This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Yammer Blog articles.
Having newly taken on an Internal Communications role, I’ve suddenly found myself ‘in charge’ of our internal social network, which is a little bit daunting to say the least.
Keen for our re-invigorated network to succeed, these are the recurring reminders I’ve set myself for my daily (yes that’s right – daily. Like any other social network platform, Yammer moves quickly!) focus time on Yammer community management.
These used to take me a couple of hours at first, while I was still figuring out what might be required for our particular network. Now that I’m happy with them, I’m managing to get them down to under an hour (sometimes even half an hour) per day:
- New posts are in the right place and on-topic for the Group
This one’s an easy one if you’ve got clear groups with well-defined example use cases (if not, maybe that’s a better place to start!). If a post doesn’t fit, it should be moved to somewhere more appropriate (you’ll need admin rights for this). This is particularly important for posts to All Company – otherwise All Company becomes a bit of a dumping ground for any old info, which might turn users off. - New posts are being responded to
This one’s particularly important if someone’s reached out with a question. It takes anywhere from a little bit to a LOT of being brave for some people to put themselves out there on any social network, so to do that and receive no response at all would be very disappointing. Maybe you know someone specific who could help? Why not mention them and keep an eye on how the thread goes.
- Older threads are coming to some sort of resolution
Nothing worse than falling asleep 20 minutes before the end of a film and missing the ending, right? Same goes with Yammer threads; for example, if a thread has lot of suggested next steps, why not loop back around and see whether the advice given helped out the original poster in any way? If nothing else, it gives you some great Yammer success stories right at your fingertips.
- Topics are included on threads where appropriate
Adding topics to threads is a great way to help out the user who searches in Yammer tomorrow, next week or next month… if you notice some key terms are missing from a thread, add them in a Topic to help users who search find everything that’s relevant.
- People are posting information that they’re sharing conversationally
Lots of times I find myself involved in or overhearing conversations that could be really beneficial to wider areas of the business. At the time I can say “You should Yammer that!”, but often that gets forgotten. I try to keep a note of all the little gems that I come across in conversations and follow up with people individually to get them posting. Some people aren’t convinced that what they have to say is interesting, and they need a bit of encouragement.
Some of these things might sound simple, obvious, or even a little bit “Big Brother”, but without regular nurturing, the Yammer space could easily become an inconsistent experience, or worse; barren!
If you’re new to community management too, maybe these regular action items are a good place to start until you find out more about what works for your network.
We've created a simple checklist you can edit for your own network and community management tasks.
I'm Lyndsay Ansell, Internal Communication Specialist at Modality Systems. I'm working to reinvigorate our Yammer network as part of a wider Internal Comms strategy. Having spent the last 4 years working in the UC industry, communication of all forms really interests me, and I'm constantly looking for new ideas and opinions around the subject.