Yammer

success guide
A collection of best practices, tips,
and examples to make your Yammer
community launch a success.
Using Yammer to transform your business
Before you plan your launch, think about how you want to use
Yammer and what you want it to do for your organization. Yammer
is much more than a social tool for your organization—set up your
Yammer network for the maximum impact on your organization by
focusing on activities that drive business transformation.

Social outlet for status Replace existing

and photos processes and tools

To connect around To connect around

social interests common objectives

Meaningful multi-way
YamJams and Transform your business
collaboration
top-down broadcasts
Drive employee
morale Using Groups for
Posting to All functional and
Company/Newsfeed project teams

Vanity metrics and Measuring for business

social badges outcomes
Roadmap to success
Congratulations on choosing Yammer to connect your company!
Getting started can be daunting, but we've been helping
organizations connect since 2008 and have learned a few things
along the way. We want you to be successful, so here is a
roadmap to help you make a successful and thriving network.

Getting started
A great network starts with a great plan. Follow these
five steps to make sure you’re ready for launch.

Introducing Yammer to your organization

Starting with your pilot users and champions, all the
way up to the leadership team, get everyone on board
and excited to use Yammer in four simple phases.

Keeping the conversations going

Now that you’ve launched, check out three ways to
provide support for your Yammer network and
continue to optimize for greatness.
Getting started

Master the technology

Develop your vision

Identify your team

Get executive buy-in

Set policies and guidance

Master the technology
Start by working in partnership with your IT department to
establish technical needs like mobile access and network support.
You can learn to administer your network like a pro with the
Yammer admin guide. We walk through confirming system
requirements, setting admin privileges, and how to understand
your network.

Resources: Pro tip:

Use the Technical readiness checklist to In order to enjoy the full experience of
ensure your network is ready for launch Yammer integrated with the rest of
Office 365, ask your Office administrator
Learn more at Yammer admin help
to enforce Office 365 identity and
connect your Yammer network to the
Office 365 groups service.
Develop your vision for
Yammer by department
Here are some examples of how Yammer helps drive collaboration,
innovation, and engagement across every department of your organization.

Marketing C-level executives HR Educator

Watch to learn how Watch to learn how

Watch to learn how
Watch to learn how

Sales IT professionals Learning and development

Maximize your sales team’s Speed up end-user adoption by
effectiveness with better account sharing tips and tricks for new
insight, instant access to experts, and products. Enable self-help, access to
enhanced information when on the peer expertise, and a searchable
road. knowledge base for incident
Watch to learn how
avoidance and reduced total time to
Watch to learn how
problem resolution.
Watch to learn how
Learn how Yammer can be
utilized across your organization
Meet with business managers from across your
organization to develop a vision, understand the different
strategic uses of Yammer, and identify which solutions can
help your organization tackle its business challenges.

Build a community of interest or Cultivate executive engagement Engage your frontline workforce Drive ideation and innovation
practice

Sanofi Pasteur shares best practices Grundfos engages across all levels of Red Robin speeds up process to British Airways cabin crew members
and improves processes the organization develop new burger send feedback to engineering team
Identify your team
The most successful Yammer rollouts occur when a committed
team, representing a cross-section of your organization, works
together to execute tasks on time.

Executive sponsor Project lead Internal communications, HR, IT,

Sales, Product innovation
Business decision maker who Oversees assigned tasks and
leads by example, sends ensures program stays on track Representatives from teams that
announcement emails, drives can benefit from Yammer
accountability
Get executive buy-in
The best way to get executive buy-in is by aligning Yammer with
their business goals.

Ask them what they want to achieve, Show them that time invested in Explain to them that showing interest
then demonstrate that it can be Yammer will deliver benefits to them and engaging with employees
advanced through Yammer. and their business. through Yammer drives employee
satisfaction and performance.

Resources: Pro tip: ▪ Learn how Telefonica engaged the

whole organization with executive
Read this blog about the positive effects Help your leadership lead by example by
strategy discussions on Yammer
of CEO participation in Enterprise Social making a plan for how they will engage
on Yammer. Here are some real client ▪ See how Capgemini uses Yammer to
Use the Use Case Deep Dive to engage
examples: drive ongoing executive engagement
your leaders.
▪ See how the CEO of Grundfos ran a
blog through Yammer
Set policies and guidance
Work with leadership to develop a usage policy and guidelines
for governance. This will be important to ensure that activity on
Yammer is positive, constructive, and in line with your company
policies and culture.

