Thursday, July 28, 2005

How To Email All of Your Direct LinkedIn Contacts

LinkedIn provides an easy way to send an email to all of your contacts, even ones that are not registered in LinkedIn.
  1. Log into LinkedIn.
  2. Click "My Profile" tab.
  3. Click orange area which says "Recently updated your profile? Let your network know...".
  4. Follow the instructions on the "Send Your Updated Profile" page. Note that you can add email addresses for people to whom you are not directly connected.
The premise for this feature is to notify a number of people after you update your profile, but of course you could use it any time for any reason.

Personally, I have never felt comfortable with the idea of sending a mass mailing, be it a LinkedIn profile update or a Christmas card with a newsletter of what I did over the past year. I have always preferred person to person communication.

But I must admit I have used this LinkedIn feature once recently to announce that I had totally overhauled my LinkedIn profile, and to relay news about a lot changes in my life within in a few months period (promotion, graduated with an MBA, became a board member for a non-profit, etc.). I thought if I talked to each person individually about all of these major changes, it would be months before I got to tell some people, and those who I told later might be disappointed that I didn't tell them about all of these changes earlier. So I made an exception and sent my first mass email. I advise that you too only use this feature in exceptional cases. Otherwise, you might find your direct connection count decreasing as your direct connections sever their connection with you.