In this chapter, we will learn the art of community management and some guiding principles. Also, this chapter will help you become a successful community manager so you can inspire others to follow in your footsteps. In reality, a community manager is neither a leader of a community nor a sponsor of the community. A community manager is a person who knows the business goals very well and, to achieve them, drives different user engagement.
Who Is a Community Manager?
A community manager is like a health and safety officer responsible for the health and well-being of the community. You can think of a community manager as one who energizes the community, keeping it lively and engaged in order to achieve business goals.
A community manager does not dominate or dictate, but rather motivates people to participate and guides a few to lead the show. He or she is not an expert on the specific topic at hand, but instead helps the organization find an expert through community engagement. A community manager does not solve a business problem directly, but rather facilitates finding solutions by driving engagement and collaboration.
Today, organizations are spread out globally, and in such situations community managers require a platform such as Yammer to effectively engage and connect with employees. Therefore, community management has become more challenging and interesting as you build communities that are virtual in nature and exist across cultures. It is challenging because you cannot see your community members, yet you need to virtually motivate them to drive organizational benefits. There could be one or multiple community managers building and managing communities for your organization using the Yammer network.
As a Yammer community manager, you must understand and master how Yammer functions and how its features can be used to build and manage communities. You need to understand that Yammer is a medium through which community members will listen and communicate with you. Not only this, but community members will participate in the events and engagements you create for community development. Therefore, it is important that you, as the community manager, understand Yammer features and make effective use of them.
How Does One Become a Community Manager for Yammer?
There is no ideal job description for a Yammer community manager. To become a Yammer community manager, you do not need to be specially qualified in a particular area. Information and awareness about community management will definitely help in role of community management. There could be specialized course offered by Universities or B-Schools that could prove to be useful. Ideally, if you want to implement new ideas it is always better to see what people have actually done in that area, learn from their experience and with faith, implement your ideas with consistent practice.
According to me, if you want to become a Community Manager, you need to possess “Passion” as your skill. In the role, community manager there is no definite job description and normally when you take up this role you would define your job responsibilities. Besides, there are no routine or repetitive tasks in this role, but you are required to be innovative.
Back in 2011, before I accepted my first job as a Yammer community manager, I was informed in my interview that they required a passionate person who could manage their Yammer network, but there was no specific job description discussed. When I had been working in my role for over three months, my sponsor and I created the following job description for a Yammer community manager in the beautiful city of Amsterdam.
There is no ideal job description for a Yammer community manager, as it will be specific to your Yammer network. You can create your own description once you are clear about the purpose of using Yammer. The following description was created and published on the Yammer network, and it helped the user community get an idea of how they can be helped with their Yammer needs. This description will help you perform community management activities on your Yammer network.
Note
Unless stated otherwise, communication actions are systematically done through Yammer.
ROLLOUT AND MODERATION | |
|---|---|
Continuous communication with user community | • Publish important company news and announcements • Share Yammer best practices • Publish ongoing issue status |
Handling deployment of new Yammer features | • Get detailed information from Yammer product team about new features • Communicate new features to end users • Beta test new features and collect feedback/comments |
Increase and optimize usage of Yammer | • Encourage creation of groups on relevant topics (instead of having most posts going into the “all company” group) and group activity • Rationalize groups on common areas of work/interest to merge • Facilitate YamJams and YamChats. Run campaigns • Promote Yammer usage and benefits on Yammer and other internal platforms • Liaise with key global/regional stakeholders to increase Yammer usage at country level |
Yammer content – Ensuring content relevance and compliance | • Does not violate any IP rights or client confidentiality • Does not contain abusive, derogatory or inappropriate language • Is not defamatory to any individual or to Company name |
Reference documents – Maintain a list of reference materials | • Identify relevant documents from various sources • Create user help and useful links documents • Maintaining the Yammer usage guidelines |
GOVERNANCE AND SUPPORT | |
Yammer steering committee—Facilitation of meetings | • Report on mega-trends • Present plans/ideas to be implemented • Discuss key issues and make decisions • Align moderation objectives with stakeholder views • Maintain relevant governance and process documents |
Issue management and new feature request management | • Consolidate issues and suggestions from end users and share with Microsoft Product team • Raise tickets in Microsoft Premium Portal • Publish user communications on issue resolution or its integration into Yammer product roadmap |
Groups and accounts—Regular cleansing | • Delete empty groups • Ensure removal of user accounts who have left company |
Manage Microsoft relationship | • Build and manage premier support contract • Conduct Yammer adoption workshops and user interviews with help of Microsoft • Participate in Yammer product forums and get Yammer best practices from other countries |
BUSINESS VALUE AND REPORTING | |
Yammer value—Demonstrating value and ROI to stakeholders | • Build and publish success stories • Produce use cases |
Analytics—Maintaining a repository of monthly measures | • Gain insights into usage and trends (from analytics) and derive action plan • Collect data; produce and publish reports • Communicate to stakeholders and super-users |
YAMMER NETWORK ADMINISTRATION | |
Manage Network data—Manage user profiles and data created by them | • Enable Active Directory process to remove users who have left company and monitor its daily status • Users—Add/deactivate/invite guest/block/bulk update • Data export— User profile and entire network data |
Content and security— Ensure network security | • Define keywords and monitor their usage • Set an IP range for your network to only allow it to be accessed from your office network or VPN • Facilitate data-retention policy for your network |
Generate passion: You need to be enthusiastic and possess high energy levels, as community manager is not a job of repetitive activities.
