Social: scheduling posts, social inbox and metrics
The Social screen brings three things together: a Calendar to write, schedule and publish posts, an Inbox to read and reply to mentions, comments and DMs, and Metrics on engagement per post. The networks' credentials are yours and live in the Integrations hub; without a connection you can still build drafts and nothing breaks.
Posting on social usually lives outside the CRM, and that is how the comment that turned into an opportunity gets lost. The Social screen brings the work inside: the post is written here, the reply to the customer happens here and the post's results sit next to the rest of your marketing. Open Social from the menu, in the Marketing group.
Connecting the networks
The model is bring your own account: the credentials belong to your company and live under Settings, Integrations. While no network is connected, the screen shows a banner telling you that you can build drafts, plus an Open integrations link. Actually publishing, replying on the network and pulling numbers only work once you connect.
Calendar
- On the Calendar tab, pick the Network in the composer: LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.
- Write the Text, up to 3,000 characters. If you want, tie it to a Campaign, add a Link and an Image by URL.
- Fill in Schedule for with the date and time, and click Schedule. Leave the field empty and click Save draft to store it without scheduling.
- On a post that already exists, use Publish now to publish outside the schedule.
- A post's states are Draft, Scheduled, Published and Failed.
- Instagram requires a public image: a text-only post is refused.
- A periodic sweep publishes scheduled posts on its own once their time comes.
- A published post can no longer be edited, so what went live does not diverge from what is in the CRM.
- If the post has a link, it goes out with click tracking, and those clicks show up later in the metrics.
Social inbox
- Incoming Mentions, Comments and DMs appear on the Inbox tab, newest first, and can be filtered by Open, Replied and Archived.
- Click Reply to answer through the network. Without that network connected, the reply is saved in the CRM and the screen tells you Reply saved (network not connected, not sent).
- Use Archive and Reopen to organize what has already been handled.
- When the author matches someone in your database, the item is linked to the matching Lead or Contact.
Metrics
The Metrics tab shows, per published post, the Likes, Comments, Shares and Impressions, plus total link Clicks and the performance trend across the months. The Refresh button pulls the numbers from the network again. When there is no credential configured for that network, the screen is honest and tells you the metrics are in simulated mode, keeping the current numbers instead of inventing others.
Limits and permissions
- The Calendar composer publishes to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. The other networks the system knows about have no selector on this screen.
- The post text accepts up to 3,000 characters.
- Reading the screen depends on the Social feature being granted to your role; by default it is granted to every role and the administrator can restrict it.
- On per-user plans, publishing to social networks depends on the edition you contracted.
- Inbox replies are still sent through the network only where the integration allows it; in the remaining cases they are recorded as not sent, without faking the delivery.
Common questions
- Can I try it without connecting anything? You can. With no connection nothing is published and nothing breaks: you build drafts and get the operation ready.
- Why is the Inbox empty? Because receiving mentions, comments and DMs depends on the social inbox integration being connected. Without it the list stays empty on purpose.
- I edited a published post and it would not let me. That is expected: a published post is immutable. Create a new one.
- The metrics do not change when I click Refresh. Check that the network for that post is connected under Settings, Integrations.