What value do LinkedIn recommendations provide?
I talk about recommendations a lot in my workshops, my audits and with my 1:1 clients.
Why?
LinkedIn recommendations can offer many benefits:
Credibility. They validate skills and experience listed on your profile, providing third-party
confirmation from managers, colleagues, or clients.
Validation of your professional network. They showcase the quality of work relationships and appreciation from people you've worked with.
Demonstrates expertise. By receiving many recommendations from your network you build a portfolio of positive social proof of your skills and accomplishments.
Personal branding. They reinforce your personal brand by aligning with the skills and accomplishments on your profile
Builds trust. Which in turn creates advocacy and who doesn’t want that?
I know from personal experience that lots of people check testimonials as soon as they land on a profile. It can be one of the first things they look for (alongside photo, banner and headline).
So if your last testimonial is from 2018 then you may want to go and request some new ones. It will instantly freshen up your profile.
My advice is to request at least one testimonial every month.
Writing testimonials
I always advise my clients to share some love on LinkedIn and to write 3 testimonials for others when they start working with me.
Let’s face it, testimonials can be difficult to gain, lots of people often don’t know what to write. Or worse still they write something generic or vague.
For example:
“David is professional and helps contribute to a positive experience at work”.
This lacks value and doesn’t offer any insight into David’s skills, personality or credibility. It is very vanilla.
The most meaningful ones provide specific examples of work completed using actual real life achievements and highlighting the impact he made.
Much better is:
“David hosted a really thought provoking and interesting session on AI. He demonstrated different technologies and inspired lots of discussion about how AI can transform our customer service response. He led the group with humour and made it interactive and fun! I walked away feeling confident about integrating AI into our daily operations. I can’t recommend his session highly enough!”
Spending some time writing something personalised really does work and I’m sure David would be much happier with the latter being published on his LinkedIn page!
Quality LinkedIn recommendations can positively showcase skills, expertise, relationships and give insight into what it would be like to work with that person.
So as a task for you, go write 3 recommendations this weekend. It will make somebody’s day! ☺️
AND If you are reading this, thinking ‘I need to leverage LinkedIn but I’m not sure how to’ and you don’t know where to start with your content, engagement, and audience growth then please do get in touch here.
#LinkedIntips #SocialFlowCollective #LinkedInLaura #LinkedInRecommendations
