Share the Love on LinkedIn

Welcome to Famous in Your Field! Here’s your free weekly tip to boost your fame factor.

This week’s tip is all about spreading good will, using LinkedIn. You know all about LinkedIn, right? And you’re using it to market yourself and your business, right?

While LinkedIn might look like a social networking pygmy at only 120 million members, compared to Facebook’s world-dominating 700 million users, Linkedin still has one huge advantage.

It’s about business.

People are on Facebook to post about their personal lives, to share pictures of kids and pets, and to have fun.

People are on LinkedIn for business.

Don’t get me wrong. You can have fun on LinkedIn, too. (And you should!) Make sure that your profile conveys your personality and your company’s brand. People who are curious about you and are even casually considering buying your services are checking out your LinkedIn profile. It’s become one of the basic steps in “fact checking” before hiring anyone.

So, how can you amp up the power of your LinkedIn profile? Here’s a tip that might seem counter intuitive: recommend others.

How does recommending others help to boost your own business’ fame factor? Several ways:

• It shares the love, digitally. People will be more likely to want to hire and work with someone they view as helpful and generous.
• It feeds the cycle of reciprocity. That doesn’t mean that you recommend someone on LinkedIn and then immediately ask them to recommend you. It’s much more effective to give a genuine, heartfelt recommendation to several people who you believe are doing great things in the world, expecting nothing in return. By being generous with your influence, people who are connected to you on LinkedIn and had positive experience working with you will be more likely to recommend you. That’s just the delicious way the world works.
• It spreads your name. Now, instead of just reaching the people you’re already connected to, you’re also increasing your visibility to an even bigger network.

Your Famous in Your Field action:

Start sharing the biz love. This week, choose two of your LinkedIn connections that you think are really rockin’ it out, business-wise and recommend them.