Resources: Pro tip:

Follow the usage policy setup guide and example Keep policy and guidelines positive (not
just a list of “don’ts”), and provide plenty
Help setting guidelines for Governance
of examples and suggestions.
Introducing
Yammer to your
organization

Develop a launch plan and

materials

Identify and empower

your Yammer champions

Pilot Yammer with a few

use cases

Raise awareness and launch

your network
Develop a launch plan and materials
Keep your team on schedule and prepared with a work back plan
for the months, weeks, and days leading up to launch. This should
include key dates for announcements, training sessions, and
developing materials.

Prepare launch materials to get your network excited to join Yammer.

Resources: Pro tip:

Review the customizable communication plan. Pair your Yammer launch so it supports
an existing initiative, campaign or event
Customize email templates, handouts, and posters
like the launch of Office 365, company
for your organization
rebrand, or the start of new senior
leadership.
Identify and empower
your Yammer champions
Champions are your community of people who have bought into
using Yammer from day one. Champions also are people who Millennials
would contribute to and benefit from the value created by this they will like the social
group. Some examples could be: aspects of Yammer

Create a Yammer group in your network for your champions. In this

group, they can share resources and best practices for getting the Pilot program participants
most of Yammer, and for encouraging others to get as engaged. Those that demonstrated
success with new technology
adoption in the past

Pro tip:
Set up a Yammer specialist group that
meets once a month to share insights, Team influencers
ideas, and best practices with the Regardless of title, these well
broader network connected veterans have that
leadership vibe that naturally
influences those around them.
Pilot Yammer with a few use cases
Launch first to a target group before rolling out to the rest of the
organization. Here are some tips for choosing your pilot use cases:

Start with groups that provide a central service

and work across departments (HR, Legal,
Learning and Development, Sourcing)

Choose target groups that are

geographically diverse and will benefit
from having a single space to
communicate and collaborate

Resources: Pro tip:

Customize this email template and share Yammer is about collaboration, so
with your pilot groups. It helps explain the encourage launch users to invite others
uses for Yammer through short videos and to collaborate in Yammer by
links to more resources. keeping groups public.
Raise awareness and
launch your network
Raise awareness about what’s happening in your organization
by making Yammer the hub of company activity:

Inspire leadership to reach out to the Spark engagement with a Yammer Use champions to identify “wins” big
entire organization for feedback and launch event and small, then celebrate by sharing
challenges, such as one customer on internal networks
who hosted a cost-savings challenge.

Resources: Pro tip:

View the Yammer Launch Ideas guide for Encourage executives to log in a
tips and examples from other Yammer minimum of once a week and engage
customers with posts by liking and commenting.
Keeping the
conversations
going

Provide support

Monitor and optimize

your network

Drive ongoing usage

Provide support
Give your team the confidence and knowledge to be active on
Yammer from day one with up-front training sessions and
resources for getting set up.

Resources: Pro tip:

Review and repurpose the End User Create a Yammer 101 Group in
Training Guide to help with any internal your network
presentations, and share with employees
Employees can post questions and
Check out these training videos and post request guidance
them in your Yammer networ.
Admins can upload “Getting
Started” resources and tutorials
Monitor and optimize A

your network
Follow these tips to establish and encourage a culture of
positivity and inclusiveness B

A B

C D

Resources:
Pro tip:
Learn how to use Office 365 metrics and
Work with your Office 365 administrator to get
reports in the Yammer admin guide
metrics for understanding the health of your
Review and customize your own Yammer network and how you can optimize for growth.
Usage Policy and Yammer Etiquette Guide
Drive ongoing usage
Continue to identify areas of your organization that can benefit from
cross-company collaboration and engagement. This could include
people within the same function, collaborators on a company initiative,
or participants in a trending topic – both work-related or not.

Promote ongoing discussion in Yammer:

YamJams

Pro tip:
Find and nurture your “power Provide positive enforcement by
Resources: users” – those that are using praising them on Yammer
Yammer to its maximum abilities
Give leadership visibility by hosting
Empower more champions with this Yammer Share conversations to show the lunch with the executive team
Group Owner Guide and Best Practices.
value of participation
 Key resources for launch and usage
Action Resources
Admin's Guide to Getting Started

Yammer Use Case Catalog

Email template
End User Training Guide

Prepare for Launch (Governance)

Yammer Launch Ideas
Generate awareness of Yammer with announcement email, posters, and follow-up Communication Plan and Templates
tips and tricks emails
Yammer One Page Flyer
Yammer Poster
New Yammer User Checklist Videos
Yammers Guide to Community Management
Group Owner Guide and Best Practices

Yammer Tech Community