However, you should also take the time to recommend people you’ve had good experiences with. What goes around comes around.
Approving recommendations
LinkedIn recommendations aren’t automatically posted to your profile; you need to approve them first.
When you receive a recommendation, read it carefully, make sure it reads well, says what you want it to say and there are no spelling or grammatical errors.
You can also decline recommendations. If you receive one that is too generic, or from someone you haven’t worked with, don’t accept it. With LinkedIn recommendations, it is quality over quantity.
Product recommendations on company pages
As well as personal recommendations, users can also recommend a company’s products or services on a company page.
If you have a company page (and you should!) list all your products and services with an outline of each one.
Company page recommendations give members rich, credible insights into how each product or service is perceived by their fellow professionals.
The same rules apply to product or service recommendation as to personal recommendations.
They should only be written by someone who has actually used that specific product or service; they should be descriptive and, if possible, use hard metrics. For example: “After hiring this company to do the PR for my business, my sales increased by X per cent in a three-month period.”
To request a recommendation of your product or service, click “request recommendations” on the company’s product page, select your contact and write them a personal message.
Use recommendations outside LinkedIn
One more tip on how to make even better use of any recommendation you may receive on LinkedIn: use the same recommendations and post them to your website to increase their reach.
Catriona Pollard is the founder and director of CP Communications and the author of From Unknown To Expert.
