Looking for recommendations for reputable roofers? Need to sell that exercise bike that you used for a week before it became a place to hang clothes? Trying to get more people involved in your department’s initiatives and events? Well, quit your yammering and get on Yammer!
Think of Yammer as a social networking tool just for you and your colleagues across campus to connect, discuss ideas, share updates and … well, buy and sell things. (The Classifieds community stays pretty active!) And it’s better than ever: Not only does it have some cool new features like Polls, Praise and in-text hyperlinks โ it has more users than ever.
Still not convinced? If you don’t mind missing out on everything from a bargain-priced TV to your favorite author’s visit to campus, here are six more reasons that you really, truly should be using Yammer.
1. The Faculty and Staff ListServ isn’t coming back.
We all get nostalgic about the good old days of sifting through the 300+ emails exchanged on the College’s Faculty and Staff Listserv every day, deciding what to delete to free up enough space to send emails again and accidentally replying to everyone on campus. (If it’s any comfort: Not everyone saw those messages: Only ย 60 percent of CofC employees actually subscribed to the College’s old Faculty and Staff Listserv.) But, no matter how much we miss it, the Listserv is not coming back.
So, whether you’re announcing policy changes, promoting a new initiative or looking for a furever home, Yammer is the only way for employees to ask questions, advertise events and otherwise communicate with the entire faculty and staff.
2. You don’t need any more hubbub in your life.
Between junk emails, spam texts and telemarketing calls, we already have too many extraneous and unsolicited alerts being thrown at us throughout the day. With Yammer, you’re in charge of which notifications you get โ and how you get them (e.g., email, desktop notifications, logging onto Yammer, etc.) โ so you’re not bogged down in information irrelevant to you.
Join only the communities relevant to you, and you’ll only get the notifications that matter to you. You can subscribe by email to the communities you want to hear from via email, or you can download and customize the Windows Desktop Notifier so you stay in the loop even when Yammer is not open. Of course, you can still look at other notifications and posts by exploring the individual community feeds โ and the Yammer home feed has all the highlights.
Get the Yammer news you want, how you want it โ whether that’s online, through email, through the Windows Desktop Notifier or the Yammer desktop app itself: It’s all up to you.
3. It doesn’t have to be all work, all day.
Who couldn’t use a little more room for fun in their lives? Sure, you can create Yammer communities for your department, your committee, your campus cause โ even making them private. But Yammer also lets you create as many communities as you please โ for anything you want: adoptable pets, great recipes, gardening tips, heavy metal fans, whatever!
4. You can always find what you’re looking for.
It’s hard enough to keep up with our keys (and phones and wallets!). That’s why Yammer has several features that help us avoid the time suck of digging around looking for that post weย just sawย but can’t find anywhere!ย Not only can the advanced search function find just about everything we’re looking for, but conversations can also be bookmarked and followed.
And, if you really like to stay on topic, it’s easy to add topics to your posts (e.g., #cougarspirit, #GenEd, #lecture) to make them searchable โ and to search for a topic to see all the related posts your colleagues have made.
5. It’s got all the right answers.
No more sifting through responses that don’t really tell you what you want to know! Yammer allows users to ask a group a question and then mark the best answer so that it shows up right under the question. In a Yammer community, both the original poster andย the community admins can mark the best answer. For questions in the All Company community, network and verified admins can mark the best answer. If an even better answer comes along, it can replace the original best. Best answers are marked as “Best Answer” and pinned at the top, but you can still read the other answers.
6. You’ll never have FOMO again.
How many times have you wished you could be in more than one place at a time? With Yammer, you virtually can. To bring the members of a community together centered around an event, Yammer community admins can use Yammer Live Events to host a live video event including Yammer conversations before, during and after the event. Live events can be held in a public community to reach all employees or in a private community so that only those with membership in the community can participate.