Innovate: To work on non-repetitive or undefined tasks, you must be innovative.
Develop a learning attitude: Every day you will have to work on challenging actions, so having a learning attitude will keep you focused.
Build good knowledge about Yammer, customers, and your product roadmap: As a Yammer community manager, you will be dealing with plenty of questions related to Yammer on Yammer posts and in meetings, formal discussions, and talks. Be a part of the Yammer product forum and learn what Microsoft is doing with Yammer and what other customers are doing with Yammer, and then try implementing these ideas.
Create your virtual network of champions : On the Yammer network, it is close to impossible to monitor all posts and respond to them. So, build your network of Yammer champions in different areas, such as information security and data privacy, marketing communications, branding, technologist, and others.
Collaborate socially: You, as community manager, must accept the fact that you cannot solve all problems alone; therefore, you need to get in touch with your super-users/Yammer champions and connect with your supporting leadership team and Microsoft teams. Ask for help, work together as a team, and be social collaborators.
Enhance writing skills: Starting Yammer conversations, replying to Yammer posts, building content for Yammer training, and writing articles as community manager require strong writing skills. Writing what is needed and being to the point and understandable are key to Yammer community management.
Cross-pollinate from external social media : Access your social media accounts, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and SlideShare, to look for a good tweet or article that will create engagement between users.
Build networking with Microsoft: Be in touch with the Yammer technical account manager (TAM), Account Technology Strategist, or whoever your point of contact at Microsoft is so that you are updated about the latest features or changes that will take place in Yammer. Today, Yammer is part of the Office 365 product family, and Microsoft is making huge investments to get Yammer aligned with the Office 365 product roadmap.
Act as an evangelist: You cannot force transformation, so find every opportunity to talk about being a Yammer community manager on Yammer and during business meetings, or connect with leadership teams and tell them about Yammer. Building support for Yammer community management in a bottom-to-top Yammer rollout is extremely important. Therefore, be an evangelist and spread the good news about Yammer and community management so that there is continuous awareness and people remain well informed.
Regular Actions in the Life of a Community Manager
As mentioned previously, the job of community manager is challenging as well as exciting. There is no routine or repetitive tasks like with other roles, such as a project manager, who has daily standup meeting (DSTUM) or daily reports to be published. However, a community manager creates a scope of work for themselves and further builds on that scope of activity. As a community manager of a Yammer network, I had to go through multiple learning situations, which I will share in this chapter. Let’s look at some of the activities I would like to share with you.
Check Whether Yammer Is Functioning from Technical Standpoint
The active directory synchronization process is a very important process to execute with success daily as it will prevent leavers from accessing the Yammer network and mitigate security risks. There have been some cases where a user has left a company but their Yammer account is still active until somebody points it out. Hence, it is important to check status daily via active directory synchronization. Ensure the mobile app is working as it should because today we have Generation Y working with us, who prefer to access Yammer through their mobile devices. It is very important to check the Yammer mobile app by posting conversations through your mobile device to confirm its status.
Respond to User Posts
When you start your Yammer community manager role, you will be bombarded with this question from the user community: What is in it for me on Yammer? Answer: Yammer is a place where you will build collaborative solutions and find answers to your business issues. Therefore, it is necessary that Yammer community managers are responsive. You alone cannot respond to all user queries; therefore, it is necessary to have Yammer super-users or champions to respond. Use the @mention Yammer feature, which will send a notification to your champion to intervene on certain Yammer posts. Use the “Share” Yammer feature to share a conversation in relevant groups so that like-minded people in these groups can quickly respond. Respond to primary messages sent by users so that they feel important and that you are not ignoring them. Share content such as files and word documents whenever you need to post your replies. Use images to share announcements and information . Create Yammer hash topics—for example, #benefit—for posts that have been successfully replied to so others will reuse them.
