The Most Important 10 Minutes You’ll Ever Spend on LinkedIn

At the beginning of January, I posted Reading List: How to Master LinkedIn in 7 Days or Less, and noted that Jan Wallen’s book includes a tip that by itself is worth the price.  Well, Jan was kind enough to allow me to post her tip here.

Read the tip.  Follow Jan’s advice (or one day you may be sorry).  Then, get Jan’s book for more great tips and advice.

You’ve spent a lot of time and given a lot of attention to your LinkedIn Profile. And when you’re using LinkedIn to network and build your business, enhance your career with a new position, or find your next superstar employee, you have valuable information and connections at your fingertips.

Theoretically, everything on LinkedIn should be OK and you shouldn’t have to back up your contacts and profile. However, it’s come to my attention that a LinkedIn member’s account was accidentally deleted from LinkedIn. And that meant her Profile, Contact and Connections were lost. Yes, lost. Wow! All that time, effort and information – gone.

Yes, you can start over. Though it may not be easy unless you’ve kept the same information in your contact manager, taken good notes, and have an excellent memory. And have a lot of time.

Here’s what you can do to be sure that information in your LinkedIn account is not lost, even accidentally. This is a must-do, ASAP! Don’t wait until the end of the day or “tomorrow”. It can be the most important 10 minutes you ever spend on LinkedIn. Do it now!

1. Export your Contacts. Log in to LinkedIn and hover your mouse over Contacts and click on [My Connections]. Go down to the bottom of the screen and click on [Export Connections]. Follow the steps until your contacts are exported. Don’t change any of the defaults – leave everything as it is. When you’re finished, you’ll have a .CSV file that you can open in Excel. (You can export your contacts in several formats. The easiest is the .CSV file. The default for this says, “Microsoft Outlook”.) After you export your contacts, you’ll be able to see the instructions for importing your newly exported file to:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Outlook Express
• Yahoo! Mail
• Mac OS X Address Book

You now have the Contact information for all of the people you’ve connected with, including their email addresses. WOW! A real loss if something happens!
The Recommendations you’ve received are also captured here. These are priceless!

2. Save your Profile. Go to your Profile, and look for the icons above the Summary section (it’s below the number of connections you have). You’ll see an icon for a printer, one for Adobe PDF, and one to Share. Click on the Adobe PDF icon. A box appears. Choose “Save” (rather than “Open”). Select the directory where you want to save your Profile. Change the name of the file if you want to. The automatic format for mine is: jan_wallen.pdf. This saves your Profile to a PDF document that’s formatted very nicely.

Your Call to Action:

Go now to LinkedIn and back up your priceless network. “Do not pass Go!
Do not collect $200”. Do it now!

You’ve just read one of Jan’s easy LinkedIn tips. You’ll love the others. To be sure you don’t miss any tips, go to www.LinkedInWorks.com and sign up for Jan’s ezine.

Jan Wallen wrote the book on LinkedIn – literally. She’s the author of Mastering LinkedIn in 7 Days or Less. She leverages her corporate and Big 4 sales, sales management and CRM expertise to show professionals how to maximize LinkedIn for sales and business development. Jan writes for several sales-related blogs, and has been featured in Business News Daily.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________ © Copyright 2008-2012 Jan B. Wallen. All rights reserved. LinkedIn Works!    (203) 545-6104 www.LinkedInWorks.com