Contact information for all of your connections
You’ve taken great care in building your LinkedIn network of connections because these are the folks you’ve known throughout your career, those friends from school with whom you’ve recently reconnected and professionals who are just plain helpful and wise because they might be excellent resources in the future.?Are you comfortable with all of that information residing on a website over which you have no control? What if you need to access contact information for one of your connections and the LinkedIn site is down temporarily? For many reasons, I strongly sugggest periodically exporting and saving your connections. How frequently you should do this depends on how often you add new people to your network.
Exporting your connections is easy. Let me walk you through this very simple process.
- Sign into your LinkedIn account
- From the menu on the top, left of the page, click on “Contacts”
- This will take you to a list of your Connections (see image).
- At the bottom of this list is a link to “Export Connections” (indicated by the red arrow).
- Click here and select the file type in which you’d like to save this information.
- Create the file and save it to your own computer. (Note: I have experienced occasional problems opening this file and then saving it, so I suggest saving it immediately.)
- From here, you may choose to upload your contacts’ information into another program such as Outlook, gmail contacts, yahoo mail or another CRM database.
Profile and recommendations
While you are in a housekeeping mood, let’s take it one step further. Trust me, this step is even easier, but equally important. The same care and time you’ve applied to building your network on LinkedIn?as been spent on painstakingly crafting?your profile, inclucing just the right blend of bullet point accomplishments and skills, with information about why you do what you do and what makes you unique. This is information you’ll want to save and be able to access at all times. If you others have recommended your work, this step becomes even more critical as you certainly want to retain a record of their complimentary endorsement. (Click here for more information about LinkedIn recommendations.)
To save a .pdf copy of your profile, visit your profile page and look for the .pdf icon, as indicated above by the red arrow. Clicking on the icon will create a nice page including your profile information, along with a clean copy of your recommendations.? Save this document to your computer and, voila, you can sleep well knowing you’ve got a copy of all of your hard work.
One additional tip for those seeking new employment, consulting or sales opportunities: The ability the print and share recommendations?when meeting?with a potential employer or client may prove useful as LinkedIn recommendations typically carry a great degree of credibility due to the ease with which one can learn more about?its author.
So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to LinkedIn, save your information and mark your calendar?to remind yourself?to do it on a regular basis.??This will take only about five minutes total; time well spent in managing your critical online information.
But, before you go, let me know your thoughts, won’t you? Was this tip helpful to you? What other questions do you have about LinkedIn or other social networking sites which you’d like me to address? The better I understand your networking interests and goals, the better I’ll be able to provide valuable help.
More tips to maximize your use of LinkedIn can be found here.
For one-on-one coaching to immediately turbo-charge your online presence, see the information here and here to contact me directly.
Nice piece of advice.
Linkedin addict.
Simon Hamer
Hi Irene,
Thanks for sending out the information on how to ?back-up? Connections and Recommendations on LinkedIn.
It is always a pleasure to open your e-mails!
And I have already taken action by backing-up my data 🙂
Matthew Stack
http://www.linkedin.com/in/MatthewStack
@Simon – Glad it was helpful.
@Matthew – What a wonderful compliment about my blog. I appreciate it very much and glad you’re enjoying your email subscription. Thanks for joining me for the ride!
Irene,
Good info as usual. And the tip about making it a regularly scheduled task is great. Thanks!
http://www.linkedin.com/in/napoleonbatalao
Thanks, Irene. This is really sound advice. I just did an export of my contacts and my profile. I’m so glad I follow you on Twitter!
I love the how-to posts! My LinkedIn isn’t big enough to worry about right now (YET), but this is great info.
Irene,
Great idea, Just did it. Thanks!!!
Thanks Irene,
I just backed ’em up!
Stu
Thanks for the reminder, Irene. Just like the hard-drive on my computer, I don’t back my contacts up as frequently as I should!
I did not know I could do this. What a great tip. It is on my action item list … TODAY!
Thank you for the reminder. I had not done this for a couple months. I made it an Outlook Calendar item to do the back-up each month.
As lways, thanks for the great tips! Kepp them coming!
Walt
Thanks, Irene! Wise advice, and easy for anyone to do.
