That’s right, we are giving away an iPad this month! We’re asking our awesome users to help us spread the word about Gist and one of our lucky users will win an iPad.

Here is how to enter to win:

Signup or login to Gist and use the invite feature shown below.

Every 5 invites = 1 entry to win the iPad. Enter as often as you like!

(ex. 50 invites = 10 entries)

We will be giving away the iPad the first week of October based on a random drawing from all of the entries.

Start sharing. Stay connected! Sign up for Gist here.

It was awesome to have Robert Scoble stop by the Gist office when he was in Seattle and do a quick interview with T.A. McCann and Steve Newman. The interview discusses a few different questions:

1. What is this monster screen on the wall?

2. What is Gist?

3. What is your business model?

4. What is coming down the pipeline for Gist?

5. How does Gist fit into Location?

Anyone is welcome to stop by the office and say hello if you are in town. Enjoy the interview and share your thoughts in the comments.

With a sleek new redesign and an even simplier interface, the Gist Gadget for Google Apps provides contact details, news, and status updates inside Gmail. If you haven’t tried the Gist Gadget yet, we would really love for you to give it a shot. (We promise you won’t be disappointed…)

Help us spread the word -> Tweet This!

Four reasons why you will love Gist inside Gmail:

1. A face with every email.

2. All contact information.

3. Everyone you know in common.

4. Latest news and social updates.

Check out this video to see it in action:

Download the Gist Gadget for Google Apps here.

We are also excited to share with you a case study about Crucial Point LLC on the Google Apps Marketplace Blog that details the power of using Gist with Gmail. Just remember, to use the Gist Gadget you must use Google Apps. Check out the review here: http://solutionsmarketplace.blogspot.com/2010/08/crucial-point-llc-and-gist-gadget-for.html

We would love you to try out Gist here.

To find out exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Shane Mac, Marketing Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at shanem@gist.com.

To all of our Gist iPhone app users out there, we have some awesome new enhancements. If you don’t have the Gist iPhone yet then go download it in the iTunes store here.

The Gist iPhone app brings together all of your contacts, updates them with the latest news, delivers it to you where and when you need it.

New Email Functionality

(We added more actions for contacting meeting attendees.)

When you connect your calendar to Gist you can see all of the latest information about the people you are about to meet with. On top of that, you can send a quick email directly from Gist to let the people you are meeting with know that you are running late, confirm the meeting beforehand, or send a follow up after. It is that easy with Gist.

Easily share contact info

(New My Profile view lets you easily share your contact info)

Business cards. Hello 1999? Use Gist to send a complete profile with all of your contact information to anyone in your network or someone you have just met. Simple, quick and easy.

Learn that Name

(An awesome new game to learn the names of all of our contacts)

Check out the video to see how it works.

We would love you to try out Gist here.

To find out exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Shane Mac, Marketing Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at shanem@gist.com.

We wanted to thank everyone who attended our August Webinar about Personal Branding. Look for an invite and details for our September webinar where we will be talking about using Twitter for Business.

We were lucky to have Dan Schawbel, recognized as a personal branding “guru” by the New York Times, as a guest for our webinar. He provided some awesome tips and insight on creating and managing your personal brand online. The video below is the entire webinar which we recorded if you were unable to make it or just wanted to watch it again. (It starts a few seconds late so we apologize for that…)

Dan talked about 4 different sections within the presentation. Here are the four sections as well as how Gist can help you build your personal brand. Enjoy!

4 steps to Personal Branding.

Discover
Create
Communicate
Maintain

With Gist, you will always be on top of everything that is being said about your personal brand. You can also publish content and connect with everyone in your network directly from the Gist dashboard as well. Basically, the 4 steps to personal branding can be easily conquered with Gist.

We would love you to try out Gist here.

To find out exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Shane Mac, Marketing Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at shanem@gist.com.

