{"id":4201,"date":"2009-07-17T08:06:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T15:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/?p=4201"},"modified":"2009-07-24T09:56:52","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T16:56:52","slug":"requestedreccomendations_social_networks_i_wont_do_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/17\/requestedreccomendations_social_networks_i_wont_do_it\/","title":{"rendered":"Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won&#8217;t Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;Looking at LinkedIn Recommendations, They are Puffery&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;m currently doing research on what skills marketers are looking for in their social media team, and interviewed one hiring manager yesterday. She told me she didn&#8217;t value the references on LinkedIn and told me that &#8220;Looking at LinkedIn recommendations, they are puffery&#8221;.  Instead she was looking for examples of work experience, eagerness to do the job, and of course ability. I agree with her, when I see recommendations on LinkedIn, my alarm goes off, I know most are not objective.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why These Reccomendations May Not Be Trusted<\/strong><br \/>\nFrom time to time, former colleagues ask me to be their reference &#8211;or even do recommendations (online references or testimonials) for them on social sites, like LinkedIn. Yet having gone through this process, they aren&#8217;t that trustworthy, here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Filter One: <\/em> I question how honest and authentic recommendations are when the system primarily has features that vet out unwanted reviews. In nearly every experience I&#8217;ve been in, a former colleague or someone I&#8217;ve worked with requests a recommendation, this means they are expecting a positive review. Since the content is in public, saying something bad about someone else (even if it&#8217;s true) isn&#8217;t going to help your network, so the the contributor is biased.<\/li>\n<li><em>Filter Two<\/em>: Then, they can review my submitted review, and then accept or reject. I&#8217;ve had someone reject my reference, and ask me to rewrite it once before (I think it may have been because I had a typo). Because these three filters are setup, it&#8217;s unlikely that you&#8217;ll see reviews that are have objective content, or negative information.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s not just recommendation systems in business social networks, it&#8217;s also case studies from vendors, and customer testimonials. All of this content is cleaned, scrubbed, and presentable in favor the seller.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Potential Solutions<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/rsomers\/status\/2687151109\">RSomers suggested<\/a> that LinkedIn reduce the number of recommendations people can give. \u00a0Like UserVoice or Deal Ideastorm they give a certain amount of points anyone can use, forcing people to be choosey and selective in where they put their vote. \u00a0\u00a0Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/11\/get-glue-enters-into-the-era-of-social-colonization\/\">Get Glue has interesting technology<\/a> to do this for the media side &#8211;maybe they can apply this to job candidates too.<\/p>\n<p><strong> References Will Always Have Their Place<\/strong><br \/>\nI triggered a discussion on twitter, and had a variety of responses, many who see the positives. At least two people told me they received their jobs from recommendations they&#8217;d received on LinkedIn, but not because the content was objective, but because it triggered a notification in the references stream &#8211;causing word of mouth to happen. \u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/lkilpatrick\/status\/2688439442\">Luke said he got his job<\/a> from a LinkedIn recommendation, and says &#8216;who&#8217; reccomends him is more important.<\/p>\n<p>Recommendations in any form still matter, but become more relevant if they come from someone who are at the top of their game, or have a relationship to the buyer. \u00a0This isn&#8217;t to say that none of these are helpful, they have their time and place in the marketing process. While a plethora of glowing references on a company or professional profile on LinkedIn may seem like typical marketing &#8211;in the end, smart buyers and employers will dig deeper to find where sellers and candidates shine &#8211;and need some polishing.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I Won&#8217;t be Giving LinkedIn Recommendations<\/strong><br \/>\nAlthough I&#8217;ve only given honest recommendations in LinkedIn, I won&#8217;t be giving anymore recommendations on that platform (at least for the foreseeable future), instead, I&#8217;ll use my blog and Twitter to provide them in a more organic area where there aren&#8217;t obvious filters &#8211;making the recommendations count even more. \u00a0The challenge of course is finding them will not be easy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Recommendations\u00a0that are vetted by the requestor will \u00a0never be fully viewed as objective &#8211;savvy buyers know that, and can figure out how to get the information through private conversations or other reviews.<\/li>\n<li>Reccomendations still matter, but who they come from, and in what context matters ever more, indicating you liked working with someone is still valuable &#8211;even if they are filtered.<\/li>\n<li>Buyers should look for references (positive and negative) from more organic locations like blogs and Twitter, where the candidate\/seller has less control over filtering and scrubbing the content.<\/li>\n<li>Canidates and sellers need to prepare for the open reviews of good &#8211;and bad&#8211;reviews about their company and resume.<\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn very valuable, and has many other features of note. This isn&#8217;t a knock on them, but instead on the marketing and pitching process in general.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Related: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/29\/the-impacts-of-social-media-on-corporate-customer-reference-programs\/\">Impacts of Social Media on Customer Reference Pages<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Update: Russ Somers has extended the converation on his blog: <a href=\"http:\/\/eggheadmarketing.wordpress.com\/2009\/07\/17\/evaluating-linkedin-recommendations\/\">Evaluating LinkedIn Reccomendations<\/a><\/p>\n<p>LinkedIn&#8217;s communications savvy Kay Luo, contacted me and gave some best practices around how recommendations should work, as such, she gave a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/ppl\/webprofile?action=vmi&amp;id=82111&amp;pvs=pp&amp;authToken=uHJb&amp;authType=name&amp;trk=ppro_viewmore&amp;lnk=vw_pprofile\">recommendation to my own accoun<\/a>t, which I accepted. \u00a0If they have any best practices around recommendations, I&#8217;ll be happy to link to them from this post &#8211;furthering the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>Update: July 24th, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.linkedin.com\/2009\/07\/23\/adam-nash-recommendations-and-the-reputation-economy\/\">LinkedIn has responded from their blog<\/a>, discussing the benefits of recommendations and the social economy. \u00a0They suggest that you give recommendations to five people unsolicited, although I&#8217;d suggest don&#8217;t feel obligated to meet a number, just do it when you believe in it. \u00a0I really appreciate them being part of the conversation &#8211;so we can make these systems better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&ldquo;Looking at LinkedIn Recommendations, They are Puffery&rdquo; I&rsquo;m currently doing research on what skills marketers are looking for in their social media team, and interviewed one hiring manager yesterday. She told me she didn&rsquo;t value the references on LinkedIn and told me that &ldquo;Looking at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/17\/requestedreccomendations_social_networks_i_wont_do_it\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span>Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won&#8217;t Do It<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media","category-social-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}