![\"Yammer_Amy_Rashida\"](\"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Yammer_Amy_Rashida.jpg\")
<\/a>I’m marking 14 years as a storyteller to organizations by celebrating\u00a0 my clients\u2019 storytelling journeys. Today, I turn to Cbeyond, a leading business technology ally, to learn about its innovative use of enterprise social networking.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Cbeyond\u2019s character and culture have long embraced engaging employees, through the example of Cbeyond’s Founder Jim Geiger, who talked about his company’s character-driven culture and the role of communication at a September 2011 IABC Atlanta meeting<\/a>. Jim founded Cbeyond in 1999 out of a desire to change the dynamic for small and mid-sized businesses under-served by other communications providers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not surprising that Cbeyond became an early adopter of social enterprise networking tools to bring employees together, deploying Yammer<\/a> company-wide in October 2011. Within a year, its Yammer community swelled from 400 to 1,600 members.<\/p>\n \u201cOur vision for our social enterprise network is to help Cbeyonders collaborate more across functions, manage projects better and create a community. At the corporate level, we use Yammer to create a dialogue around our corporate strategy and initiatives \u2013 it\u2019s all about being more transparent and open about what we\u2019re doing,\u201d says Amy MacKinnon, Cbeyond Internal Communications.<\/p>\n The month-long celebration coincided with Cbeyond\u2019s annual \u201cWeek of Service\u201d held in October when employees from all 15 markets engage in volunteer activities in their communities. They were encouraged to post pictures of their volunteer efforts using the #2012WeekofService tag.<\/p>\n \u201cUploads on Yammer hit the roof that week,\u201d recalls Rashida Powell, then-manager of the Yammer channel for Cbeyond, adding that adoption rates of Yammer have continued to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cThis effort was born when Cbeyond celebrated their month-long Yammer anniversary<\/a>, and has evolved as other community managers were inspired to deliver their own and iterate on the approach,\u201d the blog post<\/a> stated, citing Manhattan Associates embarking on its own \u201931 Days of Yammer\u2019 to uncover great work, celebrate successes and coach employees on working smarter and faster.<\/p>\n Cbeyond has continued to build momentum through feature campaigns in 2013, with themes such as a health-and-wellness for January, celebrating Cbeyond\u2019s Character in February, and Going Green in April to coincide with Earth Day.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n “This campaign was the launching pad for getting really focused on leveraging social enterprise networking as a strategic engagement tool,” Amy concludes.<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m marking 14 years as a storyteller to organizations by celebrating\u00a0 my clients\u2019 storytelling journeys. Today, I turn to Cbeyond, a leading business technology ally, to learn about its innovative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338,343],"tags":[490,735,737,734,733],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-communication","category-social-media-tips","tag-cbeyond","tag-employee-engagement","tag-employee-engagement-campaigns","tag-enterprise-social-networking","tag-yammer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>For Cbeyond\u2019s one-year anniversary on Yammer, the internal communications team \u00a0<\/span>unveiled \u201c31 Days of Yammer\u201d<\/a>, a highly engaging campaign that included a host of activities, from daily tips to weekly contests such as the \u201cGet Your Yam on from ANYWHERE\u201d contest, where employees were encouraged to download Yammer\u2019s mobile app. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>Yammer\u2019s own blog credits Cbeyond’s \u201c31 Days of Yammer\u201d campaign that it covered in 2012 as a best practice for organizations to overcome \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d and continue to create buzz and grow adoption for Yammer after the initial launch.<\/p>\n