Electric Trainer

Why LinkedIn endorsements are driving me nuts

Anyone with a LinkedIn account will have noticed a new feature where you are encouraged to endorse the skills of your connections.

You can read all about endorsements on the LinkedIn blog here.

The prompt comes when you view someone's profile. A list of some of their skills appears right in your face at the top of the page. When you click on the skill it sends a note to the person saying 'David has endorsed you for the following skills and expertise:...'.

In theory this is great, as there is nothing stronger than an unsolicited pat on the back.

So why am I being driven nuts by this?

Because being a conscientious LinkedIn user I have made sure all my skills are listed on my profile. You are allowed up to 50 skills and I have listed 27. But LinkedIn is only asking people to endorse some of them, and they are not the most relevant.

Not only that. My profile now lists my skills in order of endorsements not relevance, which simply perpetuates the problem.

I know this sounds churlish, and I'm really grateful to those of you who have endorsed my broadcasting skills. The problem is that I now run a training business.

Here's a screengrab from my profile that illustrates the issue:

  

The fact that I have a media and broadcasting hinterland is very important to me, and I do some training in broadcasting skills. But my training business focusses mostly on networking, communications and basic business skills, which is not the same thing.

Bizarrely, people who only know me from my training work are being prompted to endorse me in broadcasting skills. I'm delighted if they've enjoyed one of our workshops, but for all they know I might be a rubbish broadcaster.

This rather devalues the whole process.

So here's a plea to the clever people at LinkedIn. Please let me prioritise the skills that are most current. Then if anyone wants to endorse me, they will be prompted with those first.

Now that I've got that off my chest, I'm off to do some proper (training) work.

When simple simply confuses

I spent a fun day at the CIPD annual exhibition last week, helping out the lovely people at Unlimited Potential, a coaching and training company I'm associated with.

One of the reasons the exhibition was so successful for Unlimited Potential was the consistency of the brand message - from the images and wording on the stand to the way we described what we do when we spoke to people, to the layout of the brochures.

We even wore the same purple t-shirts, which made a huge impact and wasn't nearly as embarrassing as it sounds.

The best stand of the whole event was a group who provide team-building exercises in the form of film production. A wonderfully simple idea that was carried through with a stand that was basically a lighting rig. They all wore the same t-shirts too. It was a great example of good branding delivering a simple message.

Another training organisation took the simple approach to an extreme. Their key message was 'we won't waste your money'. They had bought not one but three 'plots' around the exhibition hall and instead of dressing them in the time-honoured (and expensive) fashion, they left them completely empty except for a small pile of brochures. Occasionally someone would be attending the stands. Often they were deserted.

I've no doubt this seemed like a totally genius idea when they came up with it. The trouble was there was no way of knowing that this was supposed to be clever marketing. It just looked like they hadn't turned up.

The Power of Three

A friend of mine is always reminding people of the power of the three-word tag as part of business branding. In fact he's positively evangelical about it. He says we're all pre-wired  to remember things in threes. Any business that doesn't use a three-word slogan is - in his view - missing a trick.

A quick look up and down the high street - or at least the out-of-town retail park - shows he may have a point. Test your friends with these:

• every little helps
• have a break
• Beanz Meanz Heinz (a giveaway that one)
• never knowingly undersold

They don't even have to be in English - Vorsprung durch Technik anyone?

Sainsburys has the rebellious 'try something new today', and therefore (according to my friend) deserves everything it has coming to it. Though it redeems itself slightly by having a premium line called 'taste the difference'.

I read in today's Media Guardian that ads are having to get cleverer. It's something to do with the audiences getting more sophisticated, completely contradicting the argument for dumbing down.

I wonder where this leaves the power of the three-word tag or slogan. My suspicion is that it will never go away. Threesomes are so powerful they have been used for centuries, so I can't see them disappearing just because Asda decides to spot patting its bum.

Winston Churchill used the power of three all the time in his speeches. Even when he didn't that's the way we remember him. Blood, sweat and tears was actually 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'.

The earliest example I can think of is Julius Ceasar's 'Veni. Vidi. Vici.' (I came. I saw. I conquered.) After all, he could just as easily have said 'I came. I conquered'.  Just 'I conquered' would have conveyed the meaning, especially to the poor sods he'd just slaughtered.

And he was a man who understood the importance of branding.