Twitter + your company – rest of world = Yammer?
Previously we wrote about Twitter. Hard to miss Twitter these days, it’s the talk of the town. As you, and probably your mother, knows, Twitter is a 140-character microblogging platform. It’s different from an instant message system which lets you talk in real time with one person. With Twitter, you talk in real time to a whole crowd. This is great when you’re sharing the love with the big wide world and want to seek expertise and input from those outside your company’s walls. But sometimes you want to tap the expertise inside your walls.
At Kineo, we’ve started using Yammer (www.yammer.com). It’s like Twitter, but for organizations. All users who join your Yammer group must have the same email domain. So to join the Kineo Yammer group, your email address has to have a Kineo domain. This means the big wide world can’t peer into your walls. Not that we’re hiding anything, of course. You know us.
This means you can get ideas bouncing around your organization quickly, but not overwhelm the email channel.
So think about all that information floating around your company or organization. The stuff that’s not captured anywhere, but exists only in people’s heads. Now you can track it down.
Micro-tips for Yammer
In true Twitter/Yammer style, here are some micro-tips for how you could use it in your team or business:
• “I’m writing a proposal. Looking for a good example of XYZ. Can anyone help?”
• “Do you remember the name of that guy who did the management training?”
• “Just saw great demo at the conference, here’s the link”
• “We just won a new project with Gorilla Systems!”
• “Here’s the article Joe was talking about in the staff meeting.”
• “Cammy did a great post on audio – check it out here”
• “Doing a sales pitch at 2pm- what’s our best example of a XYZ?”
• “I’m in London, got two hours between meetings – anyone around for lunch?
Yammer lets you create groups or departments within an organization, so you can share on a smaller level within the organization as well as the entire company. At Kineo, we’ve got groups for sales and design and graphics, so they can keep in touch on the things they need to, quickly.
An interesting side effect is that you can see who’s the most followed person in your organization – maybe that’s the new corner office equivalent. Certainly shows who’s got influence.
Yammer is free, so the risk is pretty low. Try it out and see how it goes. Be prepared to work a little to build momentum, as with all new tools.
And then be sure to tell us on Twitter how it’s going! We’re @kineolearning.
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