Add LinkedIn integration to Salesforce.com

As a sales person, I live in my CRM. It's the primary tool for my profession second only to my phone. Another sales tool I use is a social networking site called LinkedIn. Here is how they discribe themselves "LinkedIn is an online network of more than 10 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries". I call it the MySpace for professionals. I have put together a way to bring the two tools together and make my Salesforce CRM work for me in new ways.

When prospecting or in the course of general due diligence, the more you know about your lead the better. LinkedIn has over 10 million registered users. Chance are if you are dealing with a company executive, they have a LinkedIn account. Searching LinkedIn can give you some interesting facts as well as give you better insight to 'who they really are."

I used to pull my lead in the CRM that was either uploaded from a trade show or a person asking for more information and cut&paste the name into another tab that had LinkedIn up already. (Yes, tabbed browsing is much better!) This worked fine. I didn't know any better so I adjusted and made it work. Now LinkedIn is looking for specific information right out of the contact record and all I have to do is click the link. Here's how.

1. Go to your setup screen. The link is located in the upper right corner of your screen. When you get to the page it should look a little like this.

2. On the left section there is a link for App Setup. Click that.

3. Find the Customize your Contacts tab

4. Now go to Create a new custom link

5. Click on 'New' and create the Label for the new link. (Call it LinkedIn to make things easy.)

Here is the string to put into the large text box at the bottom. Make sure you save the custom link! Click OK at the pop up box.

COPY LINK

**Make sure that the format for the name is {!Contact.FirstName}+{!Contact.LastName}. There has been some issues with the link in some browsers.

This is searching LinkedIn for contacts that match the first name and last name of the Salesforce

record you are currently viewing.

6. Next click on Page Layout and click edit.

You will find your new custom link in the 'Account custom link' view on the right side.

7. Drag the LinkedIn custom tab and drop it into the 'Useful Links' section. Save everything.

8. Now go into a contact record and see the new LinkedIn link. Go ahead, give it a try!

If you are feeling adventurous, you can follow the same steps in the "Accounts Setup" but use the string below to search for any record in LinkedIn that works for the target company.

COPY LINK