The significance of social networking websites can be identified by the fact that Barack Obama is also the one who needs a social media website to market his presidency along with communicating with his potential voters. This is how viral marketing has come into effect.
We all know that Facebook and MySpace have been marketing tools for Obama when he was promoting his image to the public during the previous elections. As a result, his social media presence helped him a lot to achieve success. Now again, he is keen to let US citizens know he is there on social media for answering their questions. Recently, Obama is using Google Plus to keep in touch with his potential voters.
Obama has joined Google Plus so that his social networking can be expanded. Moreover, his official brand page has been created and launched recently. He is staying connected with his campaign this way. However, the page is not managed by Obama himself. Rather than that, he has a dedicated team of social media professionals who update the page as and when required.
Although Obama has over 24 million likes on Facebook and over 11 million followers on Twitter, you can notice from Obama’s official page in Google Plus that the number of fans is over 5975. But this is just the beginning and we can predict that the number will even surpass that of Facebook and Twitter.
Google Plus can be the most useful way for Obama to win maximum voters. He works through the campaign by involving in the highest level of consumer engagement. This is because nobody has ever wondered if they could talk to Obama right from their homes. But now, Google Plus has made interaction with the President so easy. You can now talk to Obama directly by using the hangouts feature offered by Google Plus. It lets you have a direct video chat with him.
Obama uses Google Plus’ hangout feature so that the US citizens can ask him questions and he can answer them directly. Although answering questions of so many people necessarily does not mean that he will get their votes, there is always another way to influence them, i.e. if their peers like Obama’s initiative, they will most likely succeed in encouraging other users of Google Plus to vote for Obama.
Obama’s first virtual hangout happened to be a live video chat in which he answered live as well as pre-selected questions. These questions were submitted via YouTube or Google. The duration of the live video chat was 45 minutes.
His presence on Google Plus was quite lucky for a woman who asked the President tohelp her husband find a job. The woman named Jennifer Weddel from Texas told Obama that her husband is an engineer and he is constantly searching for a job in the semiconductor industry. It has been 3 years now and he is still unemployed. The President responded in a helpful manner and asked her to send him her husband’s resume.
Jennifer told the news sources that her husband received many calls from various recruiters and his hiring is in process. She is happy because Obama helped her husband find work in his field of interest. However, during the Google Plus hangout, Obama was surprised to know that jobs are not available in the semiconductor industry. That was quite disappointing for some of his potential voters that he does not have knowledge of the unemployed. Jennifer was one of them and said that she will vote for him if he makes amendments in her husband’s job policies. It is expected that Obama will bring changes in the level of employment for the better.
Google Plus and other social media networks have definitely excelled in terms of providing a competitive edge to Obama for promoting his election campaigns. Numerous social media users are of the view that no president has ever contacted them and tried to ask them about their issues through live video chat. This is a good initiative by the President indeed and sounds effective for increasing the number of votes that he expects from people for the upcoming election.