How to Give Great LinkedIn Recs

Posted on March 18th, 2010 by Keith Ferrazzi

LinkedIn Recommendations are a great - and totally free - way to help connections out. Don't wait for people to ask for your recommendation - pay it forward!

Here are three tips to give particularly great recs - and believe me, they will be appreciated. You'd be surprised at how long someone will remember your spontaneous generosity.

1.    Be concrete. Which recommendation is better: "Keith Ferrazzi is a great consultant," or, "Keith Ferrazzi's work on my networking strategy lead to a 30% jump in revenue over six months."  Be as specific as you can, focusing on results whenever possible.

2.    Remember their brand. Before you write a testimonial, scrutinize your contact's profile and any other online presence carefully. Look for clues to the brand and value propositions they're already trying to communicate, and mirror them in your testimonial. Of course, make sure your testimonial speaks genuinely and specifically to the experience you've had!!

3.    Go pro by using an editor. There's nothing worse than getting a LinkedIn rec full of grammatical errors and typos -- posting it would make the recipient look bad, and puts them in the awkward position of having to turn down a kindly-intended offer. So after writing a rec, give it to an eagle-eyed wordsmith for an edit.

Why not recommend three contacts today?

Please share your tips for great recommendations in the comments!

This post is drawn from material in my Relationship Masters Academy. The pilot class is full, but you can sign up to be on the list for June founding membership.

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2 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

  1. When I recommend people on LinkedIn, I like to talk about how we know each other and what projects we worked on together. This way, I can talk about the skills he/she brought to the table and it shows he/she is a great team player.

    I like your points…especially the one about making sure there are not grammatical errors!

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