You are biased. Other people saying you are good is more convincing than you saying it...
What you say on your LinkedIn Profile is biased.
You always praise yourself. I can't really believe your claims, because I simply don't know you yet. All the same, I know you are going to be biased. After all, you're talking about your favourite subject - yourself!
However, when I see a photo of your customer telling me how your service or skills specifically benefited them, and I see what they do, where they are, what their name and job title is, and can follow a link to their profile, THEN I can really believe it.
Recommendations for David Petherick
Well, they don't often come out of the blue in LinkedIn.
Try this - ask for them from your customers. Say “I want to add a credible recommendation to my online profile so that people can see the real benefits that I deliver. Would you please add your recommendation?”
The worse that might happen is someone might say no, or just ignore you. So you can ask someone else.
Of course, the way to get recommendations is to give them first.
Visit the profile of the connection to whom you want to give a recommendation. (You have to be connected on LinkedIn to give or receive a recommendation.)
Click the little three-dots menu to the right of their profile picture, and select 'Recommend (name)' - it's self explanatory after that.
The step above also leads you to where you can ask for a recommendation.
The steps to give, or ask for a recommendation, are very clear and self-explanatory, and you can keep a record of people you have asked for recommendations and send them reminders if needed.
You can visit their profile, or click on 'Ask for a recommendation' when managing your recommendations.
If you don't ask, you don't get.
The power of recommendations is that it's not you talking about yourself - it's what other people are saying. In a word, it's credibility, because it's some else's opinion.
It's worth asking people to be very specific and precise in their recommendation, and to do the same when you give recommendations.
Remind them of the project you worked on and see if you can get them to focus on the results - the benefits.
"David is a great guy to work with"
That's pretty vague. It's not as impressive as -
"David is super friendly and efficient, and explains the technical stuff effectively. He delivers on what he promises. His PPC strategy allowed us to lift our click-through-rate by 129% in a month, reduce spend by 39%, but still increase website traffic by 8.7%"
So be specific about the impact working with someone has, and include measurable facts and figures in a recommendation if you can.
Ask them to do the same when requesting a recommendation.
It's easy to start - go and recommend someone who impressed you today. What goes around, comes around.
