I’ve had several conversations over the past month about Yammer OR Twitter. My answer: I think it’s both/and, not either/or.

Twitter, as I point out in the E-Book “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”, is simply an excellent tool for reaching out to your community, volunteers and peers. That Twitter can also be used as an internal communications tool doesn’t disqualify Yammer, though, which is more robust (additional features) than Twitter for internal communications.

External communications - Twitter.
Internal communications - Yammer.

Some of the features that Yammer offers which are not currently on Twitter:

• Privacy - Though both Twitter and Yammer offer password protected options, Yammer takes it to another level by default by limiting the users to people with an email address from the same organization. No accidental “Tweets” possible to people outside of your organization.
• Administrative Control - $1 per month, per user is the current Yammer pricing for admin tools. Very affordable.
• User Profiles - In addition to being more than 140 characters of a Twitter Bio, Yammer lets you add far more detail and more user controls.
• Threaded Mode - Keep track of a particular conversation with all replies and comments kept neatly organized.
• Member sorting - similar to “Followers” on Twitter, but unlike Twitter, you can organize your list multiple ways and create various ways to sort.
• Tag/File/Image Directories - More ways to organize trends, topics, pics, etc.

There’s more detail separating the two, but that gives the big-picture overview.

Similar to Twitter, there are computer desktop, iPhone and BlackBerry control panels so you don’t have to go to a website every time. Unlike Twitter, which has 3rd party apps do that heavy lifting, Yammer includes their own tools for you.

If you don’t mind having two sets of tools to manage internal and external messaging communications, then both can work well in tandem for your church/organization. However, some users will not want two things to manage and, though not as robust, Twitter can be used for both whereas Yammer is internal-only.

If you can, use both.

Recruiting, Training & Retaining volunteers is a HUGE part of my heart in ministry. As a result, I talk and write about the subject frequently. Last night I hosted a TokBox session on the subject and gave out some articles where I share my advice and experiences both as a volunteer myself and in leading teams of volunteers.

Here’s the list of links, all complied into one neat blog post:

Volunteering Presentation PDF from WFX

Training Video on properly wrapping cable

Clean Tech

Ministry Burn Out (entire series)

7 Steps of Recruiting, Training & Retaining Volunteers

Love a Volunteer Today

Music & Tech Training

Creating Recording Checklists

Required Church Field Trip To Starbucks (It’s about the experience)

Techies Hiding from Ministry

6 Steps to Building Strong Tech Teams

Astounded by Walter Banks

I hope these articles help you and your ministry!

More often than not I try to share freely from my experiences and give you a lot of useful info, links and content. But for this request, I’m asking for a favor from you.

I’m asking for you to help promote my E-Book “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” to your friends and peers. You can simply share the link “TwitterForChurches.com” and they can download the E-Book there. Best of all, it’s a ministry-friendly price of only $5 (five bucks)!

Blog about it, Tweet it, or even share the Facebook Group.

Thank you for helping me promote this resource!