It’s commonly accepted that LinkedIn helps to build your personal brand, because people are highly likely to  ‘Google’ your name and your LinkedIn always seems to appear on the first page search results.

This post guides you to create a more powerful LinkedIn profile by strategically selecting which skills should be listed within your “Skills” section of your LinkedIn Profile.

 

LinkedIn Endorsements – Your Top 3 Questions Answered: 

 

When setting up your profile, you can strategically select and arrange the exact skills and abilities you want to be known for.  The Skills section helps you to rank organically within your field, because when prospective clients and referral partners search on LinkedIn – they’ll use certain keywords which will bring up relevant results, and ideally your profile will show up in their results.

Do  LinkedIn Endorsements Carry any Weight?

LinkedIn Endorsements are an important part of building up your online presence, so you are seen as a credible expert within your field.  Even though endorsements are easy to obtain – even from complete strangers sometimes – it’s a way to demonstrate to the world that you’re qualified.

When prospective clients look at your LinkedIn profile, they will hopefully see you’ve received lots of ‘votes’ to confirm to others that you do possess the required expertise and skills to do a great job and provide an excellent service to your clients.

How do you ask for Skills Endorsements?  

At this point in time, only first-degree connections can endorse you on LinkedIn. This is one good reason to grow your network by the way!).  Start by identifying the people on your  list of connections who you’ve worked closely with in the past and send them a message asking you endorse them.  Ask specifically for at least 3 skills that you want to build up.

Can  I Add New Skills, Rearrange Them, or Even Delete Some Skills Endorsements?

When your LinkedIn profile was first created, the “Skills” section was pre-populated by LinkedIn by drawing on information from your employment and summary sections.

Most of the skills listed will be irrelevant in the eyes of your clients, so this is why we need to delete most of them, and only have the top 30 – 40 appear.

You can  create new skills when you go into editing mode within your profile, and you can replace the irrelevant – lower level – skills such as “MS Excel” or “Client Services”, with the terms  more relevant to your industry, which could be technical jargon, industry words or acronyms.

To rearrange your skills on LinkedIn is super easy:

1. move the cursor over the Profile at the top of the page, and then click on Edit Profile.
2. Go down to the Skills and Endorsement part of the profile, and click anywhere in the box.
3. Hover the cursor on top of the skill that you want to move, and drag it to where you want it to be. Once you are satisfied with the arrangement, click Save.

So I hope this has answered the questions you had around LinkedIn’s Skills Endorsements!

You can definitely arrange them in a way that is going to promote your key strengths, and build trust and credibility in the eyes of your prospective clients and even referral partners.   As always, if you have any questions or comments, please type them in the space below!