Zentact Blog

Scott Schnaars, regional sales director for web 2.0 software vendor Socialtext, was recently featured in an interview by Fernando Labastida focusing on how to use Web 2.0 tools to sell more effectively.   We were thrilled to discover Scott is one of our beta users and a proponent of our tool.

2.) Zentact - Zentact is a great way to stay in touch with people.  You tag your key contacts with information that is relavant to them and when you hit a website that they might be interested, Zentact reminds you and gives you a form to send a link to your contact.

You can read the whole interview on Latin IT Marketing.

When we first launched our private beta, we immediately got feedback from our users that they wanted a log of potential connection points. This ranged from:

When I am in a hurry, I don’t have time to reach out. Can you give me a list of the ones I missed.

to

I like the idea of Zentact, but I find it really distracting as I’m browsing the web. I’d like an option to turn off the browser popup and instead receive a full list of all the link suggestions either as a daily email or on my Zentact profile page. That way, I get all the value of staying in touch with old contacts, but I’m not interrupted as I’m doing other things on the web throughout the day. - Joe Lazarus via Get Satisfaction

Today, we launched Zentact Journal. With this features, we provide to you a list of places you could have made contact with your network but didn’t. We also enabled the ability to turn off those pesky alert boxes.

Want to give it a try, make sure you have the latest extension by downloading it from https://zentact.com/zentact.xpi Then use the web like you would normally for the next 24 hours. As you browse, Zentact will store missed connection opportunities.

Tomorrow, point your browser to http://zentact.com/journal On this page, you will see contacts which were matched to pages your browsed over the last 24 hours. On this page, you can:

• Click the page title link to see the page you could have sent to your network.
• Click to hide the site from future alerts and tracking
• Click Reach Out to email or tweet your contact.

If you decide you don’t want to see the alert in the future, and only use the digest, simply go to My Account, scroll to Preferences and choose “Never Show Alerts” as your Alert setting.

More features are on the way - stayed tuned.

I find Keith Ferrazzi’s blog a great resource. He recently posted a video about not being top of mind and as a result, losing a sale.

He also has great idea about Thanksgiving Day cards. Worth watching.

http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/

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!

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.

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.

Howard Lindzon recently posted about his pal, Andy Swan, and his top ten commandments for startups. An excellent list for everyone, not just start ups. Howard focused on commandment 9 and 10, we are focused on 1and 2.

10 Startup Commandments

December 1, 2008 – 5:09 pm 1. Establish and grow RELATIONSHIPS

“Contacts” are not nearly as valuable as you think. Relationships are the key. People who trust you and like you are very likely to help you. In addition, they are very likely to induce their own relationships to help you.

Develop relationships BEFORE you need them. Do this by GIVING first and freely. Participate in, and enable the success of others at every opportunity.

2. DEFINE A SINGLE PROBLEM or NICHE OPPORTUNITY and resolve to find a simple solution (IDEA)

This is crucial. DO NOT spread yourself thin. Do one thing extraordinarily well that either A) solves a common problem or B) creates a new niche that can be expanded. It is tempting to attempt more in one broad stroke, but this path leads to failure.

DO NOT rely on having the best and latest technology unless you are willing to run the 100m dash….FOREVER

As a team, we all knew the importance of # 1. Eric and John figured this out when Scott Rafer left MyBlogLog. I knew it from the winery. Contacts, Rolodexs, friends on Facebook are all meaningless unless they are real relationships. But some of us are not good at it, we aren’t programmed the same way that super-connectors, business development gurus and social butterflies are.

Which led to #2. Before our current product, Eric built a prototype that used statistical analysis of online buzz to notify users of opportunities to connect with contacts about relevant information. It was complicated and didn’t give good results.

Zentact is much simpler - so simple that I didn’t think it would work when I first tried it. I was wrong.

And yes, I need to have Tracey add her dog Gibson to Dogster as well.