There are recommendations and then there are RECOMMENDATIONS and then, for the majority, there are no recommendations.  It isn’t easy to enter in to the world of LinkedIn recommendations without knowing the way.

There is an art to recommendations and then there is a culture around it.  At IA, we are artists on creating effective recommendations and there are many others including career coaches. 

Here is our unique artistry on recommendations.  I would like to hear what you think about it?  We teach this methodology in our LinkedIn training workshops and webinars.

Pick the right person – only request recommendations from people that you actually had business dealings with.  Good idea is to look at successful projects and who else was involved.  Job titles are important as are company names.  Pick people that you could recommend as well.

Tell them what they might cover – Suggest a specific project.  “You might say something about the Marketing  database conversion we did last year.  A couple of statistics and something about how I helped make it successful is all it takes.  I will return the favor if you like.  Thanks a lot!”

Return the favor – you will be automatically asked/encouraged to reciprocate.  In most cases, you will want to do this, especially if you picked the right person in the first place.

Some recommendation examples:

“Bob and I worked on a data conversion project in 2003.  We has 12 cities to convert from .Net to MySQL in a month.  Bob made sure the project got done right.  We have worked on other projects together as a result.”

“Tony worked for me as a Sr. Account Manager at Sprint for 2 years.  He worked with 10 of the top 40 accounts in Colorado.  He always exceeded goals and made those around him more successful in the process.”

“We hired Mike to train our team of 30 outside sales reps. on LinkedIn.  Mike delivered a vibrant program with play by play instruction that has already helped our team open new doors and close new deals.”

Look at this as a place for testimonials that you might use elsewhere in your marketing.  Note: the testimonial text from others is not searchable using LinkedIn keyword searches.

As a result of being recommended and recommending others you now have links to and from other LinkedIn profiles that you personally selected.  This is a sort of super-connection between you.  You have increased your visibility in the LinkedIn world and in the Google world.

Need more examples, please look at the 100+ recommendations on my LinkedIn profile at www.linkewdin.com/in/mikeoneil.

LinkedIn is trialing a new Advanced Searching Screen and capability.  Look hard and you will see the new option on the Advanced Search Screen.  This looks like a BETA version. 

They have rearranged a few things and then they have some new stuff.  Here are the significant changes that I see at a glance with my comments:

1.       The screen layout is different – cleaner tighter.  Two thumbs up.

2.       “Relevance” replaces “Keyword Relevance” it seems. 

3.       “Relationship” replaces “Degrees away from you”?   

4.       You can choose to see basic vs. expanded views now.  Toss up.

5.       The results of your search can be sorted more easily and it now shows the number of shared connections.  Two BIG thumbs up.

6.       You can search by School on the search screen.  That is new and of value to some.  There is no selecting from a list though. You must type it in and have it match.  Not well done.  One thumb up, one down.

7.       They busted out first name and last name vs. a single field.  Two BIG thumbs up.

8.       There has always been a recommendations factor in searching.  It is just worded a bit different now. 

9.       Saving searches is a brand new feature that people will like a lot.  This is a hard to notice feature.  Unfortunately you can only save 3 searches.  It says it is free for a limited time.  Two thumbs up for effort, half a thumb for implementation (limit of 3 is inadequate). 

10.   The search results show PICTURES now.  Two HUGH thumbs up.

Please leave your comments on this new LinkedIn feature for others to see.

STEPS FOR MARKETING TO YOUR LOCAL LINKEDIN CONNECTIONS:

1.     Create your marketing copy in an MSWord document

2.     Be sure to include links to your events or landing page e.g. www.integratedalliances.com

3.     LinkedIn now turns these into Hot Links in the message body

4.     Add Affiliate codes to the end of the landing page url if appropriate

5.     Login to your account on www.linkedin.com

6.     Click on View My Profile

7.     Click on Forward this Profile (small link right above your name)

8.     This brings up the Compose Message screen

9.     NOTE; BE VERY CAREFUL DOING THIS AND FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CLOSELY!

10.  Copy and Paste your Marketing copy into this message screen

11.  Change the Subject Line to be custom for this message

12.  UNCHECK THE ALLOW ALL RECEIPIENTS TO SEE NAMES AND ADDRESSES BOX

13.  Don’t forget to UNCHECK THE BOX!!

14.  Click the check box to Send a copy to yourself

15.  Then search your Tier 1 Connections by Location or by Industry

16.  This will produce a list of your Tier 1 Connections that meet your selection criteria

17.  You can send this message to up to 200 connections at a time

18.  If your query produces less than 200, then proceed to SEND, if not

19.  Select a letter of the alphabet and see how many connections are selected

20.  Add another letter of the alphabet until you are close to 200, then SEND the message

21.  Sometimes you may need to double or triple click the Select All box

22.  If there are over 200 in one letter of the Alphabet you have to individually select the connections

23.  There may be times when you may have to manually click on the connections to add them

24.  Then you’re done hit SEND, or repeat steps 19 to 23, until you’ve sent the message to everyone who meets your selection criteria

25.  Write down the last record that you sent to; so you can pick up from that point going forward

26.  Unlike an email, the advantage of this approach is that it can’t be deleted unopened.  Your LinkedIn connections must deal with Forwarded Profile messages so you have a 100% open rate.

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