Author’s Note: I hope all those who chose to read and comment on the Obama reelection campaign article will put their political bias aside and have a civilized conversation.

President Barack Obama has officially started his bid for reelection. In doing so he’s filed papers to run for reelection sooner than any other incumbent president in recent memory. His desire to be reelected comes as a surprise to no one. Today we’ll focuse on Obama’s use of social media to energize and empower his supporters.

Barack Obama – It Starts With Us Video

Obama for America has released their first video to support the reelection campaign. It’s pretty simple. It’s aim is to get people excited about the grassroot efforts that Obama for America hopes to put together over the next year. Here’s the video:

This video really tries to represent everyone. You can see that we have most areas of the country represented with people from: North Carolina, New York, Nevada, Colorado, etc. This is done to show that the campaign isn’t set in one area of the country, but rather it’s every where, with every person. I’m surprised there wasn’t more focus on smaller states, given how much concentration they received from Obama for America in the 2008 election.

Also the video shows people from all different ethnic backgrounds. It was important that the Obama team stress that Obama is the candidate for all walks of life, regardless of your background or ethnicity. By giving us diverse supporters, even showcasing someone who says he doesn’t agree with Obama on everything, shows that Obama is a uniter, and is worthy of respect and of course a presidential vote in his favor.

Perhaps the most telling part of the video is the grassroots footage of campaign workers working phone banks, going door to door, etc. As someone who has worked on various political campaigns, I can tell you these are NOT easy tasks. While they look easy or simply they are often the hardest things to do. Going door to door is tiring and you have to put up with a lot of hassle from people who don’t support your candidate. Same with phone banking. The campaign workers getting highlighted and shown are meant to draw people in to volunteer with the campaign. As the tagline says, “It starts with us”.

Barack Obama – “Are You In?”

Whenever I here “Are You In?” I immediately think of the Incubus song of the same name. However this is the launch of Obama’s Facebook connect program with his web site. Obama currently has over 19 million people “liking” him on Facebook. That’s a very large number. To put that into perspective, right before Election Day in 2008, Obama had 2 million likes, where as McCain only had 627,000. That’s total domination by the Obama camp.

Obama for America asks "Are You In?"

Obama is asking his supporters to connect through Facebook and tell the world that they are in. With as many Facebook supporters as he has, expect your News Feeds to be displaying that your friends are in, if it hasn’t already. This is a great way to use Facebook for the Obama campaign. It gets the message of the reelection bid out early, without having to rely on print or TV ads. The Obama campaign is hopeful that the majority of their 19 million supporters will connect with the website and “Be In”.

Obama has already taken to Twitter to talk about the reelection campaign, using the hashtag #Obama2012. His initial tweet of this reelection campaign was been retweeted over a 100 times. Seems to me that the campaign is off to a pretty good start.

Barack Obama – What’s To Come

It’s clear that the election of 2012 will be won and lost on the battlefields of social media. Twitter and Facebook will be integral parts of candidate success and failure. Presidential Debates will feature questions asked from both of these forums, which is nothing new. This was done in 2008 as well.

Obama is set to hold his first Town Hall meeting on April 20th, live from the Facebook Headquarters. That’s pretty impressive on several levels. One, the President embracing the largest social media network around and two, a president candidate getting that type of exposure. He’s already got a leg up so to say on the competition.

The Obama reelection campaign will probably be successful. I say that for a few reasons:

1. Lack of a true challenger on the republican side of the coin.
2. Young voters being energized by the Obama team, as they were in 2008
3. You don’t switch Presidents during times of conflict (this won Bush the 2004 election in my eyes)

I’m sure there are others that play into the re-relection of Obama. Either way he and his Obama for America team are in excellent shape. As always keep reading Social Medianaires for coverage on all things social media. Make sure you answer Obama’s question, Are You In?

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