ROCKVILLE, Md.—Getting people to "recommend" you as a professional on LinkedIn has always been a powerful tool. The recommendations on the well-known professional social network enable people to "find" you for the services and products you want to be found for within the LinkedIn network. These recommendations "label" your brand in the LinkedIn network, and to give you a "boost" in what I call "Searchial Marketing."

Searchial Marketing describes how the actions you undertake in the social media world help LinkedIn and, ultimately, Google to better place you in their search for the keywords and key phrases you hope to be found for when people search for the services/products you offer in your geographic vicinity.

LinkedIn has initiated a new feature lately, an "expert endorsement" feature. This enables connections to "endorse" or support you with a recommendation for certain areas of expertise just with a click of a button.

On your LinkedIn profile page, scroll down and you'll see a "skills and expertise" section just below the "experience" section of your profile. You may find that some people have already endorsed you, and if so, that endorsement will show up under the "activity section on the right column of your profile page.

 

If you want to endorse someone, find their LinkedIn profile and right at the top you'll see a widget that enables you to endorse them. Here's how a friend of mine, business consultant Ian Altman (author of numerous books on sales and strategy) endorsement widget shows up.

 

The strategy is this: endorse people and many of them will endorse you back as a courtesy. With repeated endorsements, let's say, for "Optometry," your authority within the LinkedIn search engine will increase for the keyword "Optometry" and, ultimately the Google search engine as someone who is influential in "Optometry." As Google seeks out influencers and authorities in particular subjects queried by people using their search tool, being influential is very important from a search engine optimization (SEO) angle.

The idea for ranking people based on their expertise is not a new one. Klout is a website I've written about before that ranks people based on their influence online and has been doing so for years. Whether you like it or not, when you interact online around particular keywords and key phrases you gain an "influence score" around those subjects, which engines like Google use to determine where to place you when people use the Google tool to search for information. You can find out how much influence you wield online by signing up for Klout and checking out your score.

LinkedIn, by adding its own "credibility" score is giving cred to the concept of online cred as a growing trend, and something to focus on as part of a social media strategy. Get people to "recommend" you and "endorse" you for the keywords and key phrases you hoped to be found for online!

 

Alan N. Glazier, OD, FAAO is the founder/CEO of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care in Rockville, Md. A search and social optimization consultant, he is a regular contributor to CLICK and also writes a regular blog for SightNation.com. A founder of ODs on Facebook, Glazier is also a VM/ROB Optometric Business Innovator. Glazier is at aglazier@youreyesite.com and his regular posts can be found via his Twitter handle: @EyeInfo, his blog: youreyesite.net and his website: YourEyeSite.com. He's the author of the new eBook, Customer Communication Software, which features a "comparison checklist" to help ECPs determine which software platform is the best fit for their office. More info on the new eBook is posted here.