By JOE GRIMM

Recently, I helped lead an online workshop on professional branding.

A participant asked for my thoughts on the value of Linkedin recommendations in brand building.

I think the best way to build your brand on Linkedin might not be to get recommendations, but to give them.

I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but work with me here.

Your Linkedin profile should not have a ridiculous number of recommendations. I know one person who called me, panicked because he had decided he needed to have 500 Linkedin connections right away. I told him that was possible because he is well networked. He got them, and then turned to rolling up 20 recommendations. It looks odd.

A handful of good recommendations tied to the most recent jobs on your resume can reinforce your brand. Linkedin attaches them to the positions in your job history, so you can load them toward the more recent jobs. Be judicious about whom you ask and even talk things over ahead of time. Linkedin gives you the option of NOT posting recommendations you get, but how will you explain that?

While any more than half a dozen recommendations might look scary, there is no limit to the number of recommendations you can write for others. And this is the way to really build your brand.

LINKEDIN REFERENCES BENEFIT THE WRITERS, TOO

* When you recommend others, you attach your name to the names of other good people. You will actually show up on their profile and people will see you when their search leads to that person.
* The people you recommend also show up in a new way in your own profile. People will judge you by the company you keep — or recommend.
* Recommendation writing shows up in the Linkedin community as activity. They will be in your connections’ network updates. For this reason, I would spread them out and not write several recommendations in one day.
* Most importantly, writing an unsolicited recommendation for someone whose work you respect can bring you untold goodwill. This is powerful brand building. When your recommendation is sent to the person you have written about, the Linkedin system asks whether they would like to write one about you.
* Although this is not our motivation, we may find that the people we recommend do it for us, too. Even if they don’t, you win.

TIPS FOR WRITING GOOD LINKEDIN RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Write your recommendation within the Linkedin system. This will generate a message to the

people you are recommending and will make it easy for them to activate your reference on their page.
2. Be specific, describing an incident in which the person did great things.
3. Stay very professional. If you are recommending a friend, don’t make it sound that way.
4. Do not try to game the system by using your recommendation of someone else to talk about yourself. People will see right through that and it is a real turnoff. Give praise generously and modestly.
5. Keep potential employers or clients for the person you are writing about in mind when you recommend. Describe their value.
6. Edit your work.

I can’t resist a kicker here. After I wrote to my question-asker, she replied, “I guess my reticence is that many of the recommendations I’ve read sound like or are boilerplate with the name and specific area of expertise and time frame added in. They are MadLibs without the humor. For me, those hurt the brand of the person profiled rather than help.”

I pointed her to a Web site that generates phony Linkedin recommendations. They sound like, well, boilerplate. It’s endorser.org

Funny.

I reminded her that we control which recommendations actually get posted on our profiles.

The branding session, by the way, was part of a weeklong webinar on entrepreneurial skills for journalists, organized and produced by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. The Reynolds entrepreneurial workshop is archived here.

I recommend this post by Chris Brogan, co-author of “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Improve Trust.”