The White House will be answering your State of the Union questions on Twitter tonight

The White House will be checking Twitter after President Barack Obama is done with the yearly State of the Union address, the company shared today.

While the official White House account will be providing backstage tidbits leading up to the SOTU at 9pm ET, its staff will be following the hashtag #SOTU and encourages you to share your thoughts on what President Obama is telling the nation during his update.

Here’s what Twitter had to say about the White House’s use of the service during and after the speech:

Make your voice heard: Join the conversation by adding the hashtag #SOTU to your Tweets. Immediately after the debate, a team of senior White House officials will be ready to answer your questions when you add the hashtags #WHchat and #SOTU to your Tweets. And if you have something to say about specific parts of the speech or topics, you can include one of the following official hashtags from the White House:

#jobs
#manufacturing
#energy
#education
#fairness

Here’s a look at the types of things the White House is sharing on YouTube via Twitter:

Want a peek behind the scenes of the #SOTU? Here’s the story of how it comes together youtube.com/watch?v=FxwcJx…

— The White House (@whitehouse) January 24, 2012

Republican leaders will be watching the hashtag #SOTUGOP, so be sure to ask all of your questions using that hashtag as well.

Millions of Americans will be watching the State of the Union, so lets hope Twitter has prepared itself for a huge amount of traffic. During the Ravens/Patriots AFC Championship game on Sunday, the service had on and off downtime for nearly an hour before everything got worked out, and the political sentiment provided in real-time from its users during tonight’s speech should provide more chatter than the game.