Crafting Powerful LinkedIn Recommendations: 7 Top Tips

LinkedIn recommendations sit so far down a profile that most visitors stop scrolling well before they reach them, and I never look at anyone else’s.

All the same, I still ask for them and I still write them.

I’ve written about the minimum LinkedIn that works. A complete LinkedIn profile with recommendations looks more credible than one without, even if nobody reads them individually. They function less as persuasive content and more as a signal that real people have worked with you and were willing to say so publicly. That signal has value, even if it’s hard to measure.

Why is it hard to get LinkedIn recommendations?

Getting people to give recommendations is a pain.

I’ve been asking clients for them across 54+ ghostwriting projects, and the pattern is consistent. Sometimes they write one quickly, but it’s generic. “Richard is great to work with. Highly recommend.” That tells a visitor nothing useful. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. They agree to write one, then don’t follow through. They keep saying they will. Weeks pass. Months. Eventually you stop asking because it feels like nagging. For more, see tips for optimizing LinkedIn profiles [interview] and LinkedIn account restricted.

The main reason people don’t write recommendations isn’t laziness or ingratitude.

They don’t know what to write. Standing in front of a blank text box and trying to summarize a professional relationship in a few paragraphs is difficult for most people. They know they appreciated the work, but translating that appreciation into specific, useful language isn’t a skill most professionals have practiced.

For ghostwriting clients, there’s an additional complication: anonymity.

Most ghostwriting clients don’t want to publicly state that someone else wrote their book. Some solve this by crediting me as their “writing coach” or “editor” in the recommendation. That makes it possible for them to acknowledge the relationship without revealing the full scope of the work. That compromise works. It’s better than no recommendation at all.

How do you get useful LinkedIn recommendations?

Don’t just ask “Would you write me a LinkedIn recommendation?” That question produces either silence or generic praise. Instead, make it easy for them. Tell them what you’d like them to mention. The project you worked on together, the result it produced, the skill that made the collaboration work. Give them a structure so they’re not staring at a blank box. The best recommendations come from people in the field you want to be in. Back when I wrote LinkedIn profiles, my ideal was to ask people I met at a conference, connect with them afterward and use LinkedIn’s Ask for a recommendation option. Skill endorsements were a low priority, because recruiters are the only ones who look at them.

Timing matters. Ask when the project is fresh, when the client is happiest with the result, when the value of your work is most obvious. Asking six months after a project ends means they’ve moved on mentally and the recommendation becomes a chore instead of a natural expression of satisfaction.

If you’re a ghostwriter or anyone else whose work involves confidentiality, suggest the language they can use. “You can mention me as your writing coach” or “You can reference the project without naming the book” removes the obstacle that stops many clients from writing anything at all.

I’ve also written draft recommendations for clients to submit under their own name. This has worked a couple of times, but usually the same pattern plays out: they say they’ll post it and never do.

Write recommendations for others first. This is reciprocity. When someone receives a thoughtful recommendation from you, many will feel motivated to return the favor. And if they don’t, you’ve still done something useful for someone in your network. In my profile-writing days, my rule of thumb was to get at least two recommendations a month and give at least two. If someone doesn’t know what to write, offer to write it for them and ask whether that’s okay. We ghostwriters do that a lot, and most people say fine.

How do you write a LinkedIn recommendation worth reading?

If you’re going to write a recommendation for someone, make it specific enough to be useful. “Great to work with” is meaningless. Anyone can say that about anyone. A useful recommendation describes what the person did, what the result was, and what made their approach different from what you’d get from someone else. Video testimonials work the same way. An unpolished one from the heart, with somebody in front of their own background saying what you did and how it came out, beats a scripted one. The ones read off a sheet are almost useless, and sometimes worse.

Instead of “John is a talented writer,” try something like “John took a disorganized collection of interview notes and turned them into a manuscript that sounded exactly like me. He met every deadline and handled three major direction changes without complaint.” That tells a reader something real about what working with John is like. Keep it short. Three to five sentences is enough. Nobody reads long recommendations. The people who do glance at them are scanning for specifics. Give them something concrete to scan and move on.

Only write recommendations for people whose work you can endorse. A half-hearted recommendation is obvious, and it reflects poorly on both the person receiving it and the person writing it. If you can’t say something specific and honest, it’s better to decline gracefully than to produce something generic that helps no one.

Do LinkedIn Recommendations Matter?

You must have them. You should give them. The more the better, because a profile with no recommendations or just two or three looks incomplete. A profile with twenty looks like someone who has worked with a lot of people who were willing to say so publicly. That’s the entire value proposition.

When I wrote LinkedIn profiles, I told clients to build toward about 30 recommendations given and 30 received. You don’t have to do it tomorrow. Six months to a year is fine. They’re easier to get than you think when you send the person a sample they can use or ignore. And every one you give puts your name on someone else’s profile. Make each one specific, and work in words people search for when they look for what you do.

The direct impact on business? Minor or zero. I can’t point to a single client relationship that started because someone read my recommendations. Nobody has ever mentioned them in an initial conversation.

The career coaches and LinkedIn experts who call them “essential” are overstating the case. But having none is worse than having some, the same way having no profile photo is worse than having one. It’s not that the photo closes the deal. It’s that not having one raises a question you don’t want raised.

Get recommendations. Give recommendations. Make it as easy as possible for people to write them. Accept that most people won’t follow through no matter what you do. And don’t expect them to generate business on their own. They’re one piece of a credibility picture that only works when everything else is in place too.