Make the most of all your relationships.

The Problem with LinkedIn

Oftentimes, the people we’re connected with on LinkedIn aren’t truly representative of our professional networks. Your LinkedIn connections are likely people you’d like to nurture your relationships with, scattered amongst someone you were on a conference call with at your previous job–or even your Physics TA! Simply put, LinkedIn is rarely a tidy, definitive list of people you have good professional relationships with, let alone an easy way to keep up with those that you’d like to deepen your relationships with.

Additionally, because our LinkedIns are so often limited to our professional spheres, we’re out of the loop on work-related accomplishments of friends, family, or those who otherwise matter in our personal lives. To further clutter things, your LinkedIn inbox is likely full of recruiters' messages, even when you’re not job hunting. Or, your feed is full of influencer posts promoting the newest WFH trend.

A Post-LinkedIn Life

So is there an easy way to cut through all the noise without missing genuinely helpful posts and updates? Yes! The good news is there is a way to export your 1st Degree LinkedIn connections’ information. To do so, open LinkedIn and click on “Me” in the top navigation bar. Select "Settings & Privacy'' under "Account", then "Data privacy" on the left. Click on "Get a copy of your data'' in the first section and select "Connections." After confirming your export, you’ll receive an email where you can download limited information about your 1st degree connections such as their name, workplace, position, date connected, and email address (in limited cases).

There are a few systems you can set up with all your connections’ contact information, but most of them require manual upkeep.

1. One option is to build a spreadsheet of basic information such as contact method, job title, interests, and more. You can create a new row when you meet someone and add where and how you met and things to remember for the next time you talk.
2. You can import your LinkedIn data export into a digital address book like Google Contacts, so that information is accessible from inside of Gmail and Google Drive, making it easier to share documents and correspondence.
3. Alternatively, import your contacts into a customer relationship manager (CRM) like Hubspot (CRMs are software used by marketers to keep track of potential and existing clients). You can then use a no-code tool to set up reminder messages for yourself to reach out at weekly, monthly, quarterly, or at the interval of your choosing. This solution is a bit more advanced as it requires some set up and familiar with no-code tools such as Zapier.

If you're looking for a more user-friendly solution that automatically provides more comprehensive data about such as all education and organization history, bios, and interests as well as have all of that information be searchable, try out Clay!

An Automatic Solution

Clay works by connecting with your LinkedIn account (among others), meaning the info you can see when you open someone's profile will also be visible and searchable in Clay. Work and educational history will be shown, alongside mentions in news publications. The best part of Clay is that it’s for more than just your work colleagues—you’ll be able to see the same information for anyone you know, given it’s publicly available. That means you’ll be one of the first to congratulate an old friend on a promotion or a mentor on a talk they’ve recently given. We'd love for you to give it a try!