While social media platforms offer you the opportunity to connect with several people, you need a CRM to tell you whom to connect with.

Enter Social CRM - which lets you integrate your Facebook, Google+ and Twitter accounts with Zoho CRM. Not only does this integration help you monitor and participate in social media activities from one place, it also provides sufficient clarity about the significance of a particular customer to your business.

This is an organization-specific integration so your Administrator needs to set it up in your organization's CRM account. With Social CRM in place, you can

• Tweet from your company's Twitter account and Post status updates from your Facebook and Google+ pages
• Monitor real-time activity such as likes/favorites, comments, tweets, retweets, messages and mentions of your brand across Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
• Interact and engage with your customers across social media channels.
• Add prospective customers from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ as leads/contacts in your Zoho CRM account.
• Search Twitter on relevant subjects using keywords and save the searches as separate streams so that you can always stay updated on topics relevant to you.
• Focus on posts from important customers/prospects by creating custom streams.
• Add potentials, tasks and notes to a lead/contact from the Social tab.
• View all social interactions of leads and contacts with your company contextually, under the Social InteractionsRelated Lists.

Availability

Understand the Social Tab

To begin using Social CRM, you must first integrate your company's Facebook, Twitter or Google+ accounts with your organization's Zoho CRM account. Only a user with administrative privileges can enable this integration. Once a social media account has been associated, other users will be able to access the data in the Social tab based on the permissions granted to them. See Also Associate Company's Social Account

The Social tab comprises three important elements.

• The CRM View
• The Navigation Panel
• Social Media Details View

Each of these elements is explained below in detail.

The CRM View

In the CRM View of the Social tab, the social media posts from your contacts are classified under four categories based on the data available in Zoho CRM. This distinction greatly helps you identify people who matter to you and prioritize their posts over others'.

The categories in the CRM View are

• Customers - Contains posts from customers (contacts that have all potentials in the Closed stage, with at least one potential that is Closed Won.)
• Open Potentials - Contains posts from prospective customers (at least one open potential in the pipeline.)
• Leads/Contacts - Contains posts from leads and contacts (the contacts here have no potentials associated with them as yet or have potentials that are Closed Lost)
• Unknown - Contains posts from people who are not yet associated with the CRM.

Initially, the social interactions are listed under the Unknown column. You can add people from the Unknown column as a new lead /contact or associate them to an existing lead/contact. Once this is done, the posts will appear in the appropriate CRM category.

Note that in case other users in your CRM account had already set up their Facebook or Twitter profiles with the organization's account and associated the social profiles of leads and contacts, then the posts will appear under the appropriate columns right after the integration is enabled. For example, if a user in your CRM account has already associated a lead's Twitter account, this lead's posts will start appearing under the Leads/Contacts category as soon as the Social integration is enabled in Zoho CRM.

Under Customers, Open Potentials and Leads/Contacts, the social media posts are further classified under two categories for better clarity.

• Pings - These are posts in which your business/brand has been mentioned. This includes Mentions and DMs on Twitter, comments, replies and private messages on Facebook and Google+.
• Streams - Streams applies only to Twitter. Streams contain tweets from different contacts updated in the chronological order, with the latest posts first. While Pings contain mentions, Streams contains all other tweets by the contact(s) in the specific cateory.

The Navigation Panel

The Social tab has a clear navigation panel on the left. The navigation panel has the following options:

• Navigate easily to other tabs while working within the Social tab.
  
• Compose and publish posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can also attach an image to go with your posts.
  
  • You can also de-select a channel if you do not want to post on that page. Simply click on an account icon to de-select it. (In this screenshot, a Facebook page and Google+ page of Zylker have been de-selected).
  • Please note that you can attach only one image to go along with a post. The maximum file size of an image that can be attached with posts from the social tab is 5 MB for Twitter, 25 MB for Facebook and 36 MB for Google+.
  • Besides this, you can pin My Posts & Tweets as yet another column in the CRM view. This way you will not always have to click the Compose icon to view your social media posts. You can unpin the column anytime.
• Filter out the social media accounts that you wish to be displayed.
  
  Once filtered, the CRM View as well as the My Posts and Tweets section will contain social media posts from only the selected networks.
• Track keywords and save the search results columns for future reference.
  
  Later, all you would need to do is refresh the search column to see the latest posts surrounding the keywords saved.
• Customize the CRM View by adding Custom Streams to follow important customers. Search for those special leads and contacts and save your Custom Streams.
  
  These columns will display the say tweets and posts from the selected leads/contacts sorted by recency.
• Refer Activity Stream () to view the recent activities performed from the social tab.
  
• Use Social Settings () to change users' profile permissions.
  
  You can also use Settings to add a new Twitter handle, Facebook/Google+ page or delete existing ones.
• Use the Power button to sign out of your Zoho CRM account.
  

The Social Media Details View

A useful addition to this feature is a 360 degree view of the leads or contacts whose social interactions are listed in the CRM view.

Once you click on a post, you are taken to the Social Media Details view which gives you complete details about the lead/contact. These details include CRM details as well as social media details. Some of them are business card details, mail conversations, associated activities and notes, potential summary among others.

Note that the Social Media Details View is not available for the Keywords Tracking column.

When you click on a particular post by a lead/contact, the social media details are presented to you in three parts

• The CRM category section
• Social conversation summary
• 3-Tab Section

The first section on the left is the CRM category section. The CRM view which the selected post belongs to is presented here. For example, Customers.

The second section is the social conversation summary. Here the social media information of the contact is presented. You can interact with this post.

The last section on the right is a 3-tab section that includes CRM as we all social conversation details.

