Zentact Blog

This past week,  we quietly pushed several new features and our latest extension.  If you are on our private beta, we are sure you will like these.

New features include:

• More robust contact information including LinkedIn, Blogs, RSS, Flickr and Delicious
• Automagical population of data - we have added Twitter handles to 8% of the contacts (more coming soon)
• Access to real time data while emailing.

To get started using these, you need to do just two things:

1. Download the latest extension at: https://zentact.com/zentact.xpi
2. Add data to a few key contacts.   (We will start populating it for you in the future.)

And enjoy.

Happy Friday the 13th!

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!

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.

I have 255 connections on LinkedIN. Glancing through the list, probably 50% of the most important contacts I haven’t touched base with in at least a year - some probably two or three years. Zentact is helping solve this problem by making it easy for me to stay in touch.

You can leverage this functionality as well. To do this, the first step is to add contacts from LinkedIN . On the right hand column of LinkedIN, Look for the “Add to Zentact” Link. You can find it between “Send a message” and “Recommend this person”. It will only appear on first degree contacts.

Next step, add tags. Companies, interests and schools all work well. Personal connections work even better.

Then just browse the web. When a match is found, you can reach out in one click.

We pushed an updated website late Monday evening and a new Firefox extension Tuesday morning. The release gets us closer to our public beta. For those of you using the service, things to look for include:

• Contact importing from Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail/Livemail
• One click contact addition from LinkedIN.
• Post email contact addition/modification in Yahoo Mail
• Inline contact management in Gmail - add or modify contacts within the page
• Automatic invitation linkage

It is a big release. Give the new features a try and let us know what you think. We will be posting more details on each feature over the next few days.

If you don’t have an account yet, please Request an Invitation and we’ll get you an invite shortly.