On LinkedIn Be Cautious When Connecting Via Your Email Database

Up until now I have resisted the offer of any social media site to connect me with the people on my email database.

But reading yet another blogger's encouragement to do this on LinkedIn prompted me to decide to take up LinkedIn's offer of sending invites to people on LinkedIn who are in my email database.

I clicked on the top nav bar option "Contacts" and then in the dropdown I clicked on "Add Connections" and I got this notice:

See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn

Searching your email contacts is the easiest way to find people you already know on LinkedIn.

I hit continue and learned I had over 1800 people in my gmail database who are on LinkedIn.

"No way all these people are going to know me," I thought, so I tried to stop this LinkedIn connection option from going through.

At first I believed I had successfully stopped this action, although I soon learned otherwise.

Here is what happened:

I got several acceptances – and continue to get acceptances. BUT …

I also got notified from LinkedIn (when I tried to send an invite to an individual in the usual manner) that I was restricted from sending any more invites because too many "invited" people had clicked that they didn't know me.

Duh! That's why I tried to stop from sending connection invites to more than 1800 people.

Thanks, LinkedIn, for recommending this action and then penalizing me for doing it.

LinkedIn automatically offered to let me agree to a pledge that I would never do this again, in which case the restriction would be lifted. But if the same thing took place again, dire things would happen to my account.

Obviously this called for a protest email.

After drilling way down, I managed to find an email contact for LinkedIn support.

I sent an email explaining what happened and also that I could not sign the pledge because there will certainly continue to be people days from now who will click that they do not know me.

I also indicated in the email that this should not be my fault if LinkedIn gives me this option and then restricts my account because I took up the offer.

Finally, I asked for LinkedIn to clean up this mess.

The only response from LinkedIn so far is the automatic reply: "Thanks for contacting us and we'll get back to you as soon as possible."

Thus I'm getting out this blog post now to save other people from running afoul of LinkedIn's contradictory actions.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services including marketing-focused WordPress websites.

Visit Phyllis' "about" page on Google Plus.

View information on Phyllis' books and ebooks at http://budurl.com/PZMbooks