How Obama Stole Romney’s RNC Thunder With Clever Social Media

[flamingdem]

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/03/how-obama-stole-romneys-rnc-thunder-with-clever-social-media/

President Barack Obama managed to steal an impressive amount of Gov. Mitt Romney’s press coverage with a few, cheap social media tricks, including the most retweeted post of the convention. In comparison to the Republican National Convention’s all-out multi-million dollar conservative carnival, Obama made front page Google News with dramatically less effort and at no cost with three clever social media projects: answering questions from Reddit users for 30 minutes, tweeting “This seat’s taken” in response to Clint Eastwoods silly stand-up routine (51K retweets), and releasing the White House beer recipe. Sure, Obama has the spotlight advantage because he’s the President, but it goes to show that all the money and staging in the world can’t compete with cleverness.

The Republican National Convention, by any measure, was a breakout social media success, with 4 million total tweets and 14,000 tweets per second for Romney’s big speech. There were more tweets by the Tuesday of the convention than occurred during the entire 2008 convention (even though ratings were higher in 2008 with Palin). And, as well detail later, the Romney folks have an impressive digital media strategy.

But, team Obama managed to get an inordinate amount of traditional and online coverage with a few novelty social media actions. The first presidential “Ask Me Anything” on the popular news aggregate site, Reddit, racked up a whopping 5 million views for just 30 minutes of the President’s time.

Riding the wave of Clint Eastwood’s head-scratching conversation with an empty chair, Obama’s team dropped a pitch-perfect photo of him sitting in the commander-in-chief’s seat into the Twitterverse and watched the fireworks fly. The simple text + photo took the crown for the most retweeted post of the RNC.
To top it off, the White House assistant chef answered a much-anticipated call for the first official beer, which made the Google News front page. MORE AT LINK

[JNelson6563]

1. Still the smartest motherfucker in the room.

And it's fun to watch him best them again and again.

[flamingdem]

2. You know they're good when they were able to produce that Obama in President's Chair

response within minutes!

[JNelson6563]

6. Yes, Instant Response!

Or, more accurately, Instant Brilliant Response.

Julie

[flamingdem]

3. PS I think we all need to get on twitter

and start retweeting ... twitter stats get quoted a lot though I'm convince most people only read 2% of their twitter feed.

[JNelson6563]

7. I agree!

I have an account but never go there. I will have to change that.

Good idea/reminder!
Julie

[wildeyed]

9. It is hard to read it all.

I am pretty sporadic, but Twitter is unparalleled for keeping track of things like political conventions. I now stream the convention speeches online with my Twitter feed open right next to it so I can see the real time/real people response.

Another hint, when you click the number above the Twitter logo in the OP, you can see who tweeted the story and find other DUers to follow.

[flamingdem]

12. I was wondering about that thanks nt

[Cha]

4. Thank you, flamingdem..

& thanks to Clint Eastwood's participation in making just an hysterical contribution(whether he intended to or not) and Sam Kass for the Beer Recipe!



http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2012/09/white-house-releases-homebrewed-beer.html

[flamingdem]

5. Now I want a beer!

It's going to be a good week

[Cha]

8. Yes, it is! Happy

Labor Day~

[avebury]

10. Do you think that Obama's campaign was behind the

InvisibleObama twitter account? If so, it was a clever way to draw more attention away from Romney.

[flamingdem]

11. I don't know if they confessed yet

The one post that made me think otherwise was when the account used a photo of a chair with HOPE underneath.. that was a little unclear.