Submitted by guest blogger, Maeve Naughton – Senior Manager, Field Marketing at Fluke Networks and Customer Reference Expert

In my younger years, if you were endorsed by someone, it meant that you were being recommended by them. Someone valued and approved of your services or work and were willing to stand up and say, “Yes, Maeve is a good bet! I’d hire her.” It was almost like a badge of honor. You wouldn’t endorse the guy you bought an apple from because you shared an email or even a phone call to find out where his apple stand is located. That would just be silly. You don’t really know anything about them. You might, however, endorse their ability to grow great apples, after you have tried some. Maybe you found value in the price of the apple, maybe it was the greenest one on the block, offered the most crunch, lasted a week without going bad. I think you get the point.

Things have changed, and change isn’t necessarily a good thing. LinkedIn’s endorsement feature is such a thing.

According to the LinkedIn blog from Dec. 18, 2012, “Endorsements are a valuable way to enhance your professional identity and is an even simpler way to help build the professional brands of your connections. And we’re seeing great reception, with more than 550 million endorsements given out since launch.”

What I would love to know is, how many of those 550 million endorsements are legit? To me it seems like the LinkedIn endorsements are a popularity contest. Maybe even the same idea as seeing how many Twitter followers you have.

Why do I keep bringing up “legit”? I’m not going to call out people specifically but every now and then I get a happy little notice saying “so and so has endorsed you”. Well that’s just fabulous. I dated him 10 years ago and he would have no idea what my press release writing skills are like. Or, I met so and so at a party and now they’re endorsing me for my “Marketing strategy”. Funny, because we never talked about Marketing, just different types of beer we both like.

Why do I care so much about what LinkedIn is doing with this new feature? I have years of customer reference experience and taking lightly what is seen as a reference, is, well, disturbing to me. It belittles the value of a reference. I get that it’s an easy thing to do, just click a button and you’ve ultimately acted as a reference for someone, but the real world of references isn’t that easy. Reference professionals are some very hard working folks. They make sure that the right reference is matched to the right opportunity whether it be speaking with an analyst group or speaking with a prospect. It’s not as easy as clicking a button and it’s done. Hopefully people are smarter and know that just because someone is endorsed doesn’t mean that they’re good at what they’ve been endorsed for. They need to look at the actual recommendations, talk to references, both ones provided and those not provided.

With all this being said, I do love LinkedIn and am on it a few times a day checking out the suggested news for me and seeing who is moving where and all that good stuff. It’s a great site, but I think they majorly failed with the endorsement feature. References aren’t as easy as a simple click.

Do you agree?

‘Big data’ is another one of those buzzwords that had reached the tipping point and is a topic that any business person worth their salt needs to be somewhat conversant on.

My clients have been asking me how big data fits in with their focus on understanding their customers using traditional tools like surveys and interviewing. As perplexing as the concept can appear to be, it’s really quite simple. Traditional tools still have a place in this new ‘big data’ world…

Understanding your customers’ needs and wants and getting inside their heads about what challenges they face so you can figure out how to be invaluable to them is hugely important to business success. This information is data, regardless of how you GET that data. Conducting your own surveys, interviewing your customers, or buying syndicated market data. Plain and simple, it’s just data.

Likewise, the information that can be collected about the transactions your customers conduct with your company is also data. Whether you mine your own databases for that information or ask your customers directly. It’s data.

Similarly, information you can get about the behaviors that your customers or target market exhibit BEYOND their interactions with your company and information about the environments/settings in which they do what they do is also data.

The farther you get away from your own interactions with your customers, the more likely it is that you will need to turn to other sources for the data, but it’s all just data.