As The 2012 Campaign Heats Up, President Obama To Start Tweeting

From @BarackObama

Leena RaoJun 17, 2011

You’re about to see whole lot more Tweets from the President. President Obama’s Twitter account,@BarackObama, has been around for sometime, accumulated 8.6 million followers but he was rarely sending any Tweets himself-his staff did. Today, the President’s campaign posted a message notifying the public that his 2012 presidential campaign staff (Obama for America) will start managing his Twitter and Facebook  accounts (which were previously managed by the DNC).

And Obama will be Tweeting regularly from @BarackObama, with the signature
“-BO.” Apparently both Facebook and twitter accounts will be posting daily updates from the campaign trail, from Washington, and more.

Now that the campaign has taken over the Twitter account, staff sent out this message in a Tweet a few minutes ago: Welcome to a new @BarackObama. From now on, #Obama2012 staff will manage this account; tweets from the President will be signed “-BO.”

In the past few years, the President’s Twitter account has posted about one update per day on average, so I’m assuming we’re about to see way more Tweets and activity coming from the account.

In the post on BarackObama.com, a staff member writes this of the reasoning behind the change in social media strategy:

As the President said when he launched this campaign a few months ago, he’s focused on doing the job we elected him to do — so he’s counting on all of us to lead this organization from the grassroots up, helping to shape it as it grows. One way we’re putting that idea into practice is by taking the reins of these Facebook and Twitter accounts. This change will give us new opportunities to make the most of these channels, using them not only to report what the President is doing every day but to connect to the millions of supporters who will be driving this campaign.

If the 2008 election was about Facebook, the 2012 election may also centralize around Twitter, which has more mass appeal than four years ago. Obama and his campaign are wise to start engaging constituents and citizens personally. In fact, Republican candidates are already starting to throw punches and jabs over Twitter. The fact that Obama will now be actually Tweeting from the account will add a ton of value to his stream.