How can you best leverage LinkedIn Endorsements to benefit you and your business?
Whether you like them or not, LinkedIn Endorsements have become an integral part of your profile – and brand.
I want to help you leverage LinkedIn Endorsements, so here are 5 ways to ensure you’re making the most of this feature on your LinkedIn profile:
1) Endorse Your Connections for Engagement
Reach out, reconnect and engage.
How?
Similar to how you post status updates to engage with others in your network or “Like” a friend’s post on Facebook, a LinkedIn Endorsement is a strong social signal you can send another professional on the site…the strongest being a LinkedIn Recommendation.
An Endorsement acknowledges that they have a particular skill and can help strengthen their branding without them having to do anything.
Here’s how to endorse a connection…
When you visit a connection’s profile page, you’ll see a module at the top suggesting relevant skills you can endorse. Use this as an opportunity to reconnect with an old connection by endorsing them for a skill.
Don’t see the skill you had in mind? Just “X” out the suggested one and type in the skill you’d like to recommend.
Just “X” out the suggested one and type in the skill you’d like to recommend.
Depending on your contact’s settings, it may also prompt them by email that you have endorsed them – creating a potential spark for further engagement when you know how to effectively leverage LinkedIn Endorsements.
2) Control the Endorsements You Show
Show off your best assets. You have full control of which endorsements and endorsers show up on your profile.
For example, you can show only notable connections in your industry who’ve endorsed you for a particular skill as a way to strategically leverage LinkedIn Endorsements.
LinkedIn has also added the ability to hide all your Endorsements if you prefer not to have any endorsements on your profile.
Being able to control the Endorsements you show can be a potentially powerful feature that you might consider based on your own particular situation.
3) Choose Your Skills to Align with Your Brand
Here’s a third way to systematically leverage LinkedIn Endorsements: look at the Skills that you have received the most Endorsements for. Do they best represent how you want your brand to be perceived?
Do they best represent how you want your brand to be perceived?
Say you’re looking for specific kinds of business opportunities. You have the ability to show off select skills and endorsements on your profile by simply click on the pencil icon next to the skill and quickly move, add or remove skills from your profile. This way only the skills and endorsements you think best represent you professionally are shown on your LinkedIn profile.
BONUS TIP: LinkedIn Endorsements are suggested based on the content in your LinkedIn profile. To powerfully leverage LinkedIn Endorsements and manage the skills your contacts are offered, use your skill keywords liberally in your LinkedIn Headline, Summary, Position Titles and Positions Descriptions. This will also help you rank higher in LinkedIn Search Results.
4) Take Endorsement Choices as Invaluable Feedback
Think of LinkedIn Endorsements as invaluable feedback from your network as to where they see your value, a sort of mini-audience or community survey. While some might just accept those skills suggested by LinkedIn, there are more than enough of your connections who will carefully choose from those skills listed on your profile to ensure that their endorsement is based on their experience with you. Use this information about your brand as invaluable feedback coming from your trusted network.
5) Deepen Your Relationships by Thanking Those Who Endorse You
Here’s how to really leverage LinkedIn Endorsements and make them count in a way that can easily generate new business.
Reach out to those who endorsed you and thank them, and endorse them in return if you can (more on this below).
BONUS TIP: Take it one step further and deepen your relationship by asking them: “Is there any way I can help you further?”
Be thoughtful about the skills you endorse. I recommend focusing on skills and expertise you can personally attest to or have experienced first hand. You can also suggest a skill they may not have listed yet on their profile. Just remember, the endorsee must accept the suggested skill before it appears on their profile.
While I don’t recommend blanket quid pro quo Endorsements, if someone has made the effort to endorse you on LinkedIn, you can certainly endorse them for networking, LinkedIn, relationship building, etc.
And…if you really want to thank those who endorsed you and cultivate the relationship further, write them a LinkedIn Recommendation, for the greatest social currency weight.
If you want more details on how to quickly and easily get better results from LinkedIn, click here to qualify for your complimentary LinkedIn Results strategy session with me to explore that and to find out what you can do to have a results breakthrough.
I have a limited number of appointments available and request that only people who are serious about dramatically increasing their results on LinkedIn apply for a time to talk.
Was this article on how to leverage LinkedIn Endorsements helpful? What else would you like me to write about for you? Please let me know in the comments below.
================================================
© 2016 ChristineHueber.com
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR NEWSLETTER OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete text with it:
“Marketing mentor Christine Hueber teaches business owners and entrepreneurs around the world how to create and manage profitable marketing that gets them more clients easily. Get her FREE Report “Top 10 LinkedIn Profile Marketing Secrets for Entrepreneurs” at www.ChristineHueber.com”
Not sure how I feel about endorsements- they way they appear on my page for others simply lists one skill and a face. I've had people endorse me for skills they don't know anything about, but not for the skill that they have observed.
great article, I'll go in and change what skills show and see what happens. thanks
Thanks for your comment, Jeanne, and now you know how to handle those endorsements, don’t you? ; )
Please let me know how my tips work for you.
Best,
Christine
The problem with endorsment is that recommendations have been pushed further down on the profile. Truth is that endorsment don t show the value of your skill as much as a recommendation and the new endorsment is almost a cheap sale. You can say to someone "check off these boxes on my LI and I'll reciprocate" Now try doing that with a recommnendatio and it's much harder.
Thanks for your comment, Ariel.
Recommendations are now directly below the position to which they correspond which makes it easier for those viewing your profile to get a complete picture of the value you provide.
(Recommendations are still also their own separate section near the end of your profile.)
And did you know you can move the Endorsements skill section lower in your profile or delete them all together, as I mentioned in this post?
To your LinkedIn success,
Christine
Awesome post.