Post a Link from Internet to Build User Engagement
Building user engagement is an art every community manager should learn to be a successful community manager. Post conversations in the form of questions or ask for feedback/reviews or opinions to generate replies. When you share images from a business situation, people find it easy to understand because they can connect with the Yammer post through the image rather than text and then tend to give replies. Using the @mention Yammer feature, which sends a notification to the user who is mentioned, produces replies to a conversation. When there is disagreement between members of the user community in the posts, create a poll and let the best answer get maximum response.
A community manager needs to always be cool as ice, as they will engage across the network with users who post extremely heated messages or multiple @mentions or several private messages. However, in such situations, the community manager needs to be cool and calm and provide replies to users with courage and politeness.
Guide People to Not Create Groups on Similar Topics
On Yammer, users can create multiple groups on similar topics, and in a large company network this will lead to chaos. Having multiple groups on the same topic does not go hand in hand with a good knowledge-management process, as the knowledge is scattered and accessible to the limited people in the various groups. Having one large group on a topic with everyone in that one group is better than having several similar groups with only a few people in each group. Also, people often create groups that then go unused and are kept idle. Therefore, you are likely to have multiple groups on the same topics, and sometimes they are idle without any business purpose.
Stuff You Need to Know on Group Creation
Check out group directory and list of engaged groups to see whether the group you plan to create already exists.
Confirm the group you want to create does not already exist by using search.
Do not duplicate any existing group and do not create group that overlaps with an existing group (it is better to expand the scope of an existing group).
Don’t forget that you will have to moderate the group you create, so think twice!
If in doubt, please contact Group Yammer Moderator, who will assess your needs and assist you.
Educate User Community
You need to educate not only users but also those who are responsible for managing groups and keeping the users engaged. You can educate them on what group administrators are expected to do, how they can build a group strategy to keep it lively and engaged, how to publicize their groups, and how they can archive old groups.
What are you expected to do as a Yammer group administrator?
In the Group Settings tab, if you have specified “Require new members to be approved by me” then you need to ensure that you either approve or deny requests to join the group.
Make new members feel welcome and encourage group engagement.
Moderate conversations as appropriate and @mention relevant members for attention.
Provide basic Yammer support to the group and escalate to Help Center if required.
Handle duplicated conversations and intellectual property–related issues.
Archive or close the group when it has lived its life.
Build group strategy
Setting up a group objective will clearly identify your expectations.
Organize a poll on Yammer to better understand member expectations for the group.
Build a weekly/monthly group engagement plan.
Identify power users to understand expectations. Involve them to drive engagement plan.
Publicize your group
Introduce your group and ask target audience to “join” by sending a mailer.
Publish a synopsis of your group in the “All Company” feed to publicize it on the Yammer network.
Send invites to join group. Check out available Bulk Invite option.
Hold a webinar to explain objectives of the group.
Link your group URL into people’s email signatures.
Get leaders on board and get introductory messages published by them.
How do you archive or delete your group?
Post a group-wide announcement to inform members about closure/archiving.
Set up two-week timeframe for users to react. Make this clear in your announcement.
If you delete a public group, then all posts will remain available in search. If you delete a private group, then all posts are lost forever. Again, make this clear in your announcement.
Take an appropriate stand when you want to delete a group. Do not forget to mention name of this group in overall list of Deleted Groups.
When you want to archive a group, rename it by adding an “archive_” prefix to prevent any new posts’ getting published. Do not forget to mention name of group in overall list of Archived Groups.
If members make noise and resist closure/archive, then you should find ways to revive group engagement.
Educate People to Not Share Copyrighted Content on Yammer
Always check the license or terms before uploading.
Please check anything you may have uploaded in the past. Remove it if the license does not explicitly allow re-distribution of the material.
To avoid copyrights issue, do not share the files, but instead provide a URL to view/download files hosted by the copyright owner.
When including any URL in your Yammer message, please ensure that the thumbnail preview does not show any customer name or confidential information.
Do not share any copyrighted material on Yammer even if it was made “freely” available for download by the IP owner or publisher.
During my tenure as Yammer community manager, a huge amount of copyrighted content was shared by users without any legal awareness in place. However, it was noticed by the group’s Intellectual Property department, which mandated that we analyze all content, including thousands of files, to check their copyright status and remove them if copyright permission did not exist. During this assessment, many copyrighted Dilbert images were found to have been uploaded by users; however, when asked to show permission to reproduce those images, the user community was not able to produce evidence of such permission from the organization that created the Dilbert images. The internal assessment was completed, and the network was made free from copyrighted content.
