I’ve just pressed the button on a 500 person tweet out, to congratulate the top 500 social media influencers within the United Nations on their inclusion on the UN Social 500.

The UN Social 500 is designed to recognise and honour those UN personnel who are spreading the word about the work of the UN by creating and maintaining a social media channel.

The UN Social 500 program came about in response to the challenge of the UN Influx hackathon. The challenge asked “how can we use digital innovation to connect the UN and the public more effectively”.

There are already hundreds of UN staff using social media channels to connect with hundreds of people and the vast variety of these means these channels cover thousands of niche topics.  By recognising their valuable contribution in an innovative way we can amplify their impact and encourage others to work on connecting the UN and the public via social media.

There is no prize for being on the board, simply the honour that comes from being included, though there is a digital badge that can be embedded on each individual’s own blog or home page.

The board is open for new UN staff to join, there is Social Media Guidance on how to plan and create an effect social media presence. The board has its own hashtag #UNSocial500 so everyone can see what each other is saying about it.

To rank players within the UN Social 500,  I used Klout scores, a universal standard of social media influence.  The board is based on the Rise gamified performance management platform  which provides personalised feedback, maintains an historic score record and allows flexible scoring systems.

From a Rise point of view, it is particularly interesting as a great technical deployment of a standalone Rise board on WordPress. If you’d like to copy the site then do let me know and I’ll be happy to send you a file with the WordPress template I used and the initial content.