10 Yammer User Tips to Get Started

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Joel Oleson

Yammer may feel like Facebook, but there are definitely ways to be more productive with it. Those who try to use it like Facebook will be surprised that enterprise social is a little different than social in the consumer world. As an example, when Yammer was first deployed at Microsoft there was a problem with people updating yammer with status that was unengaging. People were simply sharing one liner status updates which would flood the All Network newsfeed. Here are 10 simple tips to get started as a user in the enterprise social network…

1. Creating a group is a great way to start a conversation with a team or virtual team or interest group. A note can be used to help organize disparate content that may have been previously shared such as documents or pages.

Best way to help a group get started is to start a thread. Great way to start a conversation is with a question or a poll. Don’t be afraid of replying. It encourages others who have asked questions. @mention people to bring experts or others who may know the answer into the conversation. Be positive and informal.

2. Configure your subscription settings. Both overactive or under subscribed can create misery. Configure the subscription settings based on when you want to be notified or get daily or weekly roll ups of the content. If you own the network you may find a better response when the default is weekly rather than daily aggregation.

3. Profiles are very important. Fill out your profile, and if you notice some you talk with that hasn’t filed out their profile, find a nice way to encourage them to add a picture. Not only pictures, but twitter and facebook links can encourage people to get to know you. Only share what you want to be discovered.

4. Yammer search is very powerful yet often overlooked. Search will predict your search and auto populate with people, topics, files, groups, and web results that have been previously shared in groups that you have rights to (it will automatically security trim the results).

5. When Creating a group make sure it hasn’t already been created. There’s a lot of duplication and that doesn’t help anyone.

6. If you need to get back to a thread you can subscribe to it in email (“email me”) or bookmark it or add topics that relate to the subject for easy search and topic pages.

7. Don’t share things you might otherwise share on facebook like what you’re eating or a checkin at the park. Some may find Tripit integration does allows you to share your trips which may be relevant if you have collegues you need to inform about your upcoming travel, but in larger companies this can crowd the enterprise feed. Be considerate.

8. Apps – There are some great apps, from the SharePoint yammer webparts, to the mobile apps for Desktop, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android, and iPad, and more. There are some great administrative apps for looking at top conversations, Looking for more analytics? Check out the ViewDo Labs app which includes leaderboards for likes, comments, conversations, and additional adoption trends over time including 30 and 90 days. In addition to a 14 day trial of the enterprise social graph. Also check out the Klout app which allows you to take your enterprise networks into consideration with your other social networks.

Recent updates allow a presentation to be uploaded and viewed online. Other updates are coming for Office files for online rich editing with Office Web Apps. Be sure to have a strategy for what should be stored where, but don’t go overboard with trying to control.

9. Start conversations with people from multiple departments across multiple geographies.

10. Try using a yammer group to manage a project including assets and links to team sites. Run a team in a group. Run your scrum meetings every other day through yammer…

Think of additional tips? Add them in the comments… Love to hear your feedback.