Diane, I am really sorry to hear about your brush with “scumbags”! It will be poor solace to say that you are worth hacking but it is a backhanded compliment. I am grateful for the reminder about changing passwords etc and have only recently invested in 1Password which is working really well for me. I also use TimeMachine which is a wonderful backup system for the whole system. Still doesn’t take care of the other stuff.
Just going to check out the tips for WordPress and back up my database
Amanda
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
I would add one other thing, have another domain name that you own that you can forward to and run your backup there.
For example, when bizop.ca was hacked, I had uploaded my backup, and redirected bizop.ca to fraudlaw.ca, for several days.
It worked very well, and I had time to deal with the hack. Which was the result of me leaving an old wp script online even though I use mt.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Thank you for the excellent advice, Diane.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Amanda, Michael, and John, thanks for your support. Michael, that’s great advice – one which I wish now I’d thought of. I’ll add that to my repertory of hack-recovery tricks.
Amanda, I really appreciate your kind words! Great point about passwords – there are all kinds of tools out there to help you create strong ones. I would add, don’t rely on passwords alone to protect you. I had strong passwords, and that wasn’t enough to stop the hackers. Protection takes place across a number of levels – updated software, strong passwords, security measures, and hypervigilance. And that’s why it’s so important to prepare for recovery.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Diane,
I am terribly sorry to hear about the hacking of Mediation Channel. I am sure all or most of your readers are at least as angry as I am about it, although not quite as angry as you must be.
On the brighter side, you’ve managed to turn this very unfortunate event into a learning experience for the rest of us. I think all bloggers (including yours truly) would be well advised to read and heed your advice.
Thanks again for sharing!
Phil
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Thanks, Phil! It’s great to know you’re on my side.
You know what they say about lemons and lemonade! It just made sense to take this opportunity to remind everyone how important it is to take precautions and be prepared.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Scary story. Thanks for keeping us updated. Good luck with recovery efforts.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Diane,
I am sorry to hear about the trouble that you had to go through with your blog. Blogging can be a lot of work (joyous, but still work) without having to go through this kind of hassle.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Wow – I’m sorry to hear about this. I’m amazed at the things people spend their time doing. I received a BURN IN HELL tweet the other day. . .I let ‘em know it was too late. . . sizzle.
I love your response to the hackers and ask your permission to plagiarize it in the future if necessary.
Take care.
Debra
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Diane,
I am so sorry you had this happen to you. Thank you for sharing your unfortunate experience with us to help us protect ourselves.
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Steve and Tom, I really appreciate your concern and support! Knowing I’ve got you guys in my corner makes all the difference.
Debra, glad you liked my message for hackers! I’d send along the same greetings to whoever it was who told you to burn in hell. And by all means feel free to apply liberally as needed. (Just don’t tell the other mediators I said that.)
Julie, thanks for your message. I know you’re new to blogging, so just be careful and follow the advice of those I linked to in this post. I appreciate your kind comment!
This comment was originally posted on Mediation Channel
Thanks, Irene…Just went to do it, and now know why I haven’t done it before. It only gives options that I don’t use (Outlook, Yahoo, Mac, etc.). I tried .vcf, but am not sure I’ll ever be able to open or use it.
Thanks, anyway! :o)
Many blessings,
Nancy
.-= AffirmingSpirit´s last blog ..Crafting Your JOY List =-.
I export to .csv and then import into gmail. What are you using for your contacts? This works with most programs.
Hi Irene,
Thank you so much for the information. I backed up my contacts, imported them into my Mac address book, put them into a separate list and also saved a .pdf file of my profile page.
I appreciate your advice and assistance. Backing up is always a great idea!!!
Thanks again, Andrea
.-= Andrea?s last blog ..Social Media – A Tool in Your Marketing/Business Plan =-.
Excellent, Andrea! Good to know you’ve got direct access to the information should you ever need it.
Thanks Irene for the reminder to backup my LI contacts. Am temporarily using my biz email accounts via gmail.
Oh yeah, I back that up regularly … not. Last time I did was a year and a half ago! Thanks for the reminder.
Is there an equivalent function on FB?
Solid and well-reasoned advice, Irene. Too often the matter of our needing to access key-data when Linkedin may be down is overlooked but, it can be quite costly…Thanks, Irene!