The Power of Social Media

No one can deny the fact that Barack Obama’s success is somehow due to how he utilized social media. He is the first president who was able to reach out directly to the people through different tools and services that Web 2.0 can offer.

From his blog at my.barackobama.com, he was able to reach out to many people. The site offered not only articles, news, and press releases. It is also capable of sending text alerts, it has videos and membership privileges. This has undoubtedly transformed the name Barack Obama a household name.


Obama also created the blog fightthesmears.com. This is just an extension of the my.barackobama.com. The main focus of the site is, as the name suggests, to fight the smears campaign being raised against the candidate, now the president. And it worked! Due to proper optimization, people searching for “issues” were directed to his fightthesmears.com, thereby, clarifying any issues even before they increased in circulation.

Obama also maintains different social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and even Youtube. He utilized all of these for managing his online presence, and more importantly, in managing his only reputation. (He announced who his running mate will be through Twitter!)

Point is, social media is something we should take advantage of. It is not just a social tool; it is more of an opportunity. If used properly, one will can have a great tool that he or she can used to achieve his ends, not just it’s monetary or something else.