How the Phoenix Suns shoot—and score—on social

*This is a live blog from our 6th Annual Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference at the Walt Disney World Resort. Please excuse any typos.

Jeramie McPeek, vice president of digital for the Phoenix Suns shares the basketball team’s winning social strategy.

McPeek knows that employees are valuable brand ambassadors. Employees are active on Twitter. The TV production department has a social media presence, the dancers have accounts, as well as other key players in the Phoenix Suns world. This keeps the Suns present on social 24/7.

McPeek took building a social team a step further and recruited a group of fans to be social media ambassadors who took pictures during games and posted updates to social media platforms. The Suns thanked them for their engagement with a special ‘tweet suite’ at the arena—an exclusive area for the lucky winners to watch the game and receive other perks.

The Suns also share fan photos on Twitter. The social media team chooses the best photos and tweets them from the @Suns Twitter account, posts them to their blog or offers the winners prizes.

Before games, the social team often tweets a #fansrollcall hashtag to engage fans and ask them where they’re watching the game from.