Leaderboarded.com launched a new template today designed for event managers to drive pre-event buzz around their event hashtag.

CEO Toby Beresford explains “many event managers let social media fend for itself, often creating an event hashtag but minimally promoting it. They are missing a trick. The huge advantage of a hashtag being used in the run up to event is that it builds digital buzz – that sense of excitement is often the signal people look at when whether to attend in person or not. Driving up digital buzz pre-event can increase attendance, ticket sales and community engagement at the event itself. “

To work the tool all you need is an event hashtag and a name for your ‘ambassadors’, then you publish the results weekly as a news bulletin, gradually warming up your audience week by week.  The Leaderboarded tool tracks all Twitter activity around the hashtag for you and gives the ambassadors points when they are tweeted, mentioned or retweeted by others.

Events guru William Thomson of Gallus events recommends giving your ambassadors a name that is in keeping with your event theme – for example with his “Who Stole My Audience” event the ambassadors would be named “The Usual Suspects”.

While some event managers like to incentivise their ambassador programs, it’s not a pre-requisite. “Generally speaking event ambassadors don’t need additional incentives” says Beresford “a good ambassador program is all about being seen to belong to a cadre of core supporters rather than doing it for some extrinsic prize.”

Social media expert Nat Schooler (@natschooler) used Leaderboarded to promote the Dentistry Show earlier this year with stunning results – “Our event ambassador board created so many interactions that our weekly twitter feed has gone from 85,000 impresssions per week to an average of around 500,000” he said.

The tool is priced per ambassador with pricing started at £9.99 per month for a small event up to around £100 per month for a larger event. To try it out free for 7 days, visit www.leaderboarded.com/butler/hashtag and sign up with your event Twitter account and enter your hashtag.

Leaderboarded is a previous winner of the Event Technology Awards Best Use of Social Media category.