LinkedIn is a powerful career & sales tool because it helps us make connections and build relationships with people that evolve into job or sales opportunities. Through LinkedIn we’re able to build professional credibility with complete strangers by posting insightful content, receiving endorsements and personal recommendations from colleagues, engaging online, publishing personal blogs and crafting our profile pages in a way that showcases our abilities and or value we bring to our buyers. Indeed, millions of people turn to LinkedIn to learn about other people’s backgrounds and to get reliable information about businesses and other organizations.

Although we invest considerable time and care into updating and polishing our LinkedIn profiles and pages, virtually no one thinks to create a backup of this content. But there are two main reasons we absolutely should be backing up our LinkedIn accounts on a regular basis:

We invest considerable time into our LinkedIn profiles but no one thinks to create a backup. #Sales Share on X

[clickToTweet tweet=”There are 2 main reasons we should be backing up our LinkedIn accounts on a regular basis #Sales @M_3jr” quote=”There are 2 main reasons we should be backing up our LinkedIn accounts on a regular basis #Sales @M_3jr”]

You violated their Terms

In cases where LinkedIn deletes your account for violating the terms of use, your profile page may be gone forever. All of the text you’ve carefully crafted about yourself is instantly erased. All of the private correspondence you’ve had with colleagues and recruiters becomes permanently inaccessible to you. And all of the connections and endorsements you’ve accumulated vanish forever. All the links you maybe have included from articles you were quoted in finished! Often, you’ll be forced to sign up for a new account and start over from scratch.

[clickToTweet tweet=”If you violate #LinkedIn Terms, your profile page is instantly erased. #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr” quote=”If you violate #LinkedIn Terms, your profile page is instantly erased. #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr”]

And what exactly are these terms of use that LinkedIn users violate? Unfortunately, there are many, and most users don’t bother to read the terms of use they’ve agreed to. Here are four reasons (knowingly or unknowingly) why your LinkedIn profile might violate the company’s user agreement:

[clickToTweet tweet=”4 reasons your #LinkedInProfile might violate the company’s user agreement #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr” quote=”4 reasons your #LinkedInProfile might violate the company’s user agreement #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr”]

How to Backup your LinkedIn Account

Backing up your profile on a routine MONTHLY basis is, fortunately, a piece of cake. You can manually copy and paste all of your text into a separate text file, or you can take screenshots of your pages. Or go the easy way! As LinkedIn also offers us the ability to create a free backup at any time of all of our LinkedIn data, posts, and connections; you save this backup file to your own hard drive. Simply go to request a data archive:

  1. Click the “Me” icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage.
  2. Click “Settings & Privacy.
  3. On the Account tab under Basics, click “Change” next to Getting an archive of your data.

Note: You may be prompted to sign in.

  1. This will take you to the “Request your data archive” page.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Backing up your #LinkedInProfile on a monthly basis is a piece of cake. #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr” quote=”Backing up your #LinkedInProfile on a monthly basis is a piece of cake. #Sales #SocialSelling @M_3jr”]

Our LinkedIn profiles are incredibly valuable to us, but also incredibly vulnerable to being compromised by a hacker or being removed for violating LinkedIn’s terms of use. We can only do so much to prevent our account from being compromised by a cyberattack, but we can always make a concerted effort to follow LinkedIn’s user agreement, including not inviting people we don’t know to join our network, not uploading a profile picture that’s not our likeness, not inserting information that isn’t asked for, and not plagiarizing and copying someone else’s profile.

If you are using LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator then you’ll want to subscribe to the Vengreso blog for regular social selling tips, sales and marketing strategies to help you up your game!

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