Chatter top 10 best practices

Are you looking to implement Chatter?  Have you implemented Chatter, but are having limited success? Well, this blog post may help you out.

Here are the top 10 things to consider as you transition your company into a successful social enterprise using Chatter:

1.       Get managers and executives to start using it

Ask them to commit to posting; nothing drives adoption like top-down behavior. If your C-level execs are posting industry trends, interesting articles, commenting on records, etc., people are going to pay attention.  

2.      Create a “Chattetiquette” (Chatter Etiquette) guide

Establish some helpful tips or guidelines about how Chatter should be used at your company.  Define your own best practices. For example, you may want to set guidelines for Chatter profile photos and make clear what type of topics can and cannot be posted.

3.      Draft a communication plan

Let users know about the changes that will be taking place — before you launch.  Set expectations around the transition and provide materials such as your “Chattetiquette” guide. Be sure to include specific use cases by job role.  For example, the way your services and support team may use Chatter could be very different from the way finance may use it. After you go live, send out an FAQ.  Recognize super users for their early adoption, and ask for feedback.

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4.      Identify evangelists

Select influential employees on different teams and recruit them to be your Chatter evangelists. Their role will be to encourage adoption through leading by example and providing support to their peers. Make sure your evangelists feel invested by getting them involved early.  Ask them to help define use cases and provide them with training before your Chatter rollout.

5.      Determine the objects on which to enable Chatter

Also determine which key fields should be tracked. Although you can select up to 30 fields, we recommend keeping it to 10 fields or less and primarily selecting fields that will drive people to take action.

6.      Populate the :Manager” field on the user record

Building the user management hierarchy will help the Chatter recommendation engine recommend users for you to follow.

7.      Create several Chatter groups for users to join

Determine if groups are going to be private or public. You might create a public group for your Chatter launch where users can provide feedback.  They may help you identify useful enhancements or expose areas where further training is needed.

8.      Educate users about communication preferences

Ensure users are aware of how to modify their Chatter email settings to best fit their needs.  I personally like the daily digest.  But some people might prefer to have the Chatter Desktop app installed to get their Chatter feed in real time and avoid receiving an email digest.

9.      Encourage participation in Chatter through “gamification”

Clear Task recently customized a “gamification” app for a Chatter rollout to 1000+ Salesforce users.  Users earn points when they post to Chatter, comment on someone else’s post, or like someone’s post. A dashboard recognizes top users at the company and our client is seeing excellent adoption as a result.

10.      Take advantage of Chatter mobile apps

The bus ride to work is the best time for me to catch up on the previous day’s Chatter. It’s the perfect opportunity to check out links to articles people have posted to Chatter and catch up on industry news.