Gratitude, in Action

Welcome to my Weekly Content Rundown, where I shine a light on the best content from LinkedIn business influencers over the past week. These folks are creating content that's unique, thought-provoking, and relevant.

If you're looking for help creating your own content on Linkedin, check out my free eBook The Daily Post: Build Your LinkedIn Audience Every Day.

This Week's Rundown

Happy holidays, Linkedin family! I hope you ate some delicious pie this week and took pictures of all your food. Here's my wife and I with the spread we cooked for her family in El Paso. The turkey was being carved at picture time.

Before the feast, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. I'm won't fib and say Linkedin was top of mind at the dinner table. But I did spend the rest of the day reflecting on 2019.

It's been an exciting year for me. I left my job at PatientPop after nearly five years, and I started my own business. This has been my most challenging and rewarding work so far.

With fewer geographical constraints, my wife and I made it a priority to travel as much as possible. Seize the days we have. We visited Japan, Argentina, and New Zealand this year.

None of my personal success would be possible without the incredible people I've known and worked with over the years. The universe has a funny way of bringing people into our lives, and I've been awfully lucky to learn from so many different kinds of people over my career. Many come to mind. Too many to list here.

As I mulled over professional relationships, old and new - I got to thinking about how to express my gratitude. Many people used Linkedin to thank and tag people they appreciate this week. I felt inspired by that.

It's nice to say you're thankful for people and talk about giving back. It's good vibes. Holiday cheer. Positive chatter. It's nice. So when I started thinking about what to highlight for the Content Rundown this week, I was thinking about appreciation. But I wanted to use the rundown for something more than good vibes. I'm about action.

I thought about elevating the good vibes here on Linkedin. Rabbit hole of ideas, but I arrived at the simplest of "action" destinations.

To make sentiments of gratitude more meaningful, how about turning a casual shout out of thanks into a lasting note of true professional appreciation - with a Linkedin recommendation?

Recommendations on Linkedin are among the most underutilized features on the platform. Same with any other social channel, Linkedin is only as useful as we make it. The more we exploit its features, the more we get out of it.

A Linkedin recommendation is the modern letter of recommendation. And writing high-quality recommendations is a powerful way to add value to the platform, enhance your own personal brand, and express all that appreciation you're feeling this holiday season.

So - in honor of this time of year when we talk a lot about gratitude, I'm doing something a bit different with the content rundown this week. I'm featuring some exceptional Linkedin recommendations.

In doing this, I hope to inspire you to turn your professional appreciation into meaningful action that benefits the recipients of your good thoughts and serves real value to the Linkedin community.

If you haven't written a Linkedin recommendation before, here's a handy recipe to follow.

Now, let's take a look at some well-written recommendations for inspiration.

Here's a recommendation I made for Julia Bortolazzo. Julia is a special kind of employee because she's always curious and eager to learn. And then she teaches others. This is a unique quality, so I wanted to emphasize that in my endorsement.

Here's a recommendation Nancy Ward wrote for Richard Harris. Nancy jumps right into explaining Richard's expertise and the results she enjoyed from working with him.

Here's a recommendation John Durant penned about my wife, Jennifer. John highlights his own personal brand with witty writing here. But he's also specific in sharing what it was like to work with Jennifer and what she excelled at, specifically.

Here's one that Michael Jaroscak wrote for Amy Volas. Michael's recommendation is especially helpful because we can see he's known Amy for a long period of time. He speaks to Amy's unique soft skills and personal brand, and paints the picture of what it's like to know her.

Here's a pretty robust recommendation that Kevin Dorsey wrote for Reggie Paquette. Kevin details what it's like to work with Reggie with specific examples of Reggie's professional demeanor, work style, and marketing expertise.

Here's a recommendation that Julia Rabkin wrote for Megan Bowen. It's a great compliment to write a recommendation for someone you reported to, because it endorses their people management experience and abilities. Julia provides specifics about the kind of work she did with Megan and speaks to Megan's leadership skills.

Here are two recommendations written by Dan Hill. If you check out Dan's profile, you'll find many more examples of excellent recommendations he's authored. Dan is good at describing what it's like to work with people, and he really has a way with words, as you can see here:

When you get done reading this, write one recommendation for someone who deserves it for their work in 2019. Shoot me a DM and share the recommendation you wrote. I'd love to see it.

This concludes this edition of the Content Rundown. If you have any feedback about this project, drop me a note at [email protected] or shoot me a DM here on LinkedIn. I always welcome feedback and suggestions.

You can also find me around the web at:

• The Official Justin Website
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Free eBook - The Daily Post: Build Your LinkedIn Audience Every Day

Thanks for reading, and see ya next week!