How To Get And Use LinkedIn Recommendations

by Kathy Bernard

Have your customers written nice recommendations about you on your LinkedIn profile? Use those valuable testimonials to impress your prospects!

Copy the best kudos into your profile’s About summary (which you can add by clicking Add profile section > About > Summary) or add them to your free LinkedIn company page where you have 2,000 characters to share what happy customers have to say. (To add a company page, visit Work > Create a company page). Also add your LinkedIn recommendations on your website and sales materials.

One way that I have benefitted greatly from my LinkedIn recommendations was to email the people who recommended me and ask them to share the same message as a Google Review. I included my Google review link plus the message that they had shared in their LinkedIn recommendation so they could easily paste the text into the review form. The result: I received 29 five-star Google reviews in less than a week!

To get Google Reviews, sign up at Google My Business (google.com/intl/en_us/business). This Google tool not only generates a link so that you can request reviews, it lets your business appear in local search results for what you offer and so much more.

To secure LinkedIn recommendations from your 1st degree connections, visit their profile and click More > Request a recommendation. But first, click More > Recommend on their profiles to write them a heartfelt recommendation – that will go a long way toward encouraging them to return the favor.

Kathy Bernard (kathy@wiseru.com), CEO of WiserU.com, is a St. Louis-based LinkedIn expert/trainer who equips businesses to maximize LinkedIn for sales, marketing, or fundraising.