For President Obama, a Good 15-minute Investment
President Barack Obama knows that women are powerful and influential. As he noted in his live video address to the annual BlogHer conference yesterday, “women make up 80 percent of my own household, if you count my mother-in-law.”
As the 2008 presidential candidate whose innovation in using the web and social media tools to raise money, organize and get out the vote was recognized as a key factor in winning the election, Mr. Obama also knows how important online influencers are to his re-election. So for 15 minutes of his time yesterday, he reached more than 5,000 women bloggers attending the conference. And he told them that women’s issues, including health care and contraception, were “front and center as they should be” in his campaign.
I arrived at the conference after his speech yesterday but I heard a lot of women buzzing about it. They thought it was pretty cool that he opened the meeting, even if, as he coyly admitted, he’s campaigning for his election. I’m willing to bet he solidified a few relationships and won a few new influential friends for that 15-minute investment. What do you think?
