Obama’s Social Media Hits and Misses

Nate Lubin, the White House’s social media guru, is stepping down. He’s left quite a legacy. President Barack Obama has used social media to connect with voters in the United States as well as people around the world more actively than any other President. The main reason for this is that other commander-in-chief’s haven’t had the online tools that Lubin, a 28-year old who started as a campaign volunteer in New Hampshire in 2008 and joined White House staff in 2013, has at his disposal. But that shouldn’t dismiss the effectiveness of some of the campaigns Lubin oversaw on behalf of the President, many of which rolled out some of President Obama’s more ambitious initiatives. To mark Lubin’s departure, we’ve gathered what we consider a few highlights, as well as some misses, of President Obama’s social media messaging:

• Lowlight: “Things Everybody Does But Doesn’t Talk About, Featuring President Obama,” on Buzzfeed. The video was an effort by the president to get people to visit http://www.healthcare.gov. It comes across as a bit labored and not all that funny. But credit to Buzzfeed: they got President Obama to use a selfie stick.
• Highlight: The White House’s #FreeCommunityCollege campaign. The president posted a video on the White House Facebook page ahead of this year’s State of the Union address hyping the President’s plan to offer two free years of community college. By social media standards, it was a raging success: more than 8 million people have watched it.ident Obama’s social media messaging: