6 Tips For Selecting Social Media Ambassadors For Your Event

Last week was another busy week in the social media office for SAPPHIRE NOW Madrid. We’re pretty excited now because our social ambassadors have been officially announced – a group of SAP employees who are the eyes and ears for our virtual audience sharing their personal experiences via social media.

It’s become such a popular program both with audiences and internally.  So much so that we now have a waiting list of people who want to be ambassadors at SAP!

This year we have a fantastic team lined up to cover each campus area.  Each of them will get close to their allocated campus area way before November 13th to share what people can expect through blogging. They connect and network with attendees on their topic area prior to the event via Twitter.  They are the ‘social’ face of each campus area during the event sharing videos, photos and sound-bytes so that our virtual attendees can get as close to the event buzz and content as possible. 

So, if you want to select social media ambassadors for your next event, here are some tips from the SAPPHIRE NOW team:

1. Expert Background:  Where possible try to select topic experts that have established credibility in the field of expertise you’re asking them to cover. This makes the job more interesting for them and will keep audiences engaged.
2. Assign A Topic: This helps the ambassadors to focus their attention in a specific area and ensures you’re providing event coverage across the entire event.
3. Accessibility: Having ambassadors that are accessible is pretty key.  It’s not enough just to pump content out onto social media platforms – it’s about starting the conversation early and engaging audiences before they reach the live event.
4. The Skill Of Storytelling: Communication is key – especially when the audience is virtual.  If your ambassador can explain the most complex technology in layman terms so your Grandma can understand…sign them up!
5. Socially Smart:  You don’t often have time to teach people the basics of Twitter so try to select a team that understand how social media works and have an established social profile already.  That way they bring their network to the role as well as their self taught skill of social profile management.
6. Close To The Market: Where possible we’ve tried to allocate ambassadors from the EMEA region because they’re closer to the issues and the customers that will be attending the live event.  Whilst the virtual event is global it’s good to have a team that have the local knowledge.

Any tips to share?