Here’s what it looks like:

You can see how useful it will be in terms of building credibility.Your endorsements are a great visual way for others to instantly see your skills. On the flip side, it is easier for connections to compare your skills to your competitors, so you can see how important it is to gain more endorsements.

So how do you set up your LinkedIn profile to take full advantage of this new feature?

Add Your Skills

Now is a good time to complete your LinkedIn profile if you haven’t done so already. Just go to Edit Your Profile, scroll down to Skills and start adding your expertise.

Here’s a handy tip from Social Media Examiner on adding your skills

Make sure you add your skills in order of importance to you, as these will be the first ones listed on your profile and thus the easiest for your connections to see. As you get more endorsements for a particular skill, that skill will automatically rise to the top of the list, as your skills will then be listed by numerical order of endorsements.

Add popular skills to your profile

If you hover your mouse over a skill, a popup box with further information about that skill appears with a figure %, which refers to the popularity of that skill being added to other people’s profiles.

How do you endorse a connection?

• On the top of a connection’s profile, you’ll see recommended endorsements for them. You can suggest additional skills as well.
• You can also endorse them from the new Skills & Expertise section that now showcases these endorsements.

When someone endorses your skills, LinkedIn will send you an email to let you know and the endorsement will show in your LinkedIn newsfeed. This is a good opportunity to send a message to the endorser thanking them for their endorsement and perhaps suggesting a way you can be of service to each other.

We think the new endorsement feature is a positive way to strengthen connections and boost your credibility and profile on LinkedIn. What do you think?

The post How to set up your LinkedIn profile for endorsement appeared first on Write On Track.

SlideShare is a social platform for sharing presentations, and with 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. 

While its primary purpose is uploading presentations (which in turn can generate business leads, drive traffic to your blog and position you as an expert in your field), it also has value as an educational and research tool, a good way of reaching an international market and even a way to beat blogger’s block (browsing presentations online can spark your own blog ideas, or you can embed a presentation on your blog).

Here are nine reasons that you should add SlideShare to your blogger’s toolkit!

1. Upload presentations publicly or privately
2. Download presentations from others
3. Use as blog research tool
4. Embed presentations on your blog
5. Share with ease on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
6. Generate business leads with your presentations
7. Slidecast: sync mp3 audio with slides to create a webinar
8. Embed YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations
9. Use SlideShare PRO for premium features like branded channels, analytics, ad free pages

SlideShare has recently been bought by Linkedin, a fact which strengthens its power as a B2B tool. Writing about the merger recently, Spiderworking’s Amanda Webb has this to say:

One of the reasons I joined SlideShare was because of it’s Linkedin integration.  It’s possible to display a SlideShow on your Linkedin profile using the application.  This is handy for people like me who may wish to offer teasers of courses, share slides from a speech and it’s even more useful for those who work within a visual industry.  It’s a fantastic way to showcase your portfolio.

Do you use SlideShare? Have you found it useful? We’d love to hear from you if you do. 

Subscribe to Write on Track on SlideShare (we will be adding more presentations soon).

The post 9 reasons you should add SlideShare to your blogger’s toolkit appeared first on Write On Track.

Buffer Account

I recently starting using the Buffer tool for my Twitter updates.  Buffer is a scheduling tool for Facebook and Twitter, (they have recently added LinkedIN) which lets you pre-programme times for your updates to be posted. I think it is one of the easiest and most effective time-saving social media tools for small businesses, and I encourage you to give it a try.

How much does it cost?

There are three pricing plans with Buffer, but as I have just started using it I am happy to go with the free plan for now. This allows me to add 10 updates to my Buffer, 1 Twitter, 1 Facebook and 1 LinkedIN account. The paid plans extend the number of updates and accounts you can add.

Buffer Analytics

You can gain valuable insight with Buffer analytics into how many times you have been retweeted and how many people conceivably see your updates.

Buffer Analytics

Scheduling vs Automation

I would emphasize that I use Buffer to schedule my updates, not automate them. I am no fan of automation, but I am a great believer in scheduling, especially as is the case for one of my social media accounts, your audience is global.

It’s very simple to use. You just type in your update and Buffer automatically schedules it to go out at a time that your audience is most engaged. You can easily change the times to suit yourself if your prefer.

I choose not to add Facebook to my Buffer account, as what I tweet and add to LinkedIN are different from my Facebook updates. Again I would caution you not to fall into the automation trap, but consider which of the platforms you would gain most from pre-scheduling.

The post How to buffer your social media updates appeared first on Write On Track.