Hello and Happy Easter! I got to double-dip on the holidays and dig on some fine Easter dinner fare with the family. Oh, and Happy Earth Day and Administrative Professionals Day!
NEWS AND NOTES!
This week is my 18th Voice-aversary! On Wednesday, April 23th, 1996, I nervously walked into a recording studio in New York City and recorded my first professional voiceover. Wanna hear it?
Lately I’ve been thinking about the voiceover industry as it relates to referrals, endorsements, and recommendations.
Yes, I’m talking about LinkedIn but I’m also talking about what happens when clients ask for help finding other voice talent for their projects. Today let’s talk about LinkedIn, shall we?
First off, what’s the difference between a LinkedIn Endorsement and a LinkedIn Recommendation?
An Endorsement is when one of your LinkedIn Connections adds a skill they think you possess to your LinkedIn profile. In my experience it’s never proactive; LinkedIn prompts you to do it when you log in. That doesn’t necessarily make them not valid, but it’s easy to do and I’m sure there are many people out there who will click on any skill regardless of the person in question. You can have a max of 50 different skills listed on your profile. I’m fortunate in that I’ve been endorsed quite a bit, but I tend to think that that and 50 cents will get you a phone call. To see what I’m talking about you can check out my LinkedIn profile. Having a list of Endorsements on your profile does have some merit though, as this article illustrates.
A LinkedIn Recommendation is when one of your Connections writes some (hopefully) nice things about you and it shows up on your profile. Recommendations tend to be proactive though you can request one. I’m very lucky in that I have 34 of them, but I’ve given out 74 of them, too (and thanks to you wonderful people who did one for me!). I think the Recommendations have far more merit than the Endorsements because it actually takes some effort to write them and they’re given in context so it gives them more credence.
In general, both Endorsements and Recommendation are good things to have on your profile, as long as you’ve “earned” them. Like many of you, I’ve had LinkedIn connections ask me for recommendations when I’ve never even met them, much less worked with them. I always politely turn them down but say I’ll be happy to write a recommendation after we’ve worked together and it was a good experience. To date, I’ve had a grand total of zero recommendations given or received after that kind of correspondence. Shocking, ay?
TIP OF THE WEEK: How do you get quality Endorsements and Recommendations? By giving them first! A part of my Action Plan is to recommend one LinkedIn connection every month. I only recommend people I’ve actually worked with and had a good experience with. I try to make it both personal and personable, in that I try to communicate that this is a great person you want to have in your life, not just as an asset to your business. Once you do that, your fellow connections are likely to reciprocate and give you an equally flattering recommendation back. Talk about karma!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.”
Mark Twain
STUFF!: Man, I love that quote! It may be the finest insult in the history of the English language. My current favorite insult is from Louie CK, “You non-contributing zero“. What your favorite insult?
From Tom Dheere’s apartment, this is Tom Dheere: GKN News…
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