We escaped the clouds and non-summer we are having in Seattle last week for a visit to Austin, Texas.  Before our visit, we put the word out that we were coming to town and interested in meeting up with Gist users.  Steve Sanderson (pictured below with Gist CEO T.A. McCann) responded and we had a great meal at Manuels.  Steve is VP Product Development for cool meal planning startup FoodontheTable.

We had a great conversation about everything from how he uses Gist to the startup scene in Austin to the weather…which was hot…

Lots of startups use Gist for everything from recruiting to marketing to being their defacto CRM system and we love hearing about what we can do to make it even better.

We also had the chance to hang out with the guys from InfoChimps and talk about “big data.”  Super smart group so definitely check them out.

All in all a great trip where we made lots of new friends.  Keep an eye out for when we come your way and we’ll plan on meeting up!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertop/

Keeping your contacts up-to-date = Not Easy.

Have any of your friends or colleagues changed jobs recently, or added a new social media account?  Chances are, if these contacts are not sharing their information changes with you personally, your address book might be out of date.  It’s funny in the age of cloud computing — where information can be available anywhere –  to realize that many of us still keep our address book information in silos, not updating that information unless we have to move or close that account.

At Gist, we’re building the Real-Time Address Book that you can use across different computers and systems to make sure you have the most up-to-date information about your contacts.  Whether you’re using Gist in your email (Outlook or Gmail), in your CRM (Salesforce), or on your mobile (iPhone and Android), Gist builds complete business profiles for your contacts and makes sure that you can keep all of that contact information in one place, updated, in real-time.  Have trouble remembering that your friend Simon uses a different handle on Twitter than his name on email or his record on Facebook?  We can help with that.

Gist = more real-time address information in one place.

Gist makes the act of keeping your contacts up-to-date much easier than having lots of information silos everywhere.  Whether you want to build your list in Gist, read that contact list from another source like Google Contacts, or make your mobile the center of your world, your Real-Time Address Book is waiting for you online.

It’s hard to keep track of what everyone in your network is doing. That’s why we created Gist. Gist helps you build professional relationships by serving you the right information at the right moment to get a meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection. We would love you to try out Gist here.

To view a 90 second video of exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Greg Meyer, Customer Experience Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at greg@gist.com.

This is a guest post from Dave Clarke, the Communications Strategist at digital strategy and production company Churnless (churnless.com)

Recently, I was reading a post here on the Gist blog by Robert Pease, the VP of marketing.  The piece focused on how Gist can be a great tool for PR types.  Having worked agency side for the last five-plus years, that’s a gross understatement.  Gist has massive potential in the PR space.  And in my quest to guest blog wherever reputably possible, I dropped Robert a line asking if I could chime in with a third party perspective.  He obliged, so here we are. (Note: This is an unpaid guest post. The motivation?  I find Gist interesting.)

Now, everyone in the PR space keeps spouting off about how the “landscape is changing!”  And with more voices clamoring for less space, and fewer reporters/writers/producers/bloggers covering way too many topics, I’d say that claim is accurate.  (That is a separate discussion all its own.)  Toss in a variety of powerful consumption and production technologies and you could say we’ve been in the midst of an earthquake for the last five years or so.  But still at the core of it all, genuine, effective PR comes down to being a GDHHB (a GD helpful human being, if you will) to everyone you interact with.  Clients.  Your boss.  Reporters.  Bloggers.  Old school columnists.  The cameraman who’s sweating hard at your outdoor, over-sized check presentation event in July in Atlanta.  And part of being a GDHHB is knowing things.  About technology.  About what’s happening in the world.  About the media.  About your clients.  About, well, everything.

Well, Gist can help you out in these departments.  From a PR perspective, Gist allows you to keep tabs on the people in your world, the stuff they’re working on, and much more.  Here are a two examples of how Gist makes blatant sense for all you PR lads and lasses.

