In my last post, I talked about being shocked at how many people in my address book were no longer reachable at their associated email addresses, and how I found out as holiday greeting emails bounced back at me. I was amazed that, out of about 1,000 business contacts in my address book, 159 had simply "disappeared" and left no forwarding address.
Yesterday, I received an email from LinkedIn which announced that 43 of my LinkedIn contacts had changed jobs or titles in 2010, with names and thumbnail pictures that connected to their LinkedIn profiles.
Cross-referencing those profiles against my address book showed me that 27 had actually changed jobs and their profiles included the name of their new firm (or an indication that they were still "between"). That means I've "found" almost 20% of the contacts I thought I'd lost.
I then messaged all of them through LinkedIn to get their new information, and have started getting responses.
I could have found some of them on my own, had I thought of going to the online SMPS Membership Directory. But because I was so shocked at the numbers, I didn't think of that, until the first responder pointed it out. And that wouldn't have helped with those who are still "between" positions.
So this week, I'm very thankful that LinkedIn was there to help me, and I've made a resolution to learn more about all the different ways to optimize my use of LinkedIn.
Stay warm!