CRMown Docs
Docs › Lead Generation

Social Channels — Inbound Lead Capture from DMs / Comments / Mentions

Every inbound DM, comment, mention, or story reply on Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp / X / LinkedIn / YouTube becomes part of the unified inbox AND auto-creates a tracked SocialProfile (per platform per person) with engagement counts, referral attribution, and platform-specific identity fields. The Social Channels card on the Website Capture hub shows which platforms are connected; AI scoring + intent signals consume the SocialProfile data downstream.

Open in CRMown →

Steps

  1. Connect each platform under Settings > Integrations > Social Integrations (OAuth flows for FB/IG/WA/X/LI; YouTube uses a polling cron with an API key).
  2. Once connected, every inbound message hitting that platform's webhook lands in the unified inbox AND upserts a SocialProfile row keyed by (orgId, platform, platformUserId). On the FIRST inbound message a Contact is auto-created (toggleable — see below) and linked to the profile.
  3. View the platform mix on the Website Capture hub > Social Channels card: green dot for each connected platform with account name + last-message timestamp. The card is intentionally connection-focused — runtime stats (profiles tracked, leads-this-month) appear in the footer hint, not the headline. Replies and auto-routing live in Conversations.
  4. Open any contact at /dashboard/contacts/{id} — the new "Social Profiles" section in the right rail shows every linked SocialProfile with platform emoji, displayName, headline, follower count, business badge, follower badge, msg count, "Open →" link to the public profile.

Good to know

  • Auto-create Contact toggle: org.socialAutoCreateContacts (default ON). When ON, the first DM from a never-seen person creates a Contact with source=<platform>, tags=[<platform>], and links the SocialProfile. When OFF, the SocialProfile is still created but no Contact (you'll see the profile in Social Profile lookups but no contact row).
  • Per-message socialContext: the Message.socialContext JSONB stores structured per-message data — referralSource (ad/story_reply/post_comment/direct), adId, messageType, isFollower, follower count, etc. AI features (predictive scoring, intent signals, contact summary) consume this directly.
  • Bio + parsed fields: when the platform exposes a bio (X, LinkedIn) we kick a fire-and-forget Haiku parse to extract jobTitle / company / location. Failure mode: empty fields, never hallucination.
  • enrichContactFromSocial fills empty Contact fields ONLY (firstName, company, jobTitle, city, platform-specific URL fields). Existing data is never overwritten.
  • Five social-specific intent signals fire automatically: ad_referral (strength 9), story_reply (7), social_multi_platform (6), social_business_account (4), social_follower_dm (5). They show up on /dashboard/leadgen/intent alongside other intent signals.
  • Predictive scoring picks up 8 social features (hasSocialProfile, socialPlatformCount, cameFromAd, cameFromStoryReply, isFollower, isBusinessAccount, totalSocialMessages, hasLinkedIn) so the model can learn how social-acquired leads convert vs others.
  • Contact AI summary now mentions linked social profiles when present — the prompt gets a "Social profiles" block listing platform/headline/followers/follows-us/first-referral/msg-count.
  • Limitations: bio-link click tracking is not yet wired (Phase 5); cross-platform sentiment/conversation intelligence enrichment is a follow-up; some platform-specific signals (Instagram isFollower, YouTube isSubscriber) require additional API calls we don't make in v1.
  • Each connected platform pill on the Social Channels card is a deep-link to its filtered inbox view (e.g. clicking the Instagram tile opens /dashboard/conversations?channel=instagram). The card itself surfaces a "View messages →" link to the unified inbox.
Example: A real-estate agent has FB Messenger + Instagram + WhatsApp connected. A buyer sends a DM via Instagram in response to a story about a new listing → SocialProfile row created with firstReferralSource=story_reply, Contact auto-created with source=instagram, tag instagram, and the story_reply intent signal fires (strength 7). Predictive scoring boosts the lead because cameFromStoryReply=true. The contact detail page now shows the Social Profiles section with the IG profile + msg count + "follows us" badge. Two days later they DM on WhatsApp too — same SocialProfile pattern, NEW row, social_multi_platform intent signal fires (2 platforms), AND the same Contact is matched on phone if WhatsApp number resolves. The agent sees an enriched contact with cross-platform context that wouldn't exist without Phase 1.

Troubleshooting

Inbound DM created a duplicate Contact instead of linking to existing one
Existing matching by name is approximate (fuzzy on displayName); platforms don't always expose the email or phone, so we can't merge by those.
Fix: Manually merge contacts via /dashboard/contacts > select both > Merge. Future SocialProfiles will link to the surviving contact.
A Contact was auto-created but I don't want that
org.socialAutoCreateContacts is ON (default).
Fix: Toggle it OFF in Settings > Communications. From that point forward SocialProfile rows still capture identity but no Contact is created until you manually promote.
Social Channels card shows "0 of 6 connected" even though I see active DMs
The SocialIntegration row may have isActive=false (token expired, OAuth revoked).
Fix: Settings > Integrations > Social Integrations — reconnect any platform showing an error badge.
Social Profile section empty on a contact I know has DMs
The Contact might have been created BEFORE Phase 1 shipped (2026-04-30) so no SocialProfile was upserted at the time, OR the contact is linked under a different name and the inbound DM went to a different Contact.
Fix: For pre-Phase-1 data: future inbound messages from the same platformUserId will auto-link going forward. For mismatched contacts: merge them in /dashboard/contacts.

Plans

Inbound capture is Core — no suite gate. Each connected social platform is one OAuth integration. Outbound publishing requires the Marketing suite (separate feature).

Related

  • Website Capture Hub (Social Channels card)
  • F7 Intent Signals (5 social signal types added in Phase 4)
  • Predictive Lead Scoring (8 social features in the feature vector)
  • Unified Inbox (where the messages themselves land)
  • Contact Detail page (Social Profiles section)

View as Markdown