Yammer Governance: Working Like a (Safer) Network – Webinar Recap

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Each and every time my colleague, Rich Wood, speaks on a webinar or presents at an event, I know it’s going to be good. Whether his audience is more business or technically oriented, or a healthy mix, he has a knack for presenting content in an engaging manner and a way that’s easy to digest (even for this marketer). And just as expected, during last week’s webinar, “Planning for Governance in Yammer While Working Like a Network,” Rich did not disappoint.
Enterprise social networks are, by default, a more informal, natural means of communication and collaboration, whether it be with internal employees, customers and/or partners. Many companies with an enterprise social network in place are benefiting from improved knowledge transfer, empowering employees and breaking down organizational barriers. But, because of concerns around privacy and governance, the majority of companies have yet to take advantage of an ESN such as Yammer.
During the session, Rich, who heads up our Modern Applications practice at Perficient, began with a discussion around the philosophy behind Yammer. He emphasized that Yammer is not SharePoint. We are all so used to thinking of “governance” in a SharePoint context, it can be difficult to wrap your mind around how to govern a Yammer network properly and encourage user engagement. While SharePoint focuses on document collaboration, with Yammer, it’s all about social collaboration. With that different purpose comes a different philosophy.  In SharePoint, the greater user population has the least rights in common areas, and with Yammer, it’s the reverse. Those same users have the most rights in common areas.
He went on to compare the freemium version vs. the enterprise version of Yammer, as well as online vs. on premises (Yammer, when used with SharePoint on premises, will have more “seams” holding it together, as Rich put it). Next, Rich covered planning tips, including usage policies, public and private groups, internal vs. external networks, and administrators. He also covered the steps to a painless governance plan, which should be the outcome of the social strategy he also discussed.
Lastly, he walked through the most common Yammer governance controls, showing exactly how to follow along within your own network, from finding the admin controls and basic settings, to keyword monitoring and guest users.
You can view the webinar replay here.