Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

If I asked you who you thought the Most Followed Person on Twitter was, I'm sure I'd get a number of interesting and viable answers. I am forced to wonder, however, how many people would have picked the correct answer: Barack Obama.

"Barack Obama?!" you say? Yep, it's true. According to C|Net, Obama recently passed Digg creator Kevin Rose as the Most Followed Person On Twitter. I admit, I was pretty surprised - a politician? Using social media? And actually using it pretty well? That is not something I expected to see.

So, I figured "hey, why not?", and I decided to follow him too. In doing this, I got another surprise - less than 10 minutes later, I get an e-mail from Twitter that Barack Obama is now following ME on Twitter. OMG! Following ME?

It's pretty clear the Obama camp is really on the ball with this - no doubt they have a volunteer whose job it is to ensure that everybody who chooses to follow Obama on Twitter immediately gets a response in kind. Imagine being a young, impressionable voter, getting an e-mail that Barack Obama - THE Barack Obama, the (presumptive) Democratic Nominee for the Presidency of the United States, is following YOU on Twitter! The potential power of that simple e-mail alone is enormous. Like never before, social media is allowing people to feel like they're really in touch with a candidate for office.

Add to this Obama's 1.3 million Facebook supporters, and the fact that it looks like he's about to surpass 2 million online donors, and this becomes even more impressive.

Obama is not the first politician to benefit from the Internet or social media. As many of you probably know, Ron Paul received a staggering amount of Internet support in his bid to become the Republican candidate. His YouTube channel currently has over 130 videos, and over 7 million views. Nobody paid much attention when he entered the race, but thanks to people in his camp who were Web and social media-savvy, he became a household name, whose opinions could not be ignored.

With all the debate about social media going on right now, one thing's for sure - a political candidate who ignores the potential power of social media does so at their peril.

In the meantime, I'd better be careful what I say on Twitter - Obama is watching!

Daryl Brewer