Zentact Blog

With New Year’s Eve parties rapidly approaching on Wednesday night, some of us will be facing an evening of both great conversations and boring small talk. Lifehacker’s has a great post on 10 hacks, http://lifehacker.com/399895/top-10-conversation-hacks, to help you with any conversation. I plan on testing #8 myself:

8. Ask sensitive questions indirectly to skip awkwardness.

When the info you need from someone is somewhat sensitive, check out journalist advice site MBToolbox’s suggestions for asking delicate questions indirectly. Use the bluff (”the breakup must’ve been hard, huh?”) or blame others (”so has anyone asked about your prison time?”) or the indirect inquiry (”what year did you get divorced?”) to broach sensitive topics with tight-lipped folks with more ease and less awkward silence.

Zentact can also help with conversations by providing context around shared interests and even names.   In my case, it helps me remember what is interesting to my friends.    With this knowledge, it is much easier for me to start a conversation and participate in a meaningful way.   Whether a ’simple congratulations for the TechCrunch’ mention or a ‘did you see this article’, I have meaningful things to say.

I got a Zentact today from a long lost colleague. I had no idea what he was up to so I looked him up on LinkedIn. I still don’t know what he is up to which made me think about using Zentact and your public profile.

If you are connecting with people you haven’t talked to in a while, you should make sure your public profiles are up to date.   Almost two years ago, Guy Kawasaki wrote a great post about what you should do on LinkedIn - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/linkedin_profil.html Lots of great suggestions!

On Saturday, the New York Times published the following headline:

You May Not Like It, but Learn to Network

The Career Couch column by Phyllis Korkki is a great read - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/jobs/21career.html

Lots of tips and suggestions of what you should be doing including:

• Reciprocity is intrinsic to the process - you have to give to get
• Mutual interests are a great way to stay in touch and build relationships
• Face to face counts

While Zentact can’t help you with face to face meetings, it can help you with the rest.

We previously posted on the ability to add contacts via a Twitter DM. Scott Rafer called out that we didn’t use the originally discussed syntax and method. He’s referring to adding contacts via a public tweet to @zentact.

While we didn’t follow the “exact” syntax, we’re happy to announce that adding contacts via a public twitter message is live.

Here’s the Twitter syntax:

With a full name

@zentact @johnsampson John Sampson #Zentact #networking #San Francisco

Without a full name

@zentact @johnsampson #Zentact #networking #San Francisco

That’s all there is to it to add contacts to Zentact remotely. Becoming better at networking requires both online and offline interaction, this will help keep those interactions in sync. Use it at your next meeting, dinner, conference or whenever you’re away from your computer.

Quick Tips: Be sure you’ve added your Twitter account to your Zentact profile (enter it on the “My Account” link). Also, if you leave the full name out, the user will be classified under the “Unknown Last Name” section when managing contacts.

Why both public and direct message?

Consider using Direct Messages to add contacts when you’d rather not share tag information about one of your contacts with the world — keeping things more private. Otherwise, tweet away publicly - others will love to see how you’re using Zentact with your contacts.

How did we do it (technically)?

To extract your twitter contact adds, we’ve tapped into the Twitter publisher feed offered via the Gnip Consumer API. We parse all tweets sent to @zentact looking for the syntax listed above, and bang - your contacts are added to Zentact.

Thank you Scott!

Zentact lets you add contacts via Twitter. In order to use this, you must have a twitter account on file with us so let’s start there:

1. Log into Zentact
2. Click ‘My Account’
3. Enter your Zentact password into the ‘Password’ text box at the top of the page.
4. Scroll to the bottom half of the page, enter your Twitter name and password into the ‘Twitter Name’, ‘Account Password’ and ‘Re-type Password’ text boxes. (It has to be your user name, not the email address associated with the account.)
5. Click ‘Update’. You will see a message confirming your update.
6. Log into Twitter.
7. Browse to http://twitter.com/zentact.
8. Choose ‘follow’.
9. You will direct message Zentact to add someone. Use the format d zentact @twittername first_name last_name #tag #tag2 tag2 #tag3. E.G. to add me at A Donkey and Goat Winery with the tags syrah, Rhone wines and roussanne, you would tweet d zentact @donkeyandgoat Jared Brandt #syrah #Rhone wines #roussanne

A great guide for those of us who are not savy with Twitter can be found on the Wall Street Journal’sAll Things Digital website under “Birds of a Feather Twitter Together“.

I just imported my LinkedIn contacts. It took me less than 5 minutes and I had to find the export instructions from LinkedIn.

To make it even faster for you, here are the complete instructions for Firefox on WindowsXP.

1. Log into your LinkedIn account and click on ‘Contacts’ found in the left hand navigation.
2. Click on ‘Export Connections’ found at the bottom of that page.
3. Make sure that ‘Microsoft Outlook (.csv File)’ is selected from the drop down menu
4. Enter the text you see in the Security image.
5. Click on ‘Export’.
6. In the pop up window select ‘Save to Disk’ then click on ‘Ok’.
7. Log into your Zentact account.
8. Click on ‘Import Contacts’.
9. Click on ‘CSV Import’.
10. Using ‘Browse’, choose the file named ‘linkedin_connections_export_microsoft_outlook’. You should find it in your default downloaded files location.
11. Click on ‘Import’.

That is it. Visit the LinkedIn Export Page. All of your contacts will be automatically tagged with their name.

Good luck!

Another great review from TechCrunch yesterday. Great way to end an exciting week.

Zentact has the modest goal to help you become a super-connector. It has a long way to go before it can do that. But it is starting with the kernel of something that is intriguing.

Zentact Wants to Turn You Into A Super-Connector (Invites)

Erick points out our number one user issue - it is hard to tag all one hundred or one thousand people in your network. Our suggestion - DON’T EVEN TRY.

Import your address book. We will tag them with their name. Pick up to five people that are important. Only FIVE! People you want to get to know better, potential sales leads, someone you want to date and just tag them. You can add the other tags as you need them - either from Gmail or Yahoo mail.

With our recent launch, we are starting to collect success stories. If you one, please send it my way and please let me know if I can post it, and if I can include your name. In the mean time, a cool stories that made my day:

Zentact Rocks! I got laid off this week which sucks before the holidays. Having time to kill, tried Zentact based on the Mashable thumbs up. Got a match yesterday with a former boss and we are having lunch on Tuesday. Zentact gave me the excuse to connect….. Brandon

Send them to jared at zentact.com or post them here.

We are launching our semi-private beta today. Quick links for your reading pleasure:

• Mashable - Zentact Might Be the Best Social Networking Idea This Year
• VentureBeat -Zentact: A new way to share information, and genuinely network
• ReadWriteWeb - Zentact: A Must-Have Networking Tool
• From our buddy Howard Lindzon - Zentact.com…Always Be Selling!
• Susan Mernitt - Zentact - The zen of contact management
• and people on Twitter - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=zentact

We are thrilled with the feedback we have gotten so far!

And thanks to Melissa at Sigma for the space yesterday.

From Gary Vanyerchuk to Keith Ferrazzi, there has been a lot of recent buzz about building a personal brand.   Keith makes five solid suggestions in his  Never Eat Alone blog for doing this on LinkedIn.

Not using Linkedin?  Where have you been?  This free professional (not social) networking platform boasts a 30 million international member base, with a target audience of business professionals.  What better way to communicate “Your Brand” efficiently and more effectively.

The LinkedIn Factor

Assuming you do these steps, Zentact can be even more powerful.   Contacts can be added directly into Zentact from LinkedIN and, by reaching out, your network will see your improved  brand.