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.

Hotmail users, we’re happy to report that you can now import your Hotmail address book into Zentact. A solution has been implemented to fix the recent Hotmail protocol change by Microsoft.

Simply go to the Import Your Contacts screen, click on the Hotmail tab and follow the steps on the page.

Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and a good ol’ CSV Address Book upload exist on the Import Contacts screen making it easy to add your contacts from many sources.

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!

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!

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.

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.