Practicing Professionals Blog by Mark V Bullock

I only recently put myself up on LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace. This was after years of not really getting what the value was, and my concerns over the “professionalism” of my being on such sites. But, I bit the bullet and set-up my profile on each, and started wondering – now what?

I figured out that it was probably a good idea to scour my address book for the people in my own network that were already on one or more of these sites (some I had not been in touch with for years). I found a few dozen, and decided to invite them to “join” my network. About half of those I invited joined – ok, not sure what happened with the other half, but now what to do with those I was connected to? How could I leverage this medium, what could I contribute that would be of value?

Then it dawned on me, how about making “recommendations” and/or “endorsing” the people I knew. It would be a simple gesture, acknowledging who each of these people were for me. Many I had not directly done business with, but I could certainly speak about their character – what kind of person they were. So I took a Sunday afternoon and wrote about 25 recommendations and/or endorsements for those in my “network” on LinkedIn. I spoke from the heart, in plain language, again simply acknowledging these people for their individual contributions to me, or the community around them – what ever came to mind.

What happened next frankly stunned me. First off a handful of individuals immediately recommended or endorsed me back – thanks guys! But what was more important was the emails & calls I got thanking me for my endorsement, and wanting to know how I was, what was up to, and when could we meet for coffee – lunch whatever. Now as I said, some of these folks I hadn’t interacted with in a few years, and honestly most were not aware of my career shift towards marketing.

In short the combination of relationship “re-connects”, “cross-connects”, direct business, and referred business that I received thought this simple act of endorsing others, was totally disproportionate to the relatively small effort I initially made. You see I had stumbled on a powerful secret – I made it about them, not about me. The moral of the story: Join an online social network, be authentic & generous, connect & endorse others. Business is conducted personally between people, people are personally connected to each other – get personally connected – conduct more business, personally!

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