I recently discovered the new tool Rapportive. This tool has revolutionized my life, and I am not even doing any hardcore linkbuilding at the moment.

Why is Rapportive so great? Let me show you.

Contacts Directly in Email

Rapportive is an add-on to Gmail that shows you the information about people that you are emailing. Let’s see what happens when I go to email Rand:

Not only do I see his picture, so I could potentially recognize him at a conference or something, but I can also connect with him directly on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace (!), or a whole host of other places.

Imagine: now, when you go to email a potential new link prospect, you can see their recent tweets, which could help you to establish rapport with the person straight away. You don’t even have to follow them on Twitter to be able to do this now!

Invite people directly from within Rapportive

You can also invite people to connect with you directly from within Rapportive. Check out this screenshot:

This is the screenshot from when I sent Rand an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. I didn’t even have to leave my email to do this. I simply had to connect my LinkedIn account to Rapportive and I could send this invitation directly from within Gmail. Amazing!

Imagine: the possibilities are endless for who could use this function. Sales people, recruiters (ruh roh), on and on. I like it because I can connect with certain people on different networks that I otherwise may have overlooked, or it would have taken me more time to do so by going to the website, logging in, finding them amidst a see of others, and finally inviting them.

Rapportive makes this easy.

Rapportive Integrates With More

Rapportive is useful for other business activities beyond email, though. Just check out what else they integrate with:

Now you can get more information about Mailchimp openings, Crunchbase information about prospective business partners (or discover new business partners), and much more. It’s brilliant really.

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Just so you know, I am in no way affiliated with Rapportive. I have simply been using them for a little while and have found it to be an invaluable tool for business, and in the future for linkbuilding.

So go install it already.