Yammer for Internal Communications

For internal communications professionals, having an arsenal of tools at your disposal ensures that you can deliver the right messages to the right people in the best way possible. As more companies adopt enterprise social networks, Yammer has become an increasingly common part of the internal communications toolbox.

For internal communications professionals, having an arsenal of tools at your disposal ensures that you can deliver the right messages to the right people in the best way possible. As more companies adopt enterprise social networks, Yammer has become an increasingly common part of the internal communications toolbox.

What is Yammer good for?

Yammer is social media for business, allowing employees within organizations to communicate effortlessly. Because it feels more like a social network than an enterprise communication tool, adoption tends to be an easy task. Forget about opening your email client and entering email addresses and subject lines; Yammer is great for sending off quick questions and comments. Yammer’s features include:

1. A user-specific home feed
2. Communities, such as for specific projects or departments
3. Search functionality for locating people, files and conversations
4. The ability to react to, respond to and share posts
5. People tagging 
6. The ability to attach files to posts
7. Live virtual event hosting and recording
8. Poll creation and dissemination

Its easy-to-use, streamlined interface means that often, Yammer serves as a gathering place for people across an organization. That not only helps them feel more connected to others across the organization and to company executives, but it also creates engagement and facilitates efficient communication.

How can I use Yammer for internal communications? 

Wondering how to use Yammer for internal communications? Let us count the ways. 

1. Segment messaging. It’s likely that not everyone across your organization needs to hear every message coming from your internal communications office. With Yammer, you can deliver targeted messaging to different “communities,” such as departments or work groups. You can also deliver the same messaging using different language for different employee groups to ensure utmost relevance and understanding. 
2. Deliver short-burst messages. Sometimes, a company-wide email message is the right tool for delivering certain kinds of content, like an e-newsletter or e-bulletin with various pieces of information. However, sometimes a short-and-sweet instant message is more effective if you don’t have a lot to share but what you need to share is important. 
3. Gauge reactions to company news. Sometimes, it’s useful to know how employees are reacting to certain information. Because Yammer allows message recipients to react to, comment on and share posts, you can glean important data from the results of your Yammer messaging. Is the company retirement plan changing? Find out how people feel about the change by performing analytics on their Yammer activity. 
4. Create an ongoing conversation. Part of any good internal communication strategy should be the goal of generating engagement to boost employee morale and retention. On Yammer, you can create ongoing conversations around topics of interest to the entire company or to specific groups of employees. By inviting people to provide input, you make them feel seen and heard. That not only translates into happier, more empowered employees, but can also lead to new business ideas and opportunities. 
5. Direct attention elsewhere. At some point, you might have a new company policy or procedure to share. Instead of putting it in an email, which may be less likely to be read, you can create a quick post on Yammer and provide a link to the document on your company’s intranet. Additionally, you can add files, including video and photo, to your Yammer communications, making it fast and easy for recipients to access your content. 
6. Pull key people into discussions. By using the @ symbol, you can let specific people within your organization know that you’d like their attention directed at your messaging. If you are posting on behalf of members of the executive team, this is a good way to let those members know their messaging is being disseminated and give them the opportunity to join any ensuing discussion. As with most mainstream social media platforms, you can also use the # sign to assign specific tags to content to broaden messaging reach and pull people with specific content interests into conversations that match those interests. 
7. Make decisions as a team. You can make use of polls in Yammer to present different viable options for approaching projects, meeting business goals or even deciding things like where the annual company holiday party will be held. Companies often operate mostly with decisions flowing down from the top, which can make employees feel like drones who simply carry out the tasks associated with those decisions. By giving employees a voice in smaller decisions, you make them feel like a vital part of the team. 
8. Host live events. Is there some major company news that the leadership team needs to announce immediately? You can host live meetings on Yammer, allowing everyone in the organization to hear from you or members of the C-suite in real time. Live events on Yammer also allow attendees to ask questions that can be answered immediately. Whether there is cause for celebration (e.g., announcing a much-anticipated merger) or concern (e.g., letting employees know about an urgent situation), Yammer’s live events functionality has your back, allowing you to add a personal touch to internal communications. 

How can analytics help?

Knowing how to use Yammer for internal communications is only partly about understanding the program’s functionality. Understanding how employees are using the platform ensures that you know how to help them get the most out of this tool. That’s why using Yammer for internal communications should also be about making the most of your data with deep-dive metrics. 

That’s where Tryane analytics comes in, giving organizations the ability to peek under the hood of their Yammer communications to see

1. How employees are communicating in Yammer 
2. Which employee groups are making better use of the platform
3. Which mediums — text, video or something else — are most effective for creating engagement
4. Who is most active on Yammer
5. What groups across the organization say about the organization 

With Tryane for Yammer, you can gain a deep sense of how well your internal communication efforts are working, and find new ways to engage employees at every level of the organization — so that when you have something to say, you know that everyone who needs to hear it will. Contact Tryane today to learn how we can help you make the best use of Yammer.