Ask the President‘s site is up and running! The idea’s simple: people can submit questions and vote on which ones they’d like to see answered at a White House press conference. Ari Melber’s The People’s Press Conference in The Nation has details; other partners include the Washington Times and Personal Democracy Forum.
If you think it’s a good idea, here are a few ways you can hep get the word out on Twitter.
1. Tweet about it the site going live — and include its URL. For example:
@AskThePresident is live! Could be the biggest thing since sliced bread!!!!!! http://tinyurl.com/askpres #askpres
If this looks like gibberish (my friends often say it looks like I’m tweeting in tongues), the tinyurl is a short version of the site name, and the #askpres at the end is a hashtag to make it easy to see all the tweets about Ask the President.
2. Tweet about questions you like — and include a link. For example:
Mr President, How will you follow through on your promise to help the people of Darfur? http://tinyurl.com/askpres #askthepres
The easiest way to do this is to click on the Retweet This button on each question. It’s a little hard to see — almost at the bottom of the question, right below the “share this” — but well worth finding. It brings up a tab with Twitter’s hope page, the shortened URL, and the hashtag; you’ll have to provide the rest of the text.
Also consider including other hashtags you think might be interested: #tcot for conservatives, #topprog for progressives, #gov20 for “government 2.0”, #green for sustainability-related questions, and so on.
3. Recommend @AskThePresident on #followfriday. If you’re not already participating in #followfriday, it’s just what it sounds like: every Friday, people on Twitter send tweets suggesting who they think others should follow.* Join in! For example,
#followfriday: @AskThePresident and #askpres for “The People’s Press Conference†http://tinyurl.com/askpres
@BarackObama: please add @AskThePresident to your #followfriday list! #askpres
4. When you see others tweeting about #askpres, retweet liberally — or conservatively, depending on your politics 🙂 And if you’re wirting or blogging about it, make sure to include the #askpres tag when you tweet.
Other suggestions? Please leave them in the comments!
Thanks!
jon
PS: For more about the thinking behind these recommendations, please see Launching “Ask The President†on Twitter. Thanks to everybody who gave feedback on that post!
* Micah Baldwin’s #FollowFriday: The anatomy of a trend on Mashable has more.
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