’ve seen in recent memory. One of the bigger reasons that he was elected president in 2008 is because of his use of social media during his campaign. He was reaching the young people where they hang out, and for the most part, John McCain was not.
The LA Times Technology blog even deemed Obama “the first social media president.”
Now, of course, every single candidate is all over Twitter and Facebook and Youtube and most everything else you can name. You simply have to be. You can’t compete without having a huge social media following.
Well, Obama is now taking it a step further. He and his campaign have now taken to Tumblr so they can have a blog (why did it take this long?). It would seem though that BarackObama.Tumblr.com is quite new, as it has (as of this posting) an Alexa rank of 23,423,176. That is incredibly low traffic. That means that even Michelle and the kids don’t read it.
Obama is wisely using social media again as he gears up for re-election in 2012. Although with his approval ratings down where they are, he’s going to need a lot more than just a blog this time.