subject: Promoting Me Inc. brand on LinkedIn for better job prospects [print this page] Promoting Me IncPromoting Me Inc. brand on LinkedIn for better job prospects
Few days back I stumbled upon a book "101 LinkedIn Recommendations" ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OL2N4M ) and immediately I realized how important, useful and time saver it is for people like me who want to leverage LinkedIn for promoting Me Inc. brand for better job prospects. Allow me to explain how promoting Me Inc. brand works for us and one of the easy ways of doing it.
One of the important aspects of LinkedIn which could be used effectively for Me Inc. branding, that is for promoting your own personal brand is writing quality recommendations for others and getting good recommendations for you. When I say quality recommendations I mean using right words and articulation which reflect your intellect, sharpness and knowledge.
When you are requesting others to recommend you, it is better to provide them some initial paragraph to start with, on which they can build on. It gives them some motivation to start with instead of just staring at blank screen and finding no words to jot down their thoughts. I know it is challenging to come up with good paragraph even for self and I am addressing this need in few paragraphs down, just stay with me.
It is very obvious that you should collect good recommendations from others for you but how it is important to write quality recommendations for others? Your prospective employers or customers visit your LinkedIn profile to find more about you. From your page they can find out for how many people you have given your recommendations and they can read these recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. Whatever you write in those recommendations is creating your brand Image. The words you use, articulations, formal non-formal tone, everything counts. The way you are writing recommendations should reflect your persona, designation, knowledge and your expertise.
Writing quality recommendations is a challenge and worth the effort. Have you ever written LinkedIn recommendation for anybody? At times we don't know where to start and what to write. Sometimes we end up writing something to complete the activity. But be careful whatever you are writing is going to stay there forever.
From this perspective, I got delighted when I found the book "101 LinkedIn Recommendations" ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OL2N4M ). It has ready to use recommendations categorized properly for different designation from CEO to software programmer. I could quickly find the right recommendation to start with and it helped me to flow my creative juices in no time. I could write 10 recommendations within 15 minutes. I know how time saver this was because earlier it took me 15 minutes or more to just write one recommendation and at the end I was not happy about the way I had written it.
Best part I liked is the recommendations are written differently depending on who is writing it and for whom. For example recommendations for President of the organization would talk more about his proficiency in developing good strategy rather his operational excellence. Similarly person writing the recommendation has great impact on words and articulation. Senior or peer writing for a Business Development Manager (BDM) and his junior writing for BDM would have totally different tone and words. Book has taken care of these finer details.
I hope it would help others the way it helped me and other would also find it time saver and great reference. Give it a try, before you decide to buy the book read the recommendations from free sample of the book.
