There are so many “experts” and “masters” of subjects out there (often just because they say they are!) and sometimes they’re not! Sadly social media and social networks are a great example of this but it equally applies to every profession.

The ability to irrefutably reflect the value that you have shared with your clients, their views of you, your expertise, products and the way they write about you online has a huge impact on your “social proof”.

You have the ability to help make a potential client relaxed that they have done their due diligence and you are as good as you say you are, often just because someone they know, someone they relate to or someone like them has recommended you on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn themselves researched this a while back and discovered that you were three times more likely to be looked at on LinkedIn if you had recommendations! Eek, three times more potential viewers for being good at what you do, get busy asking all those happy clients to recommend you immediately.

LinkedIn lets you collect recommendations for being a person who’s an expert, good at their role but you can also get recommendations for the products and services of your organisation too.

The former reinforces the value of you, your expertise and reinforces your expert or mountain top guru status. The company recommendations infer credibility on the organisation / company products and services –  ideal for larger organisations or those with high staff churn rates.

To recommend a product or service from a company

Go to the company profile, either via looking at the individuals profile and then clicking on the company name at the top of their profile, the logo in their experience section or the name of the company in their experience section (not applicable in my case) but if you don’t get a company profile you could also type it into the search box at the top of every page and if you still cannot find it then perhaps they don’t have one!

Once you are on the company page, then select products or services and then select the product you want to recommend and simply hit recommend at the top and then type something appropriate.

To recommend a person

Simply look at their profile and beside where it says send a message there is a little pull down arrow. Select the arrow and then hit recommend.

You then follow the form through to select why you are making the recommendation – is it that they are or were a:

• Colleague : You’ve worked with them as a colleague in the same company or business
• Services Provider : You have employed them to work for you in their field of expertise or product supply to help you or your business.
• Business Partner : Working with that person in partnership but not as a client or a colleague, for example aligned in a project or introducer.
• Student: When you have been at school, college or university they were there as a student or perhaps a teacher.

You then have to choose the role from that persons profile that you are recommending them for from their profile, for example their current role or you can even suggest a position which they have yet to include on their profile. If you want to add richness to the recommendation you can also include when you first engaged them, to flag if you have used them on more than one occasion and in what professional service category (from the limited list LinkedIn gives you).

You should also take a little time to reflect their key attributes that made them a standout exemplar of a good person for you. I often struggle with this as you can only select three choices from the seven possible options (sometimes I would like to tick all seven but you just can’t!), so pick the stand out three for you from; delivers great results, personable, expert, good value, on time, high integrity or creative.

You can then go on to write in free form your experiences, how they helped and the value they shared. This is shown to them, their connections and to all of your level one connections when you do it too. Please ensure that you check it for typos, grammar and that your own words reflect you and your professionalism appropriately.

I am sure that I don’t need to tell you to edit the covering message before you send it to them do I? Really? You would send a template that says I don’t care to someone you know? I am sure you wouldn’t ….  now!

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