Publish Useful Yammer Content to Create Leadership Engagement
As a community manager, it is expected that you will maintain continuous communication with the end user, and to do that, you will need to have content. Providing guidance on how to use Yammer and create user engagement is one of the ways in which you can be in continuous touch with end users. The company’s leadership team is a specific user community that often needs a little extra guidance on how to be engaged on Yammer. The following sections will help you effectively collaborate with them.
Reasons why employees want execs active on Yammer
To know leadership team and connect with them
To get support for Yammer
Want the opportunity for recognition from leadership
Ability to easily follow and communicate directly with leadership
Reasons why execs should be active on Yammer
Get a pulse check on your organization. Yammer gives real-time information on what your employees are thinking.
Opportunity to interact with employees directly
To get feedback and suggestions on company processes
To reduce gap between employees and leadership team
To foster a culture of openness and sharing
To drive innovation and rapid ideation
How leaders can spend 60 seconds a week on Yammer
Monday: “Join” a group. “Follow” an active user.
Tuesday: “Like” a message.
Wednesday: “Reply” to an existing conversation.
Thursday: “Publish” a new conversation.
Friday: “Invite” a new member to Yammer.
New User Checklist
Access Yammer through URL: www.yammer.com/companyname.com .
Read and understand the Yammer Usage Policy.
Upload your profile picture. Use a real photo of yourself!
Complete at least three profile fields. We recommend these: department, location, expertise.
Follow at least three colleagues you work with directly to understand how notifications work.
Follow (or create!) at least three topics you find interesting.
Join the New to Yammer group and other Yammer-related groups, such as Yammer Events, Yammer product features, and Yammer issues.
Join at least three groups related to the nature of your work.
“Like” messages and posts that appeal to you.
Reply to user messages with comments, questions, or suggestions.
Say hello and post a message about what your current role is.
Set your preferred email notifications.
Download Yammer mobile app .
Promotional Ideas
Feature a Yammer success story in an article on your company intranet or blog.
Spotlight a Yammer champion and their contributions to the network in your company newsletter.
Display Yammer feeds on a projector or monitor in public areas like the front lobby or cafeteria.
Create a slide that managers can include in their meetings to highlight recent relevant activity on Yammer.
Share examples of valuable conversations in a monthly report to senior executives.
Other Posts to Be Published by Community Manager
As a community manager, you are expected to remain in continuous touch with the user community on topics other than user guidance. By doing this, the user will trigger engagement on a regular basis.
Your posts should be short, to the point, and easy to read. Use bullets, dashes, and hyphens to make them easy to scan and understand at a glance. One to two sentences is ideal. Posts should be in a conversational tone, and the content should be professional and polite, similar to a face-to-face conversation. Consider the use of active voice and present tense. Take a moment to think through your posts; they should be constructive, helpful, and devoid of sarcasm.
- Your network contains valuable conversations that show how Yammer helps employees to collaborate, communicate, and get more done. The best conversations involve instances when employees have used Yammer to
surface key decisions and make important company announcements;
share critical industry or competitor news;
gather opinions and ideas from across the company;
discover valuable information from past discussions; and
introduce new hires to get them up to speed faster.
Clarify organization policy updates received from official channels.
- General updates:
Include other employees in an @mention to bring them into the conversation.
Use the “Notify additional people” field to add employees that may contribute to the conversation.
Include links to additional content (within and outside of Yammer) and remove duplicates.
Include a topic. Topics keep content and conversations organized and easy to find in search. They also link conversations between groups.
Consider adding an image to increase visibility.
- Praise :
Include one person or several.
Use “Notify additional people” field to include managers of the person or team you are praising.
Choose the appropriate badge image.
Add an image of the award, team, etc.
Links don’t work in the description, so reply to the posts with any links (remove duplicates).
- Polls:
Use questions that will prompt conversation.
Avoid “yes” or “no” questions.
- Announcements (group or network administrators only):
There is lots of formatting available! Use it to make your posts more engaging.
Attached related materials as necessary.
Think about your audience, announcements generates email, notifications .
Summary
In this chapter, you have learned the art of community management and how Yammer community managers can deploy various ideas to sustain user engagement and achieve their business goals. Also, the description of the Yammer community manager role may have given you an idea of how exciting it is to be a community manager for your Yammer network.
In the next chapter, we will review some interesting ideas to keep your Yammer network busy and engaged.