7 Tips to Run a Successful Yammer Community (formerly group)

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Yammer Blog articles.

The old adage “if you build it, they will come” does not apply in Yammer.  This isn’t Field of Dreams!  Creating a successful Yammer community takes a bit of planning and some initial care and feeding until it gains traction and becomes a self-sustaining community.

 

We have several communities in our Yammer network that have a very active and engaged community of members.  But we also have our fair share of communities with low membership and little engagement.  While not every Yammer community has to be a hive of activity, having a lot of inactive communities is not a good thing.  For one, it makes it more difficult for employees to find useful communities to join.  Additionally, if new users to Yammer join these communities and there is no activity, they will quickly feel there is no value to Yammer and abandon using it.  By the same token, the communities administrator may also feel there is no value to Yammer when no one is participating in their new communities. 

 

Since I play a role in employee technology adoption, setting community administrators up for success is important to me.  A colleague and I host an internal monthly podcast series where we talk about our workplace technology tools, like Yammer, and how employees can work with and benefit from them.  So we decided to record one entitled “How to Create a Successful Yammer Community”.  We reached out on our Yammer network to connect with community administrators who had successful Yammer communities and invited a few of them to join our podcast and share how they cultivated successful community.  Here’s a summary of their top tips. 

 

  1. Have a clear purpose and goal for the community – All the participants we interviewed said this was key.  Having a clear goal and purpose will guide both the community creator and members what the community is about and help draw in the right participants. 
    Recommended Resource: Group Owner Best Practices Guide

  2. Brand your community– Once you have a clear idea of the purpose and goal for the community, brand it by selecting an appropriate image and giving your community a clear, meaningful name.  I’ve seen many community created with acronyms that few people would know.  Having an obscure community name will not help drive interest in the community.  Also, be sure to write up a clear description for the community that aligns with the purpose.  
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  3. Have a plan – A lot of the successful Yammer communities had a plan for what they would post to the community within the first 30 days after the communities inception along with the cadence with which they would post.  This ensured that even if no members posted, there was always fresh content to keep members coming back.  This is important to do in the early days of the community.  
    Recommended Resource: 25 Types of Yammer Posts

  4. Find ways to engage your community – This is where things get fun.  In order for a Yammer community to be successful, you need to engage your members.  Some of our successful Yammer communities kept members engaged through activities such as having the members vote on the image for the community, holding Yammer scavenger hunts, and other competitions.  Additionally, it was mentioned to try to have posts end with a question rather than just a statement.  A question invites members to comment and share their views to start a dialogue, which is ultimately what you want.
    Recommended Resource: Yammer Guide to Community Management

  5. Promote it – Just because your community shows up in All Company directory doesn’t mean anyone actually noticed it.  So promote it! Do your own posts explaining what the community is about and why people would want to join.  Invite members to the community that you know would be great contributors and gain value from the community.  Talk about the Yammer community at team meetings and cross post about the community in other Yammer community, where appropriate. 
    Recommended Resources: Communication Plans, Templates, Emails, Flyers

  6. Don’t go at it alone – “It takes a village” to build a successful community.  So recruit some colleagues to be champions in your community and commit to actively posting and replying for a short period of time until the community gains some traction.  Touch base with your champions to collectively share ideas on topics to discuss that would be meaningful to the community and to support one another.  
    Recommended Resource: Community Manager Checklist

  7. Leadership Engagement – Last but not least is leadership engagement. Generally if the leader is onboard and actively participating in the community, so will the members.  Some leaders have made it part of their strategy that they will only broadcast department wide communications in Yammer versus email and a distribution list.  This strategy works well because employees will not want to miss out on important work information – FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is powerful!
    Recommended Resources: Use Case: Leadership Connection; YamJam Playbook

Share these tips in your organization with colleagues who are launching their Yammer community, or to help those just getting started. 

 

There are additional resources on the Yammer Adoption Resource Center, ready for your community owners or community managers to repurpose for your organization regardless of the stage of your community, including measurement, sentiment analysis and additional community manager best practices. 

 

If you have any other suggestions that have worked for you and your community, I'd to hear them too. 

 

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Hi everyone, my name is Tanya and I have an awesome role working in the Employee Technology Experience and Communications team at Bank of Montreal (BMO), where I actively lead the adoption of our Office 365 collaboration tools. I've played a key role in the implementation of Yammer, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange Online in or organization. I've had the pleasure of connecting with our employees and sharing the value of these modern workplace tools as a featured speaker at a number of our internal employee digital transformation events and as a host of TechTalk a monthly BMO tech podcast series. I'm passionate about making technology fun and easy to use, so employees can make the most of the tools available to them. I'm thrilled to be a part of this Yammer blog community.

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