Yammer is a social media platform for businesses. It is a business-oriented site, where people with similar ideas and skills can discuss and grow together.
What is the need of using Yammer?
Yammer is a social network for any of the enterprises. Unlike Facebook or Twitter or any other social media, It is targeted to have a social connection with business minded people. It serves for communicating with members within a given organization.
What’s so useful about it?
The basic set up of Yammer is free and easy to use. It provides a private, easy to manage, and very secure online space for businesses to discuss their thoughts.
How to Get Setup with Yammer
For creating a Yammer account, you will mandatorily need an official and valid email id of a company or a business. You will receive a confirmation mail for sign up. If you are invited by your team, you will be notified on your company’s mail id to join the community.
It is different from all other social media sites
Though the blue color of Yammer is very similar to Facebook, the app is unique and maintains its intended purpose.
At the top right corner of your yammer screen, you will find a “getting started” option. This option will introduce you to the essential steps such as completing your profile, adding your profile photo, and much more. While creating and choosing your profile, keep in mind that it looks like a typical social networking site, but is a business environment. During Sign up process choose the profile picture and username appropriately.
Sign in on their official website Or, on office.com
Select the app launcher from the upper-left corner of your screen.
The app launcher icon in Office 365 and select Yammer.
Unable to find the app you are seeking for?
No worries! From the app launcher, select “All apps” to see an alphabetical list of the Office 365 apps available to you. You can search for a specific app therein.
Select Login and enter your company email and password.
You’ll receive a confirmation email to activate your account. Select the web address in the confirmation email to complete setup. You will automatically be redirected to your organization’s network.
What are the things it allows you to do?
- Get Connected and engaged in your organization.
- You can gain knowledge from others.
- You can view, prioritize, and manage the important messages and announcements via your Inbox.
- Search for experts, conversations, and files of the topic of your will and interest.
- Join several groups to stay informed, connect with your community, and gather ideas.
- Participate actively in the conversations across your network and add insights.
Edit your profile
- Select the settings icon and select Edit Settings.
- On the Profile tab, add information that collaborators may find helpful, like your expertise, interests, experience, and a link to your LinkedIn profile. Select Save.
Set notifications
- Select the settings icon and select Edit Settings.
- Configure your preferences on the Notifications tab.
- Activity digest sends daily or weekly emails to help you discover new activity.
- Follow groups to get notifications and messages in your inbox.
- Or, on the bottom-right rail of your group, select the checkbox next to Subscribe to this group by email under Access options.
List Of Yammer Features:
Feeds
Yammer mentions all the communication that occurs on the yammer site as a ‘Yammer feeds’ or ‘Yams’. These Yams are classified into various feeds. A feed is basically a short story about a particular topic. Your main page is full of feeds from the people you are following and the groups you are a member of. You can post your own feed or a Yam, related to any topic related to business or the topic which is trending in the entrepreneur world. Once you have posted a feed successfully, your connections can interact on your Yams by liking and commenting on it. You also get an option to bookmark a Yammer feed. Moreover, you can send a Yam privately over private message.
Read: What is Feed: An Abstracted Snap Of A Feed
HashTags
The hashtag is probably not at all unfamiliar in the world of where social media is so trending. Yammer is used for working purpose only, hence hashtags play an essential role in identifying what posts are all about. For businesses, it’s a good idea to keep together a glossary of hashtags specific to your own Yammer network. New users will soon be familiar with the hashtag vocabulary. Hashtags help improve the communication and discussion over the particular topic on the Yammer network, easily and quickly.
Follow
You can follow any fellow yammer user by clicking follow button on their profile. You will be notified of the activities of the people you are following too.
Groups and Communities
You are allowed to join a group or a community in the yammer only through the invitation link. You can create your own group or community ask to join by sending the link. On Yammer, a group lets to communicate effectively within the subsets of a network. You can make groups private to focus on a conversation on a specific topic.
Communities are, however, the external groups. Communities, unlike the groups, allows you to connect with the people and invite the people outside your network.
Read: How To Join Group?
Email Alerts
When you are on Yammer platform, make sure the email address that you provided is active. As Yammer sends email notifications, you got to get the notifications via mail.
Check your email settings, by clicking on “Account Settings” and choose Notifications. You can manage your notification settings according to your priority.
The very useful communication feature of the Yammer is “digest” of message activity. Yammer sends you a digest of daily message activities in your mail inbox. This feature sends you daily or weekly e-mails, according to your preferences. The digest summarizes the day’s notification activity. It’s a very useful way to keep track of all your messages, without having to check the app frequently.
Following and Liking
Yammer features allow you to follow the people who are in your network. If you follow the people outside your network, you can see their messages directly in your feed section. However, the messages sent to you in private will appear in private messages column. Following on Yammer does not mean that you are sharing all the mutual connections and their activities. If the person you are following is following back to you, you won’t get a request from him. On Yammer, “like” is usually used to notify that you have read or been updated with the post or thread.
Apps
One of the best Yammer features is that Yammer app is compatible with the iPhone, Blackberry, and Androids. Yammer is a bit very straightforward and to the point app. Nothing besides the work is discussed over here. If you want to discuss something except the work you can form another group with your favorite buddies. Yammer allows you to use all the desktop features in the mobile app as well. There are various categories in the apps. For instances, you can search for links and you will find all the links shared across the platform.
How do you delete your account?
When you are no longer a part of the organization through which you joined the Yammer platform, you will have to delete your account. For deleting the account, you simply have to click on “options” and then “delete account”. In case you wish to delete your previous messages and posts, you have to do it manually before deleting the account.
Also Read: What Is YamJam: How To Promote YamJam?
Yammer Etiquette
Yammer is a professional platform; hence you have to follow some etiquettes:
- Proofread your posts. Avoid grammatical errors.
- You don’t have to impress anyone. Neither you have to update anyone on your Saturday night.
- Use professional and proper language. Avoid SMS lingo.
- Do not get indulge in the posts that are not in concert with you.
- Public posts within this network are written records, so think before you post.
- It is better to message in private if all the members don’t have to be updated about it.
Happy Yamming!