Innovator's Dilemma - An important tip for LinkedIn users

Just read an important tip in "JibberJobber Blog" about a critical maintenance step to take to back up your contacts and profile in LinkedIn. Here's the essence of the story followed by a simple 'how-to' (it takes just seconds to back up your information ... so before you even walk the dog or peak at the news, I suggest taking this simple preventative step!!!):

------------------------
I (Jason Alba, the Jibber Jobber Blog owner) got an e-mail from Susan Ireland, at the Job Lounge. She asked me if I knew anything about LinkedIn deleting people’s accounts… I’ve heard a little about this, but mostly just hand-slapping for looking like spammers. Getting an account deleted can be a huge problem, especially as you use LinkedIn more.

She writes about it here (I can almost hear a tear drop on her keyboard as I read it… ouch!!!).

The two issues are (1) why she was deleted, and (2) what LinkedIn can/will do about it. I have no idea why she was deleted, and apparently she doesn’t either. As far as she knows, she wasn’t doing anything wrong with her LinkedIn account, or LinkedIn connections. As far as what LinkedIn can or will do, here is their response:

“At this time we do not have a recommended back up system for your account. Once something has been deleted there is not a back up at this time to recover any information. …One thing you can do is copy your profile information and save it as a word document so that you will always have it on your computer.”

Not very comforting, is it?

Here are two absolute must-do’s, right now, on LinkedIn - and they will take less time than it takes to read this blog post (so do it now!):

1. Export your contacts. Simply click on Contacts, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on Export Connections, and follow that process. Just leave everything at default and you’ll end up with your connections in a .csv file, which opens in Excel.
2. Export your profile. You’ve probably put a fair amount of thought into creating your profile, right? What about any references you have gotten? Simply click on Profile, then find the grayed-out icons above your name, and click on the adobe pdf icon. This exports your profile, including recommendations, into a very nice, presentable document (kudos to whoever at LinkedIn did that formatting, it is very well-done!).
   

Echoing Jason Alba's conclusion, these are the two most important things for me to grab, if I knew my LinkedIn account might go away. (1) Who I connected with, which includes e-mail addresses very every single contact, (2) my recommendations (I can always rethink and recreate a profile, but those recommendations are priceless!).

Hope this tip helps.