Read What They Write.  As we all know, one of the best ways to break though with a blogger, reporter, etc., is to read what he or she writes, find a commonality and make a genuine attempt to connect to it.  It shows you care.  It shows you’re interested and not just some guy with a mail merge list in spray-n-pray mode.  But the PR gripe with that is that, “There’s no way I can possibly read everything that everyone is writing.”  And that’s true.  There are limits.  But Gist can help with that.

Say you had a quick email exchange with a WSJ reporter a long time ago.  No ink ever came of it, but that’s OK because now you’ve got something that might be right up her alley.  Before you bomb this reporter from left field, check in on Gist and see what she’s been covering, what she’s been tweeting about, who she’s been mentioning and who she’s been talking to.  Use Gist as an intelligence gathering tool.  Sure you could Google her name, but you’re going to get an array of potentially irrelevant information that you’ll have to wade through.  Conversely, Gist will show you exactly what she’s been up to the last few weeks.  This will save tons of time and you’ll be able to fire off that “Hey Laura – Read your article on the estate tax… interesting stuff.  A slightly different perspective you might find interesting…” email.

End result? Gist helps you cut through the clutter when it comes to finding out what the media folks you’re trying to help are up to. (Notice I said “help.”)  And as a PR hand, that’s vital information.

Biz Dev. For small-to-mid-sized PR shops, wrangling up new clients is tough.  Most of it happens through networking, referrals and who you know.  However, keeping track of what everyone in all of your circles is up to is virtually impossible.  Even if you’re a biz dev king or queen, you’ll have plenty of those “Gah! I wish I had known earlier that so-and-so was getting into that space!”  It’s even worse when you find out that they partnered up with a PR hack who you know is, um, shady.

The point is, like winning over writer, PR biz dev is no easy task.  But Gist can at least help you with the process of managing what everyone’s up to – and ideally, it’ll give you the upper hand to beat others to the punch.

In that Gist sort of operates as an umbrella over all of your online existences, you can tap into what’s current amongst your crowd, regardless of which method each person is (or isn’t) using to communicate.  Think about it.  Say you’ve got a non-profit CMO friend.  You haven’t seen or caught up with her in forever.   Yes, she’s on the social scene, but there’s no rhyme or reason to her posting, updating or tweeting habits (like most people, she’s just got other work to do).  As a result, you don’t pay much attention to her Twitter feed.  But for some reason, one day, she desperately tweeted out a need for massive help with an awareness campaign.  Without Gist, you might miss this.

Ideas. In that this post is reading like a Gist love fest, I have a few feature ideas that could make Gist even more attractive to PR types.  For example, it’d be great to have the ability to differentiate between types of companies (i.e., say you could filter by “media companies” or “tech companies”).  Not sure how you do that, but if you could isolate and view all of your tech blogger contacts, that’d be valuable, no?

Also, assume you’re close with a certain blogger.  Sure, you get his or her latest content through Gist, but could there be a way to get the latest from that blog, regardless of who the contributor is?  That way you could email your blogger friend and say, “Hey Jason, I saw so-and-so recently covered this… thought you guys might dig…”

All said, Gist is a legit help that ever-changing PR landscape.  Not only can it enhance your efforts, but it can also save you from those “Ruh-roh. I just royally infuriated the editor of a huge tech blog.”  So check out Gist.  Now.  (Again, not a paid endorsement, I promise.)

Dave Clarke is the Communications Strategist at Churnless (churnless.com), a digital strategy and production company that both builds web products designed to create behavioral change and helps businesses satisfy, delight, and keep their customers. Follow Dave on Twitter (@thedaveclarke) and poke around WebWorkerDaily.com for more of his ramblings.

**Interested in writing a guest post on our blog?  Send an email to VP Marketing Robert Pease with an idea or suggested post.  We love to share your thinking here!**

http://www.flickr.com/photos/orqwith/

As the Customer Experience Manager at Gist, I often get asked, “How do I use Gist most effectively?” or “What are the best ways to get started?” or “How do I make Gist relevant to my business?” Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Your contacts are not all in one place — bring them all together by connecting more accounts

You can use Gist to research people and companies, and it works even better when you connect accounts to let us do that work automatically, in the places where you already do work.  We work best when you connect an email (like Outlook, Gmail), a social networking account (Facebook and Twitter are best), and a business networking account like LinkedIn.  You can also connect a calendar (Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar), and we have mobile apps for iPhone and Android.

