At Bluewolf, we like to drink champagne. Especially our own champagne. For example, we use Chatter daily to get quick answers and to collaborate with Pack members worldwide, so we encourage our customers to do the same. In fact, we recommend using Chatter as soon as a project kicks off to boost visibility and collaboration — this way, we can ensure that the project runs smoothly by keeping stakeholders in-sync each step of the way. Here are our top recommendations to get more value from Chatter:

1. Collaborate in context — starting in production.
   The biggest upside of Chatter is that it allows collaboration in context. We recommend our customers to create a Chatter group in their production org, and then add us to it, so we can all collaborate in the context of the project. For instance, the Chatter group gives the project team a single place to share, iterate, and store documents. We recommend posting project plans, photographs of whiteboards, and starting dialogue that would have otherwise been done in email. Because of this, the team has visibility into how ideas are evolving. In a format where you can engage in global conversations and pull people into a thread by tagging them, all members of the group are aware of project updates in real time. 
2. Identify early adopters.
   One of they key change management strategies we recommend is establishing a champion network. This is also a valuable way to identify Chatter champions. When we see our customers embracing Topics and Polls, for example, we know we have early adopters on our hands. We recommend using Topics for project milestones (#BPR, #UAT) and Polls to assess risk and readiness. These Chatter champions then play a key role in engaging users by creating awareness and motivation to adopt the technology as our customers go live. Leverage your Chatter champions by calling on them to identify use cases, share success stories with the project team, and informally demo Salesforce1 to their peers.
3. Solidify partnerships.
   We see ourselves as our customers’ partner. Collaborating in Chatter together helps us solidify that partnership by building trust. We get to navigate challenges as a team, and demonstrate how Chatter is a solution to “work out loud” in the cloud. As enthusiastic users of Chatter ourselves, we get to share industry best practices, like following key players and records, sharing files, and using badges to recognize engaged employees, all while discovering customer-specific use cases. It's important to us to be agile, visible, and a trusted advisor — Chatter lets us do all of that in one place.

At face value, Chatter offers efficiency. Whether it be through Salesforce1, powerful search capabilities, or the bookmarking functionality, the platform provides added value in its simplest state. When used as a team and with the right leaders, it can be so much more: a place to collaborate, iterate, and ultimately set the tone for a new cultural shift towards employee engagement. 

If you've used Chatter as a project team, tell us about it. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.