HONK I mean BACKUP if you Love your LinkedIn Account

byRAWterri

184 followers

11 years ago

As a Solopreneur, I rely heavily on social media to promote my business and that of my clients. So, yes, I'm one of those who checks my various accounts as the last thing I do at the end of the night and one of the first things upon rising. I did say "one of" the first things in the morning. After all, I must maintain a little sanity by putting a couple personal rituals first.

For those individuals in the baby boomer retiring age range, with career desires increasingly turning to small biz or home-based revenue streams, LinkedIn has become a favorite spot on which to hang out. In 2013, there were 4.2 billion searches on LinkedIn due to hiring purposes, proving it is the place to be seen for those still in the workforce looking for employers or employees. It's certainly great as well if seeking clients, contractors, and business deals. Imagine what that search number is today in 2015?

Back to my question, now that we've established how beneficial social media networking can be. How much do you love it? If you really love it, like anything else, you'll want to protect it. How, you ask? By doing something that, if you're like me, you have become very negligent in: backing up your files.

I use a cloud service offered as one of the benefits of Ingreso Cybernetico that gives me unlimited backup/storage space and I can view/download my files from any web browser anywhere in the world. That's very good and makes me feel secure. HOWEVER...

I still prefer to back up my social accounts manually. At any given time, these sites can be cancelled according to the user's agreements, or cracked into and blocked by hackers, so why take a chance?

Hacking used to be just a term for coughing

Every day now, we're seeing something on the news regarding hacked accounts. Millions of customer and users accounts violated, passwords and other personal data leaked. Seems like even the largest of corporations are not fairing any better than the small institutions when it comes to Internet vulnerability.

I don't like to live in a state of fear. Even though instilling fear seems to be the underlying agenda of mass media, it is good to hear about so many cases of hacking so we can be moved into action. Now comes the challenge of HOW to go into action.

I must admit, I had a hard time finding out how to backup my LinkedIn Account right here on their site. Sorry, LinkedIn creator, for me saying this but it seems to be hidden somewhere. I don't know, I'll search again after I finish this post.

I googled the task and came up with several articles that instruct on how to do this. So, we are without excuse for getting the job done. The charge is on us to just do it. Below is one of the findings from my search. I chose to re-print it for you here to save you the search time. The steps are laid out very succinctly. So...

Back It Up

Compliments of Donna Seradula, owner of Vision Board Media and author of the book,LinkedIn Makeover: Professional Secrets to a POWERFUL LinkedIn Profile, here are some easy steps to backing up your account manually.

How to Backup your LinkedIn Profile

1. Click Profile on LinkedIn's main navigation bar
3. Copy the text of your profile. Do it quickly by clicking Ctrl+A & then Ctrl+C.
2. Open up Notepad or your favorite word processor
3. Paste your copied text into the document. You can quickly paste by clicking Ctrl+V
4. Save the file in a location where you can easily find it.

You can get fancy and format the file but it's not really necessary. The important thing is that you capture your content! You want to make sure you have a copy of your headline, summary, job titles and descriptions, recommendations, groups, etc...

How to Backup your LinkedIn Contacts

Export your LinkedIn Contacts for backup purposes

1. Click Network > Contacts on LinkedIn's main navigation bar at the top of your home page.
2. Click the Settings icon at the upper right hand corner of the page.
3. On the right, click Export LinkedIn Connections
3. Leave the Export to field as it appears and enter the security text if prompted.
4. Click Export.
5. Save the file in a location where you can easily find it, like the Desktop.

Note: If you're using Internet Explorer and see a yellow pop-up blocker across the top of the page, click the yellow bar and then select Download File.

Now that you have your contacts in spreadsheet format, it's easy to bring them back into LinkedIn under a new account, if necessary.

Importing Contacts

1. On the upper right hand side of your LinkedIn screen, hover over the Add connections icon (it looks like a silhouette of a person and a plus sign) and click Other.
2. Under More Ways to Connect, choose Upload Contacts file.
3. Click Browse to find the file you exported and saved.
4. Double-click the file name and then click Upload File.
5. Check the boxes in front of contacts you'd like to invite to connect.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

According to several self-proclaimed LinkedIn experts that I googled, it's not enough to backup your account just one time. You need to make this a periodic process to remain truly safe. Especially if you're a frequent user of LinkedIn like I am, back up a couple times a month or more.

I love, and am grateful for, the opportunity to have all these wonderful and resource individuals right at my fingertips. When you think about the net worth of this database, you should not delay in protecting it.

I hope this was useful information to you. I'm glad I was reminded to perform this process before any tragic deleting or hacking of my account occurred. Some people I read about, weren't so fortunate.

Have you ever had your LinkedIn Account terminated? If so, why did it happen and how did you recover? Please respond. I feel bad you had to experience that, but I would like to learn from you, as well.

Writefully yours,

Terri (T'Eileen

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