Obama Tag

Obama & The Social Media World

It’s not really news that President Obama is for social media, since many say his presence on social media helped him get to the White House.  And although he maybe for it, he’s still just learning how to use it.  Last week, when the President visited the Red Cross headquarters to learn what they were doing in effort to help Haiti, the President hit the Twitter ‘submit’ button for the very first time.  Although he has his own Twitter account, he’s never actually personally used it.

Tonight, President Obama is expected to give his first State of the Union address to the nation.  And for the first time ever, social media has already begun to play a role in the president’s State of the Union speech.  First the Rethink Afghanistan organization has started a widespread war protest on the White House’s Facebook page.  What started as an effort to obtains 20,000 signatures on Rethink Afghanistan’s website, moved to the social media world after they had reached their goal.  (more…)

Facebook’s Trends of 2009

As I predicted earlier this month, everyone is pumping out data from the what happened this year.  Last week, I shared with you some of Twitter’s most tweeted words.  Now this week, Facebook has decided to share some of the most talked about topics through status updates. 

“Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them–how they’re feeling, what they’re doing and what they’re thinking,” says Facebook’s Lars Backstrom in a Facebook statement. “In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day, thousands per second, in status updates. When taken as a whole, these words offer a unique barometer into the issues, world events and thoughts that are connecting people.” (more…)

If You Want to be as Successful as Obama

With the world watching Obama on inauguration day, it was inevitable that people would carefully analyze his speech from a variety of different angles. But I’m sure not even his young, hotshot speechwriter Jon Favreau (sorry, not Mikey of Swingers fame) foresaw that Obama’s speech would offer some helpful insight into all of our future online content.

With it well known that politicians are the kings and queens of rhetoric, what techniques of theirs can we implement into our own work?

The Hook

It’s no mystery that any good piece of writing has to hook the audience right away. For Obama, this meant utilizing language that kept us hanging on his every sentence. If-then clauses kept us asking a collective, “If what?” (See a shameless example in this article’s headline.)

In terms of online writing, pose a question in your headline. With all the numerous blog posts and articles out there, there has to be something to set your article apart. And if the headline can already get your audience thinking and asking questions, you have a significant leg up on your competition.
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