Recruiting and Managing Ambassadors

No one wants to be the first one to the party, your guests are unlikely to come back if they’re met with an empty room. That's why it’s key to make sure you have a group of engaged individuals in the community to support you in making the community a success!

This group will be your community ambassadors, they will help you set the tone and expectations of the group.

A key action for ambassadors is ensuring people come back to your community. To do this, ambassadors should be logging in a few times a week to share a new post to make sure the content is fresh.

What makes a good ambassador:

• those who are naturally supportive and engaged
• those who are directly affected by the community topic (as they are usually the most able to relate to newcomers in community & can speak from experience)
• those who are willing to reply to newcomers and offer heartfelt understanding

You’ll want a group of at least 3 volunteers who are actively engaged with your organization or the community. To help you find people who may be a good fit for the ambassador role, we recommend using the ‘most contributions’ filter in the members tab.

Recruiting ambassadors:

To recruit an ambassador, you can reach out to them either via private message on the site, or through another contact method if they aren’t yet a member of HealthUnlocked. In the message, we recommend explaining what a community ambassador is, what the role will involve and why you think they’d be a good fit.

Assigning the ambassador badge

Now that your ambassador has joined the community you can assign them the ambassador badge. A badge sits next to a username to help identify that members's role in the community.

Creating a badge

1. Go to admin section of your community
2. Click on the ‘Badges’ tab
3. Click ‘Create badge’
4. In the ‘Badge title’ box, write ‘Ambassador’ and add your description in the box below.
5. Click ‘Add badge’

Assigning the badge

1. Go to the ‘members tab’ on the community
2. Search for the username of the member you have chosen to be an ambassador
3. Once they appear, you can then click on the cog and select edit badges
4. Now you simply need to select which badge to assign, click continue and then confirm your choice

Maintaining your team

We recommend setting up a group chat via our private messaging feature with all your ambassadors so you can stay connected with them all.

You can use this chat to:

• Check-in with them once a week to see how they are getting on
• Brainstorm ideas for the community
• Set the expectations for your ambassadors to help them in the role, e.g. posting at least once a week and reporting any content that breaches guidelines.

It’s natural that some ambassadors may disengage over time, so recruiting new people to the team as needed is important. Make sure to involve your existing ambassadors in this process as they may be able to suggest some good candidates! Over time, you could consider promoting your top ambassadors to be Moderators.

This will give them access to moderation features, as well as receiving any reports. This way, they can support you in the moderation of the community if needed.