If you discover that you have two LinkedIn accounts it is possible to merge them. There are a variety of reasons for how and why this may have happened to you, and the key way to choose one account that you wish to keep and close the other down.

However if you’ve got connections on both, this could be a little more tricky as you don’t want to say goodbye to all the connections on the account you are closing down.

I recently discovered a client had a duplicate LinkedIn account when I tried to add his regular email address to his profile. It said the email was associated with another account. Upon investigation I discovered that while he didn’t have a duplicate account in his own name, he had set up a personal profile for his company and it was this that was using his email address.

Firstly a personal profile used as a company account is a big no no. LinkedIn will happily shut accounts like this down if they find them (if they are small the chances are small but if you grow the account and get traction to it, you’ll get their attention and all your work will be instantly lost). Second, the email I was adding to his account is the email he messages me with daily. Thus if I am looking for him on LinkedIn (or any of my online tools that match email addresses to social media accounts) I will find the wrong account. This could easily translate as a connection to the wrong account and a lost opportunity.

What you really need to achieve on LinkedIn, is one account, in your name, just for you.

If you have multiple accounts and connections, you’ll want to merge them as quickly and easily as possible.

In this helpful blog, LinkedIn provide a step by step guide on exactly how to do this Click Here.