Social Media's Role in 2012

Michael Scherer writes at Time:

From the moment he arrived in January, Plouffe changed the way the White House unfolds each morning. He demanded far more precision and repetition in the language used by the President and his surrogates. ("Win the future," ad nauseam.) He sought greater outreach to state and local media outlets. (West Wing aides now get news summaries from regional papers and local 6 o'clock news broadcasts, not just national publications.) And he doubled down on efforts by the White House to use social media to spread its message. (Plouffe, who turns 44 this month, also removed the clutter on Axelrod's desk; his desk is spit-shine clean.) (See why Obama is not a lock in 2012.)

Plouffe points to the recent announcement of the Osama bin Laden raid. By the time Obama spoke, shortly after 11:35 p.m. E.T. on a Sunday, 56.5 million Americans had their televisions on to watch the speech — Obama's largest audience as President, according to Nielsen. An additional million-plus people watched the speech stream on WhiteHouse.gov. Word had traveled fast in two hours. "People were texting each other and tweeting and on Facebook and doing some old-fashioned landline calling, I'm sure," Plouffe says. "That's how the world works these days."

With the 2012 campaign approaching, Plouffe is looking for every opportunity to sharpen Obama's edge. He has leaned heavily on the 10-person department that handles digital outreach and launched efforts to interact with the public, including a series called Advise the Adviser, in which citizens are invited to write in policy recommendations. He has also issued calls for Americans to organize roundtables, using online White House tools, to discuss immigration policy. "There is no guarantee that you are going to get any of those people through any other means," he says, noting shrinking audiences for TV news.

Rich Galen writes at Mullings:

In the week or so since he formally announced that he was a candidate for President, his campaign has gone from sputtering to on the rocks.

Newt is not a great orator. He is, as a former college professor, a great lecturer. If I had been involved in the planning, I would have had him deliver one of his 50 minute lectures before a live audience then edited it down to a five to seven minute video which would have had the energy a live audience provides.

As it was, the announcement had all the excitement of a corporate auditor reading the balance sheet at a stockholders' meeting.

There has been no word from the campaign as to how much, if any, money it raised in those first days.

It is hard to believe that they didn't have the millions of people on Newt's vaunted e-mail and twitter lists teed up to hit the "DONATE" key on the website when the video was put up - even if only to donate $5 - so in the ensuing 48 hours they could have announced that X-tens of thousands of people had donated Y-hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sarah Palin tells Sean Hannity:

Well, I think to start with, we ignore some of these reporters and their requests for us to comment and be interviewed. We know going into what they are going to do to us, to a conservative. So, why participate in their game?

Instead, candidates need to get their message out via the news social media, be a fair and balanced reporters who will just allow the facts to get out there. Don't even participate in that goofy game that has been played now for too many years with the leftist lamestream media trying to twist the candidates' words and intent and content of their statements.