Guestbook and Self Marketing

We dedicated the last post to searching for jobs on XING so this week we would like to discuss an often underestimated aspect of your profile: your guestbook.

Many members are already using it as an excellent tool for marketing themselves. There’s hardly a better way to advertise than through satisfied customers and enthusiastic contacts. These kinds of entries are not only rewarding to read for oneself, they also show members how much other people appreciate the quality of a person’s work. What is more valuable today than a sincere recommendation?

Setting up your guestbook

First you should check your current settings. Obviously, the guestbook feature has to be activated before people can submit entries. I recommend regularly checking your own “profile pinboard”.

You can adjust your notification settings so that you automatically receive an email when someone makes an entry in your guestbook. It is then very simple to delete unwelcome entries and to directly respond to friendly entries or enquiries. You can also respond to entries in your own profile and start a dialog with your contacts.

Displaying your guestbook

It’s perfectly acceptable to ask satisfied customers or business partners to make an entry in your guestbook. If you do this, it is always a good idea to thank the person for posting a positive entry.

By the way, you can also use this effective advertising medium for your most important contacts. Make the type of entries in your contacts’ guestbooks that you would like to see others make in yours. It doesn’t really matter if you express your respect, thank them for a job well done (if that is, in fact, the case – fake entries can quickly make you look bad!) or congratulate them on a promotion, for example. You can remove your own entries in other people’s guestbooks at any time, by the way. So if you would like to attract more attention to your profile, this is another effective way of doing that.

In any case, your contact will certainly be pleased to receive a few nice words that everyone can see. Good deeds tend to come back around! As our member, Bob Littell says:

“Good things happen to those people… who make good things happen”

More information about Littell’s networking concept “Netweaving” can be found in the XING Group on this topic.

And with that we’d like to say: Have fun bringing your guestbook to life!