The Situation
Twitter played an important role in helping move Congress to finally pass the debt ceiling legislation.
The Marketing Takeaways
At several points over the past few weeks, the president called a press conference to repeat points that he had already made many times before. Why did he bother? Because each of these press conferences included a direct appeal to voters to email, call and tweet at the members of Congress who represented them.
Obama repeated those appeals on his Twitter account, which boasts 9 million followers. And each time he did that, Congressional offices were swamped with constituent communications in support of the president. Marketers should be curious about how the president pulled this off.
Whether we agree with his handling of the debt ceiling standoff or not, we have to admit that Obama and his team know how to use Twitter. Multiple mainstream media sources (including Federal Computer Week and The Register) have acknowledged the effectiveness of the White House's use of this powerful medium, and a few (including Media Matters for America) even seem to suggest that it might have been one of the turning points in resolving the crisis.
Obama used Twitter to mobilize his base of contacts and issue calls to action that people quickly obeyed. Here are four best practices, straight from the Oval Office:
- Act like the relationship matters and keep people in the loop. The difference between treating people like a record on a database and treating them like valued customers or supporters lies in keeping them updated on the issues that affect them. Obama's team did this, regularly keeping millions of followers up to date on the latest developments in the crisis, and explaining what needed to happen to resolve it.
Big Lesson
To support your brand and build an engaged base of motivated followers, do these four things on Twitter -- whatever your politics happen to be.