• Conversations - These include social and email conversations. Any open cases are also listed.
  
• Info - All the details about the contact that is stored in CRM such as email address, phone number, website, potentials, notes and tasks. You can add a new task, note or a potential from this section.
  
• Timeline - Timeline displays a history of CRM activities associated with the record, such as notes, field updates and tasks. Note that the history includes actions performed in the last six months. 
  In addition to CRM Timeline, Twitter contacts will have a Twitter Timeline, which displays their tweets, retweets, mentions and replies.
  

Add a Lead/Contact from Facebook/Twitter/Google+

Social media offers you a great platform to meet new people, find new business.The moment you see that a person expresses interest in your business, you may want to add them as a lead/contact in your CRM database. With your Social CRM in place you can do so directly from the Social tab.

To add a lead or contact

1. Bring your mouse pointer over a social media post falling under the Unknown category in the CRM View and click +Add.
   
   • Associate to Existing - Search the contacts and associate.
   • AddNew - Specify the details and add as a new lead or contact.

Mapping Social Account details to a Lead / Contact

The advantage of connecting with a customer on social media is that it allows you to learn more about the person's likes, preferences and opinions. When you add this person as a lead or contact in CRM, these pieces of information from a contact's social profile can be associated to relevant fields in CRM.

While associating a social profile, you can also search for the Lead's / Contact's other social profiles by clicking on the Twitter, Facebook or Google+ icons respectively and associating them.

If you have any additional information while adding a specific lead/contact, you can add that information to the relevant fields by clicking on the + Include more fields and select which field you want form the drop-down list and adding data to it manually.

Also, if you feel the mapping done by CRM is not exact, you can manually change values assigned to fields or change the fields to which the values are assigned.

Automate lead generation via social media

Social media is undoubtedly a rich source of leads for your business. When people mention your brand and talk about your organization on social media, it is possible that those people might become your next big deals - but you will know that only if you have an efficient way to reach out to them.

With social automation rules, you can automate the addition of your social media followers as leads and contacts in CRM. For example, you can instruct CRM to automatically add whoever "mentions" your brand on Twitter as a lead and automatically assign the lead to your sales rep for regular follow-up. Similarly other social media action triggers include direct messages, re-tweets, favourites, likes and so on. There are similar appropriate triggers for Facebook and Google+ as well.

This way, when you bridge the gap between your social media accounts and your CRM, you can make sure you don't miss out on potential business oppourtunities from social media.

To create a social automation rule

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Social.
   You require the Social Admin permission in order to set up social automation rules.
2. Click the Lead Generation tab.
3. Against the respective social media channel, (Facebook, Twitter or Google+), add the automation criteria. For example, let's say everytime someone "mentions" your brand on Twitter or "retweets" your tweet, you want to add them as a lead. To do this,
   • Against the Twitter channel, click the Edit icon on "If someone" and select the required action triggers - in this case - Mentions OR Retweets and click Save.
   • Instruct CRM to Add (this person)as a lead or contact, in this case lead.
   • Associate an assignment rule.
     
     The lead will get assigned to the user(s) mentioned in the rule. If you do not associate an assignment rule, the lead will get assigned to the organization's Super administrator.

You can follow the same procedure in the case of Facebook and Google+ as well. Following are the action triggers available for each social media channel.

Adding parallel conditions

Consider this scenario. When someone mentions your brand on Twitter, you want them to be added as contacts, but if somone only retweets your tweet, you want them to be added as leads.

In such a case, there are two conditions in place. You can create a new branch condition and specify criteria as seen in the image below.

Leads and contacts added to Zoho CRM from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ via these social automation rules can be identified from the Lead Source field. For instance, you will see that a lead added from Twitter automatically has the Lead Source filled up das "Twitter". You can filter records based on Lead Source if you wish to see leads and contacts generated from social media.

Check the Activity Stream

The Activity Stream helps you keep track of a set of actions performed by you in the Social tab. These actions include the following:

• Publishing Status on Facebook and Google+
• Publishing Tweets
• Replying to Conversations
• Posting Comments
• Adding Contact/Lead
• Replying to direct messages on Twitter and messages on Facebook and Google+.

Note that the activities listed under the Activity Stream changes varies for different users of a specific organization's aCRM ccount according to the respective user's actions.

To check the activity stream

1. In the Social tab, click the ActivityStream icon.
   A pop-up with a list of activities will be listed.
   

Add Keyword Tracking and Custom Streams for Twitter

Use the power of Keyword Tracking and Custom Streams in Social CRM to keep a tab on important topics and people.

• Keyword tracking lets you search on Twitter for a few specific keywords and save the search results. For instance, if you are in the mobile app development business, you can search for topics such as mobile app development, iOS devices, Android devices and so on. These search results will be saved as a new column in the CRM view. Whenever you refresh posts in this column, you will be kept updated about what is being talked about these subjects on Twitter.
  
• Similar to Keyword tracking, you can keep a track of the posts by specific customers. Let's say you want to always know what some of your regular customers are saying about you. You can create a Cusom Stream for these customers. This stream will display the Twitter timeline of the contact. Whenever you refresh posts in this column, you will be kept updated about what these customers are saying on Twitter.
  

View Social Interactions

Leads and contacts in Zoho CRM will have a new Related List - Social Interactions. All the Twitter, Facebook and Google+ interactions associated to the lead/contact will be listed in this related list.

To view lead/contact's social interactions

1. Go to Leads/Contacts tab.
2. Click on a lead/contact and go to Social related list.
   You will see social conversations associated with the specific record in the Social Interactions section.