Pick a small group of people that you already do pay attention to (or should pay closer attention to) in your regular business dealings

Start “getting the Gist” by committing a few minutes each day (or a few times a week) to learn more about the people in your network.  For salespeople, these might be prospects; for marketers, they might be a list of top bloggers; for real estate agents, a list of people who’ve bought houses from you in the past few years; or for anyone, a list of thought leaders in your industry who you could learn from.

Build a list of these people.  If you don’t know how to get started, check out this article on tagging.

Sign up for and review the Gist Digest

Gist already does work for you every day, and delivers it right into your email.  Use the Notifications page to decide whether to receive the Gist Digest daily or weekly with updates from news and social network posts by and about your contacts.

Gist helps you on a daily, weekly, and ongoing basis to improve your relationships with the people you interact with in and across networks.  We build complete business profiles of people so that you don’t have to — and serve that information to you.  This helps give you the right information at the right moment to get a meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection.  If you’d like to know more, or have questions, feel free to email me personally at greg@gist.com, or to check out our Gist Support site.  And if you have suggestions that you’d like to share with other Gist users, you can share them.

It’s hard to keep track of what everyone in your network is doing. That’s why we created Gist. Gist helps you build professional relationships by serving you the right information at the right moment to get a meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection. We would love you to try out Gist here.

To view a 90 second video of exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Greg Meyer, Customer Experience Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at greg@gist.com.

]]> http://blog.gist.com/2010/07/23/how-to-get-started-with-gist/feed/ 7 http://blog.gist.com/2010/07/23/how-to-get-started-with-gist/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GistBlog/~3/yygCUQFK2Xg/ http://blog.gist.com/2010/07/21/how-to-build-stronger-relationships-with-clients/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:36:09 +0000 Shane Mac http://blog.gist.com/?p=2258

Yesterday I read a blog post from Crazy Egg that talked about building better relationships with clients. After reading the post I thought to myself, this is exactly where Gist can help you rock. Whether it is having an awesome first impression, listening to your clients, or following up afterwards, Gist can help you stand out and wow clients. Here are 3 ways to help you meet and build relationships with clients using Gist.

A reason to introduce yourself

We all know that cold calling can be a real challenge. An introduction is the best way to meet clients but is not always possible. The secret is having a reason to introduce yourself. What if you knew the latest news about all of the contacts and companies that you wanted to contact before anyone else? What if you could see everyone who is connected to the client you need to reach out to? What if I told you that you can with Gist? That is Gist. We give you everything you need to find a reason to reach out and introduce yourself to clients. It helps you find a common ground.

Listen, listen, listen

This may be the most important thing you need to do, always. You need to hear your entire network of contacts. You need to promote others content and let them know that you are listening. The problem is filtering important information vs. noise. Gist automatically prioritizes all of your contacts and makes it simple to create lists for different groups allowing you to focus on who matters today. Spend time doing what you do best, connecting, and let us monitor and prioritize everything going on in your network.

Inform Clients

Lets face it, we all need to learn from each other. Whenever you have the opportunity to share and inform clients you should do so. Not only will they appreciate the assistance but it will also help set yourself up as the expert in your field. Staying up on the all the latest news is simple with Gist and you can email, tweet or share on Facebook directly from the dashboard. Everything you need is all in one place. People, information and the ability to connect with all of your important clients.

We would love you to try out Gist here.

To find out exactly what Gist does, click here.

You can follow Gist on twitter here or join us on our facebook fan page here.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or have the latest post delivered to your email inbox here.

This post was written by Shane Mac, Marketing Manager at Gist. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, feedback, or if you just want to say hello at shanem@gist.com.

Photo Credit: schacon

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