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Why is the President Obama using YouTube?

Written by: Brian Beehler

Article Overview: The thing that I found interesting this weekend during my weekend surf through YouTube was a video by President Obama. The three-and-a-half minute video entitled “A New Year, A New Beginning.” was directed to the Iranian people. Barack Obama is trying bring the U.S. and Iran relations closer together by addressing the people directly. Obama used the internet extensively throughout his campaign and hopes that his message has the same effect with the Iranian people.

Free Download - Taking the first step – “Connecting business with Social Media” By Brian Beehler

Why is the President Obama using YouTube?

The thing that I found interesting this weekend during my weekend surf through YouTube was a video by President Obama. The three-and-a-half minute video entitled “A New Year, A New Beginning.” was directed to the Iranian people. Barack Obama is trying bring the U.S. and Iran relations closer together by addressing the people directly. Obama used the internet extensively throughout his campaign and hopes that his message has the same effect with the Iranian people.
The key reason that President Obama used the Internet for this particular message instead of using a letter is because it allowed him to deliver his words directly and unfiltered to the Iranian people. YouTube ensures that his message is heard in full and not taken out of context or changed which many traditional media outlets do today. YouTube also allows the President to address anyone from any country at any time. By doing this, the message will spread from person to person giving it a more personal feel. The whole purpose of Social Media is to bring people together, building relationships and making connections. I applaud President Obama for actually getting this concept and choosing the appropriate Social Media tool to deliver his message.

In October 2008, I took this same approach with our corporation. I needed to deliver a message from the President to 70,000 employees addressing the current financial crisis. The message primarily spoke about rough times ahead and that we needed to stick together. Are intent was the same as President Obama’s - make connections and build relationships with people at a personal level. The message was a success with more than 20,000 views in the last 3 months. With this success we have continued to use this strategy and will use YouTube to deliver messages to all of our employees.

As I mentioned in my March 21, 2009 post, you need to have a clear and concise strategy as to “What Social Media means to your business”. The President obviously does have a clear strategy and knows exactly what Social Media means to his presidency. If you are going to be successful in the use of Social Media, ensure that you get that Social Media is about connections and not only technology.
I’ll end this post by saying, keep watching how President Obama uses Social Media. Many of his strategies can easily be transfered within the business world. I believe his strategies will shape the way we communicate with our employees, stakeholders, and customers.

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Article Tags: barack obama, building relationships, financial crisis, iran relations, march 21, media tool, message from the president, new year, person to person, personal level, rough times, traditional media outlets, weekend surf

About the Author: Brian Beehler
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Improve your Communications strategies, learn from the experiences of Brian Beehler and how you, too, can leverage Social Media to improve employee, stakeholder, and customer communications as well as support your organizationï¿½s overall efforts to drive change and achieve results. Iï¿½m a communications professional with over 10 years of experience in the private and public sector. Iï¿½m currently developing a frame work for corporations to build strategies that involve Social Media. By determining the patterns of a social network, a corporation can build a plan that breaks down the barriers between employees, stakeholders, and consumers. My work within this area will help shape how we communicate within the corporate world. I will share my daily experiences from a social perspective and will determine if the line between personal and professional has become blurred. My blog will serve as an experiment to facilitate connections with people around the world and bring a collective agreement of how we should adopt social media within the workplace and our lives. Follow my blog and build relationships with other social media professionals. As a collective body connecting, collaborating, and cooperating we can ï¿½Make the Connectionsï¿½.

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