Scott Allen

How to get a recommendation from someone not on LinkedIn

When Scott Allen was my guest during the teleseminar “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything—Ethically and Powerfully,” he urged LinkedIn users to collect as many recommendations as possible.

That’s one of the very best ways to flaunt your expertise and really stand out from your competitors.

But what if the person who you ask for a recommendation doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile and doesn’t want the hassle of creating one?

Here are two options, which I discovered today in the Linked Strategies group on LinkedIn.

If you live near the person who you want to recommend you, you can visit his home, help him set up an account, and show him how to post the recommendation he has written for you. (Then, buy him lunch.)

If he lives too far away, here’s the next best solution. Create an account at Box.net, which lets people access and share their content with others, from anywhere. You can sign up for a free trial.

When your account is created, you upload the recommendation in a secured PDF to Box.net. Follow these instructions if you want the site to post the recommendation to your LinkedIn profile:

Log into your LinkedIn account.
Privacy Settings.
Authorized Applications.
Find Box.net in the list of applications.
Hover your cursor over “about” and click.
In the lower right corner, you can check the box that says “Display on my profile” or “Display on LinkedIn homepage,” or both.
Update settings.
You’ll see your “My Box” folder. You can upload files here.

If someone is searching your profile and you’ve clicked on “Display on my profile,” they can download the recommendation. Then Box.net sends you a notification that your file has been downloaded.

Watch a demo of how Box.net works below. If you get confused, like I did, call their technical support desk at 1-877-729-4269. The woman who helped me get set up was wonderful.

It’s worth noting that Box.net also has an application for Twitter.

A hat tip to Bruce Bixler, Russ Knight and Glen Loock on LinkedIn for sharing these tips. Watch this video to understand how Box.net works:

3 of 4 LinkedIn invitations include this big mistake

When a business associate told me last week that she couldn’t understand why LinkedIn froze her account, especially because she invited only a few dozen people to connect within several months, I had a pretty good idea how that happened.

Three out of four of the people who invite me to connect with them on LinkedIn make the same mistake she probably made. They fail to explain on the invitation how we know each other, or how they know me.

If somebody invites you to connect and you don’t know them, LinkedIn gives you the option of clicking on “I don’t know this user” and “Report as spam.”

Scott Allen, who was my guest during a teleseminar on “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything–Ethically & Powerfully,” said that if too many people say they don’t know you, LinkedIn can freeze your account.

I always give the person who’s inviting me the benefit of the doubt. If they send the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” invitation, I always reply and ask, “How do we know each other, or how do you know me?” I ask that question so often that I’ve even created a macro key for it so I don’t have retype it hundreds of times.

Often, I learn that many of those people read my newsletter or heard me at a speaking engagement, or they were referred to me by a friend who follows me. So I usually connect with them and we start a conversation. If there’s no connection between us, I don’t connect.

Other LinkedIn users might not be so patient. It takes only a second to click on “I don’t know this user” or “Report as Spam.”

But it takes only several more seconds to type “I read your newsletter each week” or “I heard you speak when you were in Dallas” or “we worked on a project together at Bowling Green State University.”

What about you? Do three out of four people who invite you fail to explain how they know you? Do you click on “I don’t know this user” or “Report as Spam,” or do you probe like I do?

What’s the most annoying mistake you see people making on LinkedIn?