Working With Skills and Endorsements

The Skills section of your LinkedIn profile is vital for a real estate agent because it lets you add your own specialties to your profile and allows other people to endorse you for specific skills. The more that people think you are proficient in a given skill, the more endorsements you'll receive. More endorsements equals more referrals, and thus your business will grow.

Let's scroll down here to where it says Skills and Endorsements. You can simply click Add a skill. Once you do that, it's going to bring you to this dialogue box, and it's going to say Skills and Endorsement Settings at the top.

At the very top, you have the option, Do you want to be endorsed? Yes or No. Basically, this means, do you want your co-workers and colleagues to be allowed to come in and say, "Yes, you know something about this" or "You know something about that." It's a great way to crowdsource information about your expertise, so I recommend leaving it turned on. The other check boxes correspond to whether or not you want to be included in the endorsement suggestions for your connections. That means when other people log in to LinkedIn, they'll see a box at the top of their profile that says, "Does Joe know about x, y, or z?" If they think you do, they'll endorse you for it.

This is something that you can do each and every time you log in to LinkedIn. As you start to endorse more and more of your connections, you also have the ability to choose whether or not LinkedIn shows you suggestions to endorse your connections. So, do you want to see that box at the top of your profile so that you can endorse your friends and colleagues? Also, do you want LinkedIn to send you notifications via email when someone endorses you? If you have a large connection list, this might not be ideal, so you might want to turn that one off, but when you're just starting out, I think it's a pretty cool thing to leave checked on.

At the bottom, this is where you actually get to set up your expertise. One area of expertise that a real estate agent might have is Short Sales. You'll notice that as I type it in, I get a list of suggestions. I could click Short Sales. I can also add Listing Homes, which is a big keyword. If your choice doesn't show up, you might think about rephrasing. For example, if I type in Condominiums, it does not come up, but if I type in Condos we are good to go. In a field like real estate, just about all the specialities should come up as an option if worded correctly.

Once you've added all your chosen skills, you can click Save. They will then be added to your Skills and Endorsements section. As people continue to come to your profile, they will see the various skills you have listed here and have the ability to endorse you for those skills.

The more people who endorse you, the higher the skill will rise in the grand scheme of things, which makes it very easy for other people to have an input in how your LinkedIn profile is crafted. It's a pretty interesting feature, and it's one of my favorites.