A preparation for a client session, I am looking into ways of engaging people on the Yammer platform. If you have not heard of Yammer before, this is a solution that lets employees share and connect with coworkers in a private, secure enterprise social network.
I found lots of great insights that I want to share with you. Many of the articles were found on the Yammer blog, which has tons of great content. Definitely worth checking out for other topics as well!
As I did in my recent post on using social media for innovation efforts, I have included a short snippet from each of the articles to give you an idea of what to expect.
I hope you will find these reads inspiring and worthwhile!
Implementing Yammer within Your Organization Using Twitter Best Practices
Two-Way Conversations are now the Norm. Without a doubt, social media has vastly changed the way we communicate, creating an environment where two-way conversations are the norm. We expect it. We demand it. A similar expectation has translated into how employees want to engage with their employers. Employees are no longer satisfied with simply “being in the know”. They also want to ask questions about decisions being made within their organization, and voice their opinions – just like on social media platforms.
Leveraging the Power of the Crowd in Yammer to Build a Culture of Learning
At first, Stephanie’s ideas was met with resistance from senior executives because they felt Yammer would be difficult to control and it would be nearly impossible to measure the learning taking place. Despite their concerns, she was given three months to conduct a pilot in order to test the technology itself and to focus on ideas for how to use it. Then, something unexpected happened within a couple weeks – Yammer went viral.
How to Ignite a Yammer Network? Try a YamJam!
A YamJam is a focused online discussion, using Yammer, where a group of people get together at the same time to share ideas, questions and views usually on a single topic. There are many different formats. This is how we chose to approach our first one.
Engaged Community is a Healthy Community – Best Practices in Internal Social Networking
“How do I ensure continued engagement in this network? How do I get people to come back and participate?” I think this is a key question to ask yourself, and if you can formulate a plan of action prior to rolling out the community, you will certainly be setting yourself up for success…For now, here are some high-level recommendations that I have observed thus far.
Conversation: Let’s get it started…
12 tips on getting conversations going on Yammer including:
• Define what you are trying to do
• Lead conversations by asking questions
• Have an opinion, but be open to changing it
• Have a support network
How Yammer has caught on in large organisations
But what’s it like to use the service – and how easy is it to adopt into your business??We spoke to Colette Cote-Mayerhoeffer and Aneta Hall of Pitney Bowes US and Steve Nguyen from Cargill to get the low down on their companies’ Yammer experience.
Running a Successful Yammer Event
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Even though the nature of a Yammer event is all about honest, realtime conversations, you must plan for success. We recently conducted a Yammer event with the Yammer Customer Community. Prior to the event, we did a lot of preparation around big picture stuff like goal and vision, as well as executional details like dates and general logistics. There was also lots of communication – lots and lots of it!
Turn Up Engagement With A Yammer Treasure Hunt!
The idea was to utilize game mechanics and the incentive of a prize to facilitate experiential learning of the core functions and features. I wanted them to realize they could solicit feedback from the community and have their colleagues comment on a document in-line, or post video they shot in the field, or bookmark a post so it’s easily accessible when they need it. (NOTE: Check comments to learn about the prize).
Use Yammer in Your Training Programs
Training managers can start by adding Yammer into their course by weaving them into to the design. For example, customers have used Yammer for a simple ice-breaker for their training courses, such as “What do you already know about…?”. Other customers have used Yammer to collect all the resources for the courses in one place to easily find after the You can pin important content, links and other resources for the associates to easily find within your training Group on Yammer. Pick a few activities to “Yammer-ize” as you start and build more as you learn what works best in Yammer. Just remember to align what you are doing in Yammer to the course objectives and goals. It’s not enough just to add “social” in the course if its not relevant to the objectives.
10 Steps for Rolling out Yammer Within Your Organization
This guide provides templates for sending e-mails to get employees, executives engaged with your Yammer network. Go to page 4 to start seeing them.
