How To Make The Most Of LinkedIn Endorsements

According to LinkedIn, users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities than those with incomplete profiles. Taking the time to optimize your profile increases your ranking within the LinkedIn system, increasing your odds of being found in search results.

Think of your profile as a mirror – you want it to be a robust representation of your expertise and professional capabilities. Equally as important, your profile is the place to distinguish yourself from others competing for the attention of your clients and prospects. More than ever before, a quick check of your online presence is becoming the de facto starting point for anyone “looking you up”.

One area of your LinkedIn profile that is extremely important when building your online portfolio is your Skills & Expertise section. In a nutshell, it’s a “point and click” way to endorse someone, or to have someone endorse you.

It adds tags that make your profile more easily found by search engines and LinkedIn searches and provides a consistent set of search terms. For example, you might call yourself a Writer, Copywriter, Marketing Copy Chief or endless other variations. But when the skill “copywriting” is attached to your profile, you can be found regardless of your title.

LinkedIn also has a Skills & Expertise search function, currently in beta, which utilizes these tags and suggests people with related expertise. Whilst it’s good to focus on your business skills and thought leadership its equally important to think about your clients and the type of skills and expertise they would be looking for in an expert within your field. This will allow you to be seen as a specialist, not a generalist.

We can’t tell you how many profiles we’ve come across every week that have 10, 15, 20 and sometimes up to 50 skills and expertise endorsed within their profile. Not only does this make your profile look messy it also shows you know a little about a lot instead of a lot about a little.

(Here is an example of the skills our founder Alex have listed on his profile.)

Whilst LinkedIn allows you up to 50 skills listed, our recommendation is that you should only have 3-5 skills and expertise listed on your profile, don’t accept anything outside of these skills and delete any existing skills listed within your profile. Now before you do this you may want to do some research online along with speaking to some of your clients to get a good understanding of what skills or expertise your target market is looking for in an expert within your field before inserting them into your profile. In today’s business world where competition is fiercer than ever before people are no longer buying into brands or products as much as they are buying into people, your first impression can be your best or last.