Building Connections Through Chatter

In our team, and within our larger org at Salesforce, we often say “take it to Chatter.” The goal is to move important conversations out of your inbox and share them for visibility. Plus, Chatter can be useful for having conversations about information, like an Opportunity or an Account. But, you can also be using Chatter to make connections with other people at your organization, regardless of whether or not you’re regularly communicating with them about a specific account. Chatter is a very powerful tool, after all!

Let’s talk about what you can do to construct valuable relationships and visible cadences of connection and information on Chatter.

Why Build Connections?

One of the main reasons to build connections using Chatter is to get out of your bubble as a Salesforce Admin. It’s very easy to stay heads-down and focus on Salesforce-related projects, but, to paraphrase John Donne, “no Admin is an island.” Getting out of the bubble can help you identify organizational needs and trends early, rather than waiting for them to come down from the top.

Another reason to build connections via Chatter is to expand your network beyond your local team, office, time zone, or geographical region. You never know whom you might work with on a future project, and once you have that personal connection it can streamline things if and when you do eventually work together.  This worked well for me when I connected with a colleague on Chatter first, then had the chance to meet them in-person in the San Francisco office. It was like a “shortcut” to get to know them — and set the stage for a deeper work connection. Even if you work in a small office, Chatter can still be useful. The ability to comment directly on a record, or make a quick post on someone’s profile, can help connect you with people you may not work with all the time.

How to Build Connections

One of the easiest things to start with is making sure your profile is up to date. That means uploading a recent photo, current title, a brief bio, and, once Summer 18 is live, adding the Trailhead badges component to your Chatter profile.

One of the most effective things you can do is provide value to other people in your Chatter posts. What does value look like? Chatter posts that are sharing useful information about your products, services, or internal processes can be really valuable to your immediate team as well as other teams you don’t get a lot of usual interaction with. Of course, any practical “how to” Salesforce posts are always a hit. Also, sharing updates on ongoing projects, along with celebrations of milestones, and thanking project contributors for their work allow you to establish meaningful connections and keep up the conversation.

Additionally, make sure to hashtag topics in your posts — it helps with discoverability. Topics can be a great way to publicly demonstrate expertise in a specific area. New in Summer 18 you can /mention *any* record, so you can also use that feature liberally.

Just a note: this isn’t a full Chatter etiquette post (those rules vary from org to org), but do try to avoid Chatter Spam — @mentioning groups or people that really don’t need to see your posts. Trust me, if it’s a useful post it will get shared, and you won’t need to mention 12 groups to get it seen.

Reaching Out Individually

Identify a few specific people that you’d like to connect with. Your criteria for connection could include their role at the company, their team, their region, or their areas of expertise just to name a few! Choose a few things that are important to you for helping you meet your goals, or forming connections to help someone meet theirs.

After you’ve chosen a few people, take a look at their Chatter feed. What topics are they posting about? What groups are they a member of? What questions have they asked? All this can help you when you do reach out to them and ask to connect.

So, are you ready to build some new connections? What other tips can you share for connecting on Chatter?