LinkedIn Calendar in IOS App Brings Social Network Intelligence Into Your Schedule

LinkedIn rolled out a new feature the other day, and somehow I missed it until yesterday, when I was using it on my iPhone. It asked me if I wanted to activate the new calendar feature so I could find out more about the people I’m meeting with this week. This is a great enhancement to the app, and something I hope they integrate into the web version soon.

The move is also the latest proof that we have moved beyond the era of simple social networking and solidly into the era of social network intelligence, where the average user can take advantage of the vast data mines we so happily participate in. I’ve covered “social network intelligence” tools before, with my favorite being Gist, a free social CRM tool that was acquired by Blackberry as part of its efforts to integrate cloud-based features into the lagging Blackberry ecosystem and their related notebooks. I’ve also recently been testing Nimble, which does many of the same things, and have tested Rapportive, as well as Xobni’s Smartr Contacts app on iPhone. GMail also gives users the ability to see more about your contacts by turning on the “people widget” in their mail settings.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications have been widely used by sales professionals for years, but the advent of Social CRM apps (especially free ones) brings the possibility of better relationship management to the everyday user.

Some typical features of social CRM apps:

• Calendar and e-mail integration. Inside one app, you can see who you are meeting with, when you’ve met with the person before, and the e-mails you’ve traded. It’s great to be able to pull up e-mails and attachments you’ve traded as you meet with a contact. How many times have you been on a phone or web meeting and had to say, “I don’t know if I received that, let me search my inbox.” No more. It’s all right there.
• Notes. You can make notes about your meeting.
• Tasks. You can create new tasks and set deadlines. In some CRM apps, you can share tasks with colleagues, or assign them to specific team members for follow-up.
• Social network integration. Add a social network profile to follow, and you can read tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn updates from within the contact dashboard.
• Web searches. Many social CRM apps integrate with Google API and will return possible results for the person, company, and industry related to your contact.
• RSS feed integration. Follow a contact’s personal or corporate blogs, podcasts, and anything else with an RSS feed.
• Maps. If you have a physical address for a contact, you can get a map and driving directions from within the CRM application.

LinkedIn’s foray into social CRM is interesting, but at this point, it’s also pretty basic. First, you click on the calendar tab (really a frame of sorts) in the upper right, and it shows your calendar. You’ll see the contact’s LinkedIn photo and name. Within the meeting, you see links to the LinkedIn profile for each person in the meeting (including you) and a pane with notes. If you want more information, you click through to view the  person’s profile.

I’ll be interested to see how many more of the typical social CRM features LinkedIn integrates in the future. With access to so much user data, and its position as “the” professional social network, LinkedIn could bring Social CRM not only into your schedule, but into the mainstream.