1. Implementing Internal Social Media:
A Yammer Case Study
Rebecca Jackson – Intranet Specialist
@_rebeccajackson

2. Overview
• About Melbourne Water
• What is Yammer?
• Our journey
• Implementation
• Measuring success
• Where to from here?

3. About Melbourne Water
• Owned by the Victorian
Government
• 850 employees across
numerous sites
• Significant business,
responsible for managing
$9.4 billion in assets
• Manages Melbourne’s
water supply catchments,
removes and treats
sewage, and manages
rivers and creeks and
major drainage systems

4. What is Yammer?
• Enterprise microblogging platform
• Sites open to users with the same company
email
• Some key features:
– Microblogging
– Profiles
– Groups
• Easy to set up
• https://www.yammer.com

5. Our journey
• First user October 2010
• Took off in March 2011 rj14
• 108 new members in May, biggest month
• First Community in July rj12
• Key communications late July/August
• Peak uptake days March/August rj10
rj9 rj11
rj13
rj8

6. Slide 5
rj8 First user
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj9 Took off in March 2011
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj10 First community
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj11 Biggest month in May 108 new members
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj12 Key comms messages July/August
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj13 peak uptake march august
jacksonr, 19/08/2011
rj14 peak uptake march august
jacksonr, 19/08/2011

7. Our journey
• Currently 458 members
(53.8%)
• 2,466 messages
• Average followers 25
• Average messages 4.9
• 164 users with more than 1
message (35.8%)
• 61 users with greater than
average (11.8%)
• 4.37% (top 20 users) have
generated 60% of content

8. Our journey
How are our people using it?
• Sharing updates

9. Our journey
How are our people using it?
• Asking questions

10. Our journey
How are our people using it?
• Common interest groups, work and personal

11. Our journey
How are our people using it?
• Crowdsourcing information

12. Our journey
How are our people using it?
• This was something they had been asking for!
– “Technical forums for sharing best practice,
asking questions and getting feedback”
– “Internal Twitter so you can follow colleagues
with good ideas”
– “Stakeholder, alliance or project partner
pages”
– “Facebook style individual… pages”

13. Implementation: soft versus formal
Soft approach
• Personal Yammer strategies
• Viral can be okay but…
• Monitoring
– Watch, nurture and tend to weeds…
– The first “Yammer incident”

14. Implementation: soft versus formal
A more formal approach
• Rewarding users
– 200th, 300th and 400 th user prizes
– Information Management competition
– Yammer photography competition

15. Implementation: soft versus formal
A more formal approach
• Weekly Yammer Tips

16. Implementation: soft versus formal
An even more formal approach
• OnTap article
• Yammer guide
• Yammer as a
communications channel

17. Measuring success
• Observation and analysis
– Members statistics
– New users, new and useful conversations
• Senior leaders getting involved
• Generating discussions outside of Yammer

18. Where to from here?
• Continue to nurture the community
• Build formal business case
• Investigate (and hopefully move to) paid version
• The bigger Social Media picture
– Social Media policy
– Community of Practice
– Intranet upgrade

19. Questions?