Small Business Essentials

Seeing on how it’s Friday, I thought we’d do something fun here at the Small Business Essentials blog. Let’s call it "Pay It Forward, LinkedIn Style". You mission, should you choose to accept it: spread some good will among all your LinkedIn contacts by writing them some reviews!

Share the Love

Everyone loves a compliment. Everyone in business loves a glowing and public compliment! This is your chance to spread some love around this Friday and take some time to write all your friends and contacts a review on LinkedIn. This is a good idea because:

• It makes people feel good.
• It makes you feel good.
• It expands your network by putting your name on other people’s lists.
• It makes you the person that people want to work with, because they want glowing reviews too!
• It is good business karma—it will come back to you someday.
• It gets a conversation started between you and people that you, perhaps, haven’t seen in a while.

Procedure

What are you waiting for? It’s simple. You just:

• Log in to LinkedIn.
• Click on the top tab that says "My Contacts".
• Scan your list and find the people that you are qualified to give reviews of.
• Click on each one, and then click on the top right link that says "Recommend this person" to give them a review.

Guidelines

I do want to offer some guidelines about writing a good review on someone’s profile so that you can use this time wisely. First of all, don’t write anything negative. This is bad karma! If you have a problem with someone, speak to them directly. Secondly, keep it professional. This guy was the best kegstander of the class of 97! is not a good review. Thirdly, be specific. You should be only reviewing people that you know well enough to properly recommend, so be specific in your review. Was the person always on time? Does she have good communication skills? Is he a very talented artist? Those are all perfect things to mention.

Additional Resources

For more things to do with LinkedIn, see Guy Kawasaki’s post, Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn.

Reader Questions

Do you have a profile on LinkedIn? How are you using LinkedIn for your business? Did you try today’s activity?