LinkedIn Contacts does the business

Following several recent improvements such as the introduction of 2 factor authentication and a tidying up of the menu, LinkedIn has launched LinkedIn Contacts.

Described by LinkedIn as, “a smarter way to stay in touch with your most important relationships” LinkedIn Contacts syncs all your contact details from your address books, emails from your email accounts, and appointments from calendars together with your LinkedIn network. So all the details of past conversations and meetings are added onto your contact’s profile. Handy to refer to your last conversation before going into your client meeting.

In a single place you have access to your contacts details, emails, LinkedIn messages and appointments to which you can add Reminders, Notes, Tagging and details on ‘How you met’. The Reminder and Tagging features are particularly useful. I’ve only been using it a week but first impressions are good. I’m likely to make it my CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. For example, say you meet a potential client . You can add them to your network, tag them as a prospect and add a reminder to contact them in a week’s time about possible business.

There’s also some great search and sorting features. You can now search with several parameters including Connections, Saved, Tags, Companies, Titles, Locations, Sources, Potential Merges and Hidden. You can sort your Contacts by several criteria such as where they came from, whether they were imported into LinkedIn some time ago, by the Contacts you’ve synced and also by any apps you may use such as CardMunch.

LinkedIn Contacts is available on LinkedIn.com as well as a new app for iPhone. Sadly, it’s not yet available on Android but if you have an iPhone it’s pretty useful to be able to have your entire database of customers and contacts in your pocket, even if they number in the thousands. A bit different from the days of the Rolodex! The Updates email has now been replaced with a Daily or Weekly Digest Email. This provides a handy reminder of your Contacts birthdays and job changes plus your meetings for the day or week.

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