There’s no question that LinkedIn helps to build your reputation, as the majority of people will ‘Google’ your name and your LinkedIn is likely to appear within the first 3 search results.
This article helps you to create a more powerful profile by strategically selecting which skills should be listed within your “Skills” section of your LinkedIn Profile.
What You Need to Know about LinkedIn Endorsements
LinkedIn has several features that let you build up your personal brand and promote your key strengths to the world.
One of its unique features is the LinkedIn Endorsements, which is an option in which others can publicly endorse your LinkedIn Profile.
When setting up your profile, you can strategically select the exact skills and abilities you want to be known for. The best part is that some people use these terms or keywords as criteria when they are performing an advanced search to find someone with your set of skills and service offering.. When prospective clients search for the keywords via LinkedIn’s internal search engine, your profile will show up in the results.
What does it mean to be endorsed on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn Endorsements allow others to vouch for skills listed on your profile on the social network. It is a way to show that you are qualified in the skills listed. Also known as Skills’ Endorsements, getting this ‘vote of confidence’ adds credibility to the skills listed in your profile.
When prospective clients look at your LinkedIn profile, they will hopefully see you’ve received lots of ‘votes’ to confirm to others that you do possess the required expertise and skills to do a great job and provide an excellent service to your clients.
How do you ask someone to endorse you on LinkedIn?
The first thing that you need to know is that only first-degree connections can endorse you on LinkedIn. You should identify the people on your connections who you have worked closely in the past. They can be your former or current managers, colleagues, or clients. They are familiar with you and your work. They can honestly endorse skills that represent your knowledge and experience.
To get endorsements, you can perhaps provide a recommendation first, and then they’ll be more likely to take some time to return the favour.
How do I rearrange my skills on LinkedIn?
When you first created your LinkedIn profile, the “Skills” section was likely pre-populated by LinkedIn by pulling information from your employment history and summary sections.
Most of the skills listed will be irrelevant in the eyes of your clients, so this is why we need to delete most of them, and only have the top 30 – 40 appear.
You can easily create new skills when you go into editing mode within your profile, and you can replace the irrelevant – lower level – skills such as “MS Word” or “Customer Service”, with the terms “Business Development”, “Strategic Planning”, and particular keywords that are pertinent to your industry.
It is easy to rearrange your skills on LinkedIn.
All you need to do is:
- move the cursor over the Profile at the top of the page, and then click on Edit Profile.
- Go down to the Skills and Endorsement part of the profile, and click anywhere in the box.
- Hover the cursor on top of the skill that you want to move, and drag it to where you want it to be. Once you are satisfied with the arrangement, click Save.
So hopefully you now feel comfortable with using LinkedIn Endorsements to create a powerful profile that attracts new clients. If you have any questions, please feel free to write them below!
Leave a Reply