We’re also getting busier and busier and the chance of getting a written recommendation is getting harder.

Now you have a choice, go the ‘old-fashioned route’(!) and get a written recommendation OR you can now be ‘endorsed’ for individual skills or expertise – one click, with suggestions made when you stumble across a connection’s profile. On your profile it now looks like a scorecard against the skills or expertise you claim you have.

The ‘Skills & Expertise’ section, with the new ‘scorecard’ one-click endorsements

So that ‘skills & expertise’ section that was added to your profile about a year ago (and many people still don’t use within their profile) has become very important.

Is the new Endorsements feature any good?

Well, yes and no.

Yes in that it does highlight in a quick, more visual way that people rate your skills (and thereby your services/products).

No in that you may end up being rated for skills you don’t want so high on your profile (anyone can add a skill to your list to endorse it – you will get to approve new ones) or your skills get skewed – let me give you an example:

I manage at any one time a small number of long-term strategic clients (say 8) – large businesses. I also deliver hands on social media training to a large number of (normally) small businesses in a workshop format. I would prefer ‘social media strategy’ to be my ‘top’ rated skill but it’s actually ‘small business’ that comes out on top purely because I delivering training to a large volume of small business clients. It’s not that bad and I’m not complaining about any endorsements I’ve received, they are all warmly welcomed!

No in that when someone comes to my profile, they will see a few of my skills plucked from my list at the top of the screen with the encouragement to endorse me (but it picks the most popular already endorsed ones from what I’ve seen so far thereby exacerbating the ‘small business’ issue highlighted above).

People will either ignore it entirely, endorse a few of those pre-selected ones or if time add their own, which means my total ‘skill set’ may become unmanageable and worthless if I accept all the new ones people suggest – I’ve had to cut my skills list down twice already and ‘lose’ endorsements to keep it manageable (a good problem to have, I know!).

And finally, No in that you thought it was hard to get written recommendations out of clients before? Now it just got a whole lot harder….

My advice:

1. Go and review your ‘skills & expertise’ section, pronto – I’ve seen some very strange ‘skills’ popping up already from some of my connections. You need skills that sound relevant and right added onto the sentence ‘Is [Joe Bloggs] good at xxx?’. Relevance and context is KEY here – we all have plenty of skills but which ones are relevant to your role now – what do you want to be known for most?

2. If you’ve already collated some endorsements, consider losing any skills that have no endorsements (unless they are a core fundamental skill), otherwise it can start to look like you don’t have those skills (the reality being LinkedIn just hasn’t suggested them to anyone yet). Your connections can still add them in when they want to endorse you. Aim to have 10 to 15 ‘skills’ max (we can’t be a master at everything).

3. Review what endorsements you have received – does your connections perceptions of your skills match what you thought people knew about you? If not, maybe there’s a little PR working there to be done….

4. Get endorsing - selectively. PLEASE don’t go and endorse all your mates and or people you know through networking (I already fear endorsements will become a ‘who has the most mates’ feature). Make your endorsements count – who do you work with/for, who are your suppliers, who have you heard speak or done work with in some way. If you endorse and people can see you are endorsing, you’ll have far more chance of getting endorsements for yourself.

5. Ask your clients/co-workers for endorsements – these are the people who matter, so why not send then a quick email, explain you’d like to get some endorsements on your page, provide them the link to your profile and ask them to click away if they have 30 seconds (it really is that quick). While you’re at it you could give them choice of endorsing you or providing a written recommendation – think about what is more useful.

What do you think of this new endorsements feature?

Jan

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Image courtesy of http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jamie-Oliver-Youre-Great-Mug/dp/B002DUCJCW

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The aim of these workshops is to provide advice and hands on training to allow businesses and organisation make sure they are maximising their return from Social Media, or get going with how to use it effectively, while applying a healthy dose of reality in terms of what is achievable in our busy lives.

Each session stands by itself (but obviously we’d recommend you come to as many as you can to get the most benefit for your business!). All the details for each workshop is available on the Shropshire Chamber via the links below:

Jan 25th 2012 – Auditing your Online presence for enhanced return

Feb 1st 2012 – Using LinkedIn proactively to develop quality business leads – SOLD OUT

Feb 7th 2012 – Using LinkedIn proactively to develop quality business leads

Feb 22nd 2012 – Setting up a Facebook Business Page

Feb 29th 2012 – Advanced Twitter: Using Twitter to find & engage with your target market

Mar 7th 2012 – Advanced Facebook: Using Facebook to build your Online presence

Mar 13th 2012 – Blogging: How to optimise your Blog content for better engagement

Mar 21st 2012 – Latest Social Media developments & top tips for Online Marketing success

Please note that session 1 and session 8 are interactive workshops, sessions 2 to 7 require a laptop to get the most out of the session, if you do not have one or cannot borrow one please let Shropshire Chamber know at the time of booking and we will do our best to ensure you have one.

If there are other workshops you would like to see us do, please let us know in the comments below and we’ll see what we can do.

Hope to see you at the workshops soon….

Jan

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