How to add people you already know as LinkedIn connections

You already know a lot of people in the real world.

You probably have thousands of people in your address book.

You don’t want to add them all manually on LinkedIn.

Thankfully, LinkedIn makes it easy to add all your existing relationships as LinkedIn connections. Here’s how:

Step 1: Log into your account.

Step 2: Navigate to “My Network.”

Step 3: Find “Add personal contacts.”

Step 4: Enter your email* or click “More options.”

*If you use an email service that LinkedIn integrates with (Gmail or its enterprise version, Outlook, Yahoo!, or AOL), then put in your email address and click “Continue”.

If you do not use one of these email services, or you have a spreadsheet of contacts to upload, click on “More options” and go to Step 4a below.

Step 4a: Upload your spreadsheet of contacts.

Skip this step if you connected to your email account—this is only in case you’re uploading a spreadsheet or CSV file of contacts.

If you have your contacts in a spreadsheet, you’ll need to save it as a CSV or text file before uploading it.

A note on formatting—you can’t simply upload a big list of email addresses (although you used to be able to do exactly this). You’ll need to format your file with the contact’s first name, last name, and email address. If it’s not formatted correctly, LinkedIn will display an error that says “Uploading Contacts File Didn’t Work” and they’ll instruct you that:

• "First Name" should be typed at the top of the first column.

• "Last Name" should be typed at the top of the second column.

• "Email Address" should be typed at the top of the third column.

Once you know your file is formatted correctly, then click on the button shown below and upload your file, then continue to Step 5.

Step 5: Follow directions to connect your account until you see something like this…

In the old day, LinkedIn would allow you to “Select all” and connect with thousands of people instantly. As usual, someone must have misbehaved and ruined it for the rest of us. Now, LinkedIn forces you to check, one by one, the people you want to connect with.

However! This is still a LOT easier and faster than having to look at your address book and then search for each person you know and connect through each of their profiles.

So get to it! Check the boxes next to those you want to connect to, then click on the “Add connections” button at the top, which will now be blue.

Step 6: Skip it!

You do NOT want to do what LinkedIn offers you next. Just click the “Skip” button.

Chances are, these people are already on LinkedIn, but they’re not using the email address you have for them with their LinkedIn account. If you check these boxes and send them invitations, they will get an email inviting them to join LinkedIn and connect with you.

“But I’m already on LinkedIn!” they’ll say, and then they’ll delete the email.

A week later, they’ll get another email saying, “So and so is inviting you to connect on LinkedIn!”

They’ll continue to get these emails until they unsubscribe. Now they’re annoyed at you, so you’re better off skipping this.

That’s it!

You’re all done! Although it may be tedious to check all those boxes, this is the fastest way for many people to add thousands of high-quality connections. After all, these are people you already know outside LinkedIn. You’ve probably done business with them or know them from school or other areas of your personal life. They’re highly likely to accept your connection request and be interested in what you’re up to.

The benefits of lots of high-quality connections on LinkedIn…

Why should you care about growing your connection count on LinkedIn? Well…

• Would you like to be paid more?

• Would you like to sell more?

• Would you like to get more and better job offers?

• Would you like to grow your business?

• Would you like to recruit top talent?

All these things and more can and will happen if you grow the number of high-quality connections you have on LinkedIn.

For example, let’s say you want to post some content you believe will help your business grow.

If you have 500 connections, and you post that content, LinkedIn will show that content to a fraction of your network. An even smaller fraction will even see it, because they may not be logged into LinkedIn when you post it. Let’s say that whatever you post, 5% of your network will see it. That means 25 people will see your post.

Is that enough to get you the results you want?

However, if you add all your contacts, you might have 5,000 connections on LinkedIn. Now, instead of 25 people seeing your post, it’s 250. But it gets even better than that…

Let’s say someone comments on your post. When they do, people they are connected to can see their comment on your post. This might mean that another 100 people see your post. But it gets even better than that…

When someone comments on your post it sends a signal to LinkedIn saying, “People like this content” and then LinkedIn thinks, “Hmm, maybe we should show this content to more people to keep them on LinkedIn.” LinkedIn will then display your content to more people, and if they comment on it, then the cycle repeats and more and more people will see your post until thousands, tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people see it.

However, if you only have 500 connections, you’re starting the process with only 25 people seeing your post, and that may not be enough to get a single comment, and so your post dies there.

More connections = more people seeing your content.

This doesn’t mean you should connect with anyone and everyone you can. If you’re selling a SaaS tool to IT managers on the east coast of the US, there’s probably little reason for you to connect with the guy who owns a local gardening business in Bangladesh. There’s little chance you can help each other, or ever will be able to. Not only that, but your network probably won’t help him, nor will his network of connections help you.

However, the people in your address book are probably meaningful connections, so it makes sense to start there. Then, you’ll have access to connect with tens of thousands more people, and can continue to grow your network and serve more people with your content and expertise.

Three last things…

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