Overview
Recommendations
Next Steps
Social media
LinkedIn recommendations: leveraging a powerful tool
January 19, 2016
Why taking a closer look at this powerful tool definitely pays off.
By Ritchie Pettauer
Customers’ reviews and ratings do play an important role when it comes to buying decisions – not just with online shops and local directories, but also with LinkedIn. These recommendations are far more than just a nice-to-have add-on for you profile, as they greatly boost profile visibility.
The number of received recommendations is a key factor for top search results and correlates with the top spots when searching for business partners. Yet there are a few factors to be considered in order to take full advantage of this tool:
- LinkedIn users decide freely whether they want to publicly display new recommendations on their profile. No use in writing negative reviews – recommendations always should express appreciation.
- The author has to select his relationship with the recommended contact and the job position in question.
- Recommendations by managers, superiors, and teachers are ranked higher than those by employees who rate their superiors.
- Published recommendations can be deleted at any later point in time. When deleted, they disappear from the recommended contact’s profiles (if public display is turned on).
The easiest way to manage all received and sent recommendations is by opening the recommendations management console via this link: https://www.linkedin.com/recs/received
How to write recommendations
Are you ready to author your first recommendation? Either click “ask for recommendations” and select a contact, or open the user’s profile page, click the small arrow next to “send a message” and then click on “recommend”:
This takes you to the authoring screen. Recommendations are usually 1 to 3 paragraphs long. You should always adhere to the communications standards of your industry.
Before publishing your new recommendation, select the proper type of relationship, both job positions and change the default notification text to something more personal.
How to get recommendations
Mutual exchange is a key trade of social media platforms: The more recommendations you send out yourself, the more likely you are to receive them.
Also, there is a dedicated tool: Click on “Ask for recommendations” (www.linkedin.com/recs/ask) and choose the job position you want to be endorsed for. Choose up to three contacts, select relationship and job positions and optionally change the default message text:
Display all recommendations by clicking "received" (www.linkedin.com/recs/received). Sort your reviews accordingly and decide for each on if you want to publicly display it on your profile.
Conclusion: Authoring or asking for recommendations takes some time and effort, but both are well spent: Not only will you leverage your visibility, but also make your profile more trustworthy thanks to these testimonials.
The right timing is crucial: Ask for a recommendation right after the successful completion of a project, after a workshop and so on. That’s what I always do: http://datadirt.net/recommend