After the morning tea break at Intranets 2012, Rebecca Jackson from Melbourne Water is talking about social media, communications, and Yammer. Yammer started as a rogue platform three years ago, and is now part of the corporate tool set. Rebecca is using Prezi for her presentation – it's very creative / visual / different.

Key points:
– Melbourne Water – 850 employees, 2000 people including contractors. Numerous sites – offices, pumping stations, etc. Manage $9.4 billion in assets. Most people are scientists, engineers, and operators.
– the Yammer network – currently have 695 members. Top 20 users generated 55% of content. Average number of messages is 7. The numbers are trending up. Messages are growing more rapidly than number of members.
– how it took off – October 2010 – one person started using it, then a few more joined. In March 2011, there was a swift jump in usage, as some very engaged people tried it out. May 2011 saw 108 new users ("messages were going around telling people to try Yammer"). In July/August, there were internal communications that led to another increase. In January 2012, a major IT project created a group.

– some examples of usage – postings about field trips, something from a conference, a "praise" for the work of someone else. There are also some common interest groups – eg., innovation, iPad and iPhone users, photography, etc. Asking questions broadly, and getting answers and feedback.

– content in the groups tend to have a business slant to it. There are some personal things though.
– our people really wanted this – "technical forums for sharing best practice, asking questions, and getting feedback."
– risks – the biggest risk is the free version. Adding and removing employees is difficult. There's no detailed analytics, can't moderate, and can't export data. It doesn't integrate easily with other systems.

– there have been some incidents. You need to react in a time manner, and use existing HR practices to resolve. Believe that you should respond to the incident in the same forum in which it happens.
– … deal with other incidents by talking to people directly.
– how do I nurture the community?
– … encourage people to have a personal Yammer strategy (eg., "I will post once a week.")
– … community management – watching, nurturing, tending to weeds
– … rewarding users – some prizes.
– … competitions
– … Yammer tips
– … run a YammerFall at events – to show what's going on. It also gives people the motivation to participate.
– develop the business case, backwards – collect good news stories, talk to your internal stakeholders early on (eg., IT, security, comms), identify and mitigate whatever risks you can, talk to Yammer early, and consider other options.