So what are GOOGLE CONTACTS?

Google Contacts is Google’s contact management tool that is available in its free email service Gmail as a standalone service, and as a part of Google's business-oriented suite of web apps Google Apps. More information about Gmail can be found here www.mailgoogle.co.uk

This website will provide you with a brief overview of Google Contacts and how to use it and it also covers, albeit briefly, how it integrates with Google Plus Circles.

For more detailed information with regards to how Google contacts interacts with the new Google Plus (+/+1) and how it will help you to grow your business you should go to www.whatisgoogleplus.co.uk to download a fantastic eBook “What Is Google Plus?” and additional resources which will cover all you need to know about Google Plus (+/+1).

This eBook explores the various ways that you can use Google Plus (+/+1) to grow your business. Because of Google's popularity, businesses that do not start using Google Plus (+/+1) will likely get left behind.

Use Google Contacts as a Unified Address Book

Your contacts are often scattered across multiple email accounts and social sites. Here's how to seamlessly combine them all by using Google Contacts as your unified address book.

Let's say, for instance, you've switched to Gmail but some of your contacts may still be stored in the old address books of Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. Then there are places like Facebook and LinkedIn that store personal and professional details of your contacts (including profile pictures), but fetching this information into your main address book is often a tricky thing.

One Place for all your Contacts

If you find it a hassle to maintain multiple address books, a possible solution is that you consolidate them all into a single cloud-based service like Google Contacts.

Here are some ideas on how you may go about doing this:

Step 1: Bring all address books into Google Contacts

Go to Gmail settings and click the "Import Mail and Contacts" button to bring all the existing contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Google Apps, and your other email accounts into Google Contacts.

Next download your address books from LinkedIn, Facebook, Outlook, Orkut, and other accounts as CSV files and import them all into Google Contacts one-by-one.

Step 2: Clean-up the duplicates

When you import contacts from multiple places, it is obvious that some of the entries would be duplicates of each other. Google Contacts however makes it quite easy for you to manage these duplicates.

Choose "Find Duplicates" under "My Contacts" and the tool will group all the entries that share the same name. Do remember to review all the default suggestions one-by-one as sometimes two people in your contact list can have similar names and you don't want to combine them into one.

Once you're ready, just hit the Merge button.

Google Contacts Manager mostly relies on the person's name to detect duplicate entries. If it fails to recognize all your duplicate contacts, you can merge them manually as shown in the next screenshot.

Step 3: Enrich your contacts data

Google Contacts now has basic details of all your contacts including their names, email addresses and, in some cases, phone numbers and birthdays. We are however still missing profile pictures, website URLs, social profiles, etc.

There's a useful online service called Gist that may help bring lot of such additional profile details into our Google Contacts. Here's how:

3a. Go to gist.com and open a free account.

3b. Once your account is activated, go to “other contacts” and connect Google Contacts with Gist. Type your Gmail username and click "Authorize and Upload" – this uses OAuth so you can upload your entire Google address book into Gist without sharing your credentials.

The process of importing contacts from Google into Gist may take a while to complete depending on how large your address book is.

3c. Now that all your contacts have been imported (see the progress bar at the top) go to gist.com/people and you'll find that Gist has discovered tons of extra information about your contacts that weren't available in your original address book. This includes their blog addresses, social URLs and more.

Let's now bring this new information back into Google Contacts. Select all the contacts, click Export and Gist will send you a single vCard file in your Inbox.

Download this v-Card file and import it into your Google Contacts. Don't worry, it will only merge the new details and won't create any duplicate contacts.

The next things that we are missing in Google Contacts are profile pictures. There's a utility called Google Contacts Sync that takes your Gmail (or Google Apps) credentials, finds the matching entries in your Facebook network and accordingly updates their profile pictures and birthdays in Google Contacts.

If you are not connected with all your Google contacts on Facebook, you can still bring their profile pictures through RainMaker. This is an excellent service that can populate your Google Contacts entries with photos and social details pulled from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The free account will however limit you to 25 contacts.

To summarize, we first imported all our address books into Google Contacts, merged the duplicates and then added profile pictures and social details of our contacts.
What next? If you have a smart phone like the iPhone, Nokia (Symbian), BlackBerry or Windows Mobile, you can use Google Mobile Sync to keep your Google Contacts synchronized with the built-in address book application. Android mobile phones have this built-in so your phone's address book will always be in sync with Google Contacts.
Microsoft Office users may try GContactSync to keep their Outlook address book in sync with Google Contacts (it works both ways). Another alternative is Cyncz – it will first pull all your Google Contacts into the cloud and them synchronizes them with Outlook on the desktop through a plug-in.

*Republished with permission from Digital Inspiration.

GOOGLE PLUS (+/+1) Contacts

Using Circles for Your Business

Google Plus (+/+1) is taking over social networking and online marketing industry. Businesses who wish to remain successful in the coming years must join Google Plus (+/+1) and use the available tools to drive business to their websites and earn an online income.

What you need first is a Google account and for information on how to obtain one visit any of these sites www.googleaccount.co.uk, www.googleplusoneaccount.com and also www.googleplus1account.com

As soon as you have a Google account and an invitation to join Google Plus (+/+1), you have the best tools available to network, promote your business, and make money doing business online. It also provides a very useful way to organize your Google Contacts and this is done on Google Plus (+/+1), via what it calls “CIRCLES”.

Circles are the easy way to organize with whom you communicate. For example, you may want to send your employees a message and your customers an update. You can send the two different messages to the two separate parties quickly and easily without ever leaving Google Plus (+/+1),

This is what your Circles page looks like below. You can create new circles and designate which circles to which your associates belong.

Let's say you want to create a Customer Circle and add a new customer, Customer J.

Click on the "Circles" button at the top your Google +/+1 homepage.

Click "Add a New Person," and start typing Customer J's name or email address.

Customer J is now added to your account.

Click the "Create a New Circle" button. You will be prompted to name your new circle.

Then type in, "Customers." You now have a blue button for customers.

Simply drag Customer J's small rectangle onto the blue Customer circle. Customer J is now added to this circle.

You may add Customer J to as many circles as you like.

The Power of Circles for Improving Business

Circles are good for your business because they save you time and streamline your communication. A typical business owner will have the following circles:

Customers

Put all of your customers in this circle and send them emails about sales, new products, or special events at your business.

Associates.

This circle is for other business people with whom you network.

Employees.

Send important messages to the people who work hard for you.

Friends

Keep this circle for people with whom you have some personal connection.

Acquaintances.

This is for people you don't know well, but who are potential customers or business associates.

Remember how you can check to see how others see your Google Plus (+/+1) business profile? You can control which Circles have access to what information you post about yourself on your profile page.

For example, you may set it up so that your friends have access to your home address and phone number, but your customers and employees do not. Google respects the privacy of its users, and Google makes it easy for you to control who gets access to what information via Circles.

You may even have a Circle with just one person in it. Perhaps you want a Circle for your business partner. You now have a private way to communicate with that person without ever having to leave Google Plus (+/+1). Facebook and Twitter do not allow for such privacy. This privacy and choice of with whom to communicate, however, is exactly what Google Plus Circles accomplishes.

Circles are convenient, easy to use, free, and a time saver. You no longer need to build email lists or switch accounts to communicate with different groups of people. As any business owner knows, if it saves you time, it helps you make money.

REMEMBER - If you wish to know more about GOOGLE CONTACTS how to use Google Plus (+/+1) and how it can benefit you as an individual and a business owner/manager and grab additional free resources and bonuses then have a look at www.whatisgoogleplus.co.uk and claim yours now!