With all the recent emphasis on LinkedIn endorsements, is it still important to have recommendations displayed on your profile?

This is currently a very common point of confusion on LinkedIn, and I'm here to clear up the confusion. The answer is you better believe it!
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LinkedIn Recommendations: The Secrets Revealed

This will not be the standard discussion of LinkedIn recommendations—how important they are and how you should strive to get a couple for each job entry on your profile. For "Recommendations 101," I suggest you pick up a copy of my book that includes an entire chapter on recommendations.

Here are some winning strategies relating to recommendations on your profile that you might not have considered.

1.  Your name appears on other people's profiles.

What better place to have your name and your job title show up than on the profile of a very important, well-respected individual in your town or industry. Talk about personal branding and increasing awareness of your brands—this really hits the target.

2.  The recommendations displayed in the Recommendations section of your profile can be used in other profile sections for increased exposure.

Currently LinkedIn displays the two most recently received recommendations in their entirety, which I really like, but the rest of them are typically not viewed because the reader needs to click Show more to see the entire list.

Action steps: Review all of your recommendations. Grab the most impactful quotes/statements, and include those in the Description section of any Job Experience entries to which they apply.

Another idea is to put together a document with a page full of your best quotes/statements, and add that as media in your Summary or applicable Job Experience entries.

Both of these strategies will encourage more people to read your very best recommendations and could move you ahead of your competitors.

3.  The number of recommendations you have and the keywords included in those recommendations are part of LinkedIn's search algorithm (their "secret sauce").

LinkedIn has shared that a couple of the important components of their "secret sauce" recipe (who gets picked up in a search and how high he or she appears) are the number of recommendations and the keywords that people are searching by and for. You don't have to like this or agree with it—just understand it and then make it work for you.

Action step: Go out and get lots of recommendations loaded with your most important keywords. This will help you move up in the search rankings when people are looking for someone like you.

4.  Recommendations can give you insight into how people think.

This one is from one of my former job-seeking friends (notice I said "former").

Prior to an interview, she reviewed the recommendations the interviewer had written for others. From this she learned that the interviewer appreciates attention to detail. Armed with this insight, my friend made a point of sharing with the interviewer all the wonderful real-life examples she had that pointed out her attention to detail. She got the job!

This process can also be used to learn what attributes are important to your potential customer, vendor, donor, employer, etc.

5.  Recommendations are one of the fuels of this new trust economy.

Pre-Internet, selecting the vendor of choice included lots of phone calls, meetings, brochures, proposals, interviews, presentations, more interviews, more presentations, etc. by almost every potential vendor in the market. Now think of how we do it in the Internet age: Google, Google, and more Google.

I am not saying that all the steps I mentioned are no longer part of the process, but by reviewing company websites, business and product review websites, comparison shopping websites, blogs, and all the other social media sites, we are able to eliminate vendors before we ever actually contact them.

You may be thinking, sure, Wayne, but all those recommendations you got are written by people who like your products and services. No one ever writes a bad one—and if they did, who would let it be posted on his or her profile anyway.

That may be true, but would you want all those recommendations on your competitors' profiles instead of yours?

So get busy and seek out some impressive recommendations from your customers, clients, vendors, professors, anyone who can attest to how great you and your products or services are. It will make you stand out from the crowd and help you land your next business or career opportunity.
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SPECIAL OFFER

For more simple strategies to improve your LinkedIn ROI, along with a detailed critique of your profile, be sure to take advantage of my limited time offer: a one-hour, one-on-one phone consultation for just $197 (this is a significant reduction off my regular fee).

I will share my computer screen with you during the call and send you a marked-up copy of your profile prior to the call.

Whether you’re using LinkedIn to find your next high-impact customer, raise your organization’s profile, or land the job of your dreams, this session is for you.

There are limited spots available, so don't delay. Book your session today by clicking here.