The President of the United States responded to questions from the public in a live YouTube interview at the White House on Monday, February 1st, at 1:45 p.m EST.When all was said and done, it brought in almost 800,000 votes on 14,464 questions from 64,968 questions. Not bad, but I would have expected much more from somebody running the country.
I suspect because it was so poorly advertised. I heard about it from colleague Craig Ritchie the morning of the broadcast. Russ Hopkinson mentioned he saw it on Google's home page "in the same way they are advertising the results now... in a one liner below the search bar."
Citizen Tube reports that people "submitted over 11,000 questions and cast over 667,000 votes after the President's State of the Union address last week." When I viewed the live stream around 2 p.m. it had only received a handful more than 47,000 votes.
Bridget McKinley agrees about the lack of publicity. "I didn't hear about it until people were tweeting about the answers. And I'm a political and media junkie. Not well publicized/marketed at all..."I'm perturbed at the reason for this. What makes Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say" video more popular (at 31,970,491 views) than getting your own question asked by the President?
Has President Obama outdone his digital presence?
Sarah Jo Sautter
Strategists & Planners
Comments (2)
Much like every bad marketing campaign in social media, a one-off doesn't work. If Obama did this once a month, he would have something here. We would have something here.
Posted on February 2, 2010 07:13
He has a huge community on Facebook. Why didn't he engage them? I noticed only 1 post about it on his facebook wall (less than 2 hours prior).
And where is the dialogue? Just once (well, okay a few times), I'd like to see "him" comment on all his wall responses. Or at least post something like, "Thanks for all of your questions and interest. I wish I had time to answer them all, but someone needs me over at the Pentagon."
A public Town Hall once a month. Now that would get a better response. Great idea, Craig!
Posted on February 2, 2010 09:53