Since the release of Spring ’12 of Salesforce, there has been a feature called Social Accounts and Contacts that allows users to view basic social information on Leads, Accounts, and Contacts.
Salesforce Social Accounts and Contacts is enabled by default for new Salesforce customers after the Spring ’12 release and needs to be enabled by administrators if your instance was created before Spring ’12.
As of this writing, Salesforce users have the ability to see social information from the following networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Klout. To enable Social Accounts and Contacts, Salesforce administrators can go to Setup and do a search in the Quick Find box for “Social” and then go into the Settings page. Individual users can do the same search to adjust their personal settings for this feature.
When enabled, Salesforce users will notice little Social Network icons under, and a picture placeholder to the left of, Account, Contact, and Lead names in the header above the Salesforce Chatter feed on detail pages. Simply click one of the icons, enter your user information for that network, and enjoy the new feature. You will need to have a login to a network (like a LinkedIn account for the LinkedIn icon) for the feature to work correctly.
Salesforce stores your credentials securely and each user that wants to use this feature will need to supply their own credentials. So if you enter your credentials for a contact, and your co-worker views the same contact in Salesforce, the co-worker would need to enter their credentials to use this feature. Also, the information available will be different for each user, depending on the connection level the user has to the lead, account, or contact.
Salesforce does not store or import any of the social information and it is read-only. This ensures that the data is always current. Salesforce does not post to these networks, and leads, accounts, and contacts are not notified when you view the information.
Salesforce is always looking for ways to give you an edge when working with your customers and Salesforce Social Accounts and Contacts is another example. Utilize it to its full potential and happy networking!
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