A number of personal friends and business contacts have fallen into a trap on LinkedIn, and haven’t figured out how to get out–they apparently created a second LinkedIn account using an alternate email address (when someone invited them to connect submitting that email address in the invitation form).
Each LinkedIn account uses an email address as your login ID, along with a password. Ideally, you’d only have one account so that all your connections may connect to one another through you, and you can log into one account and take advantage of the power of all of your connections. You’re able to configure your LinkedIn account so that accepted invitations received through any of your email addresses will link the new connection to your single account.
For readers who have a LinkedIn account, but haven’t added in all of their email addresses, you should follow the steps for adding in your other email addresses now, so that you don’t end up having to invite the person back from the “right email account.”
Follow along, and let us know if we can help.
Choose which account you want to keep based on which one has more recommendations and/or connections. You’ll have to ask people to do your recommendations over again or connect to you after you delete one of your accounts, so try to inconvenience as few people as possible, and not lose any recs.
If you log in to the one you intend to keep, you can click on your name on the upper right and select Settings (it might prompt you to log in again to make sure you’re really the user), and then choose Accounts on the lower left, and Add & change email addresses from the list on the right (see image). It will show you the list of email addresses which you’ve associated with this account (presumably, only the one with which you logged in). You should add each of your email addresses, including the ones you’re not using most of the time (just in case someone is trying to add you using them; don’t forget alumni accounts you rarely think about).
At least one of those other email accounts won’t be allowed if you have another LinkedIn account which uses that one. You’ll come back and add it after you’ve deleted your other account.
As you add each one, it shows up on the list in red, with “Send Confirmation Email” next to it, but as soon as you added the address, it already has sent that email address a message asking you to click on a link to verify that this LinkedIn account is really you…and once you’ve confirmed it, that email address will be in your account.
Once you’ve added and confirmed all the other accounts, log out, and try logging in with the other email address that you couldn’t add. If you can’t get in, do the “forgot password” process and see if you can get in. When you’re in, export your contacts from that account so that you can make sure that you’re able to add them to the account you’re keeping: Click “Contacts” from the top menu, scroll–on the outside of the browser, not through the list of contacts–to the bottom of the page, and click on Export Connections on the lower right (see image). That will allow you to have a .csv [comma-separated values] version of your contacts that you can view in Excel…or import into your other “keeper” LinkedIn account.)
Once you’ve successfully exported those contacts, you should click on “Settings” on the upper right, and under the Account tab on the bottom right, select “Close Your Account” (making sure you’re in the account you want to get rid of [of course]).
Go back into your keeper account, add in the missing email address (Settings/Email Addresses/Add Email Address) and import your other contacts (from Contacts menu, select Add Connections, and select “Import your desktop email contacts” from the lower left portion of the window with the header See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn.)
A few additional comments:
- You might want to ensure that your primary email account (the one you use to log in with) is not a work account, just in case you find yourself no longer working there in the future.
- Stay in touch with some of the more superficial contacts on your list. Call someone up and invite them to go to Starbucks and catch up. If you have connections on LinkedIn, and you’re not sure you really know who they are (and they probably don’t remember you very well either), you’re not going to be helpful lead generators for each other.
Complicated enough? Questions? Would you like a consulting session on using LinkedIn? Give Hartley Data a call… 847-724-9280