Using Social Media and Celebrities to gain support

I was on Twitter a few weeks ago, and noticed the trending topic: #GetCovered. Wondering what it meant and where it started from, I came across a lot of articles that discussed how President Obama's staff met with celebrities to ask them to promote the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/312747-obama-asks-hollywood-celebs-to-help-pitch-obamacare

We are in the age of the digital revolution, so this idea of using social media to promote policies is very new. Previously, in order to promote a policy, president's and politicians had to wait for a news network to pick up the story and hope they would be on their side. Obama was the first Presidential candidate to fully implement a successful social media strategy in his election campaign. It comes as no surprise then that Obama received 60% of the vote from 18-29 year old's. Also, it comes as no surprise that Obama is implementing social media as a way of promoting policies.

In order for Obamacare to be successful, it needs healthy young people to sign up to pay for the costs of the unhealthy old people. So far, the numbers are low for healthy individuals who have signed up. Although I do not support parts of Obamacare, such as the individual mandate, I think Obama is brilliant in using celebrities to promote it via social networking sites. Since Obama is trying to appeal to young individuals, and they are almost all on social networking sites, it is a brilliant strategy to combine celebrities and social media. Obama is setting a precedent for future president's as to successfully implementing the power of the social media.