How To Use LinkedIn’s Skill Endorsements For Your Business

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Melissa Mel Conkling – Social Media Marketing by Mel

Are you using LinkedIn’s Skill Endorsements feature for your business?  They are a great way  to build your brand awareness as well as building a strong connection with the endorser.  Here are a couple of ways to use them:

First, here’s what LinkedIn’s Help Center says about using Skill Endorsements:

Skill endorsements are a great way to recognize your 1st-degree connections’ skills with one click. They also let your connections validate the strengths found on your own profile. Skill endorsements are a simple and effective way of building your professional brand and engaging your network.

Receiving endorsements:

Scroll down to the Skills & Endorsements section on your own profile to see endorsements you’ve received. You can add any skill to this section. Accumulating a high number of endorsements for a skill adds credibility to your profile, and shows that your professional network recognizes you have that skill.

Note: You don’t need to ask for a skill endorsement to receive one. You’ll also be notified by email when you receive an endorsement.

Giving endorsements:

Endorsing others is a great way to recognize your colleagues for the skills you’ve seen them demonstrate. It helps contribute to the strength of their profile, and increases the likelihood they’ll be discovered for opportunities related to the skills their connections know they possess.

Endorsing your colleagues also helps keep strong connections with the people in your network. You may find that after endorsing a colleague from the past, it’s easier to reach out to them because you’ve recently been in touch.

Another way to use skill endorsements to build your brand awareness is with gratitude.  Always, always show appreciation to the endorser for endorsing you for that particular skill.  Not only does it build the relationship, it also is a show of gratitude which turns what we have into enough and more.  You know the whole Law of Attraction thing.

To start, create an post to thank the endorser by name.  Their name should automatically pop up when you start typing it but in case it doesn’t, put the ’@’ symbol before typing their name.  This creates a hyperlink and a notification is sent to them.  Also you can add a brief sentence about how you use that skill in your business.  This is a quick moment to promote yourself but don’t over do it!  Then thank them again for the endorsement and send them well wishes.  Below is a great example of one I recently did and I received a bonus endorsement when the endorser expanded on her original endorsement.

One of the great things about this is these posts get viewed by your connections just like any other post you make .  This particular one received over 100 views.  What does this mean?  It means many of my connections saw this awesome endorsement of my me and my business.  Everyone knows endorsements, testimonials, & recommendations for your business are huge!  See this quote:

“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg

So I encourage you to start using this feature for your business today.  Be creative in showing your gratitude for your endorsements.  And remember, be sure to give back with endorsing your connections!

In gratitude,

Mel — Social Media Marketing by Mel