Ouch, LinkedIn, why did you do that to me?
LinkedIn recommendations for Susan Weiner’s presentations
If you’ve ever doubted the value of hosting content of your own website or blog, I hope my story makes you reconsider. My problem? I am losing valuable recommendations from LinkedIn. A quick tip for you: Take screenshots of any of your recommendations that will be affected.
Before you panic at the thought of losing valuable recommendations from your personal profile on LinkedIn, let me reassure you that they’re not affected. Instead, it’s the recommendations on LinkedIn Company Pages’ “Product & Services” tabs that will disappear as LinkedIn discontinues that tab. This means I’ll lose the 12 recommendations on my Financial Blogging book page, along with four recommendations for Speeches and Workshops, and three for Investment Writing Top Tips.
It never occurred to me that LinkedIn would deprive me of the recommendations that seemed like such an important part of their offering. LinkedIn did offer to send me a copy of these recommendations, upon request. I received them in an ugly Excel spreadsheet with typos—quite a contrast to the attractive presentation on the LinkedIn page that included my recommenders’ photos.
LinkedIn recommendations for Investment Writing Top Tips
I suppose I could email my recommenders, asking them to copy-paste their recommendations to enter them as recommendations on my LinkedIn personal profile. However, I don’t think I’ll bother. Now that I have more than 20 recommendations there, I think new recommendations may get lost. Also, the LinkedIn’s personal profiles’ categories for recommenders don’t really fit for people who bought a book or attended a presentation, rather than hiring me to work directly for them. Also, I liked how the “Products & Services” tab let me group recommendations by category, which was more user-friendly.
I shouldn’t be surprised by LinkedIn’s betrayal. After all, I lost content when Facebook deleted its “Discussion” pages. Oh well, I still have this blog as my soapbox.
It’s a cautionary tale, Susan. Every platform other than the ones we control ourselves can lull us into thinking that we have shared agendas.
As in: “They would never yank that capability away, it’s too important to my business and me.”
Oh yes, they will and they can. It turns out it wasn’t important to them!
I feel your pain. Thanks for sharing it here to help impress upon others.
Thank you for commenting, Pat.
LinkedIn suggests using other features of its Company Pages as replacements. However, having lost what I invested in “Products & Services,” I’m not inclined to put more time into Company Pages.
LinkedIn’s rapid growth has far outstripped the ability of its senior executives to manage. The technology is clunky (why can’t we use occasional HTML), the Customer Service is glacial (weeks), and the corporate arrogance is truly in-your-face, as your tale affirms.
Warren,
Thank you for your sympathetic comment. LinkedIn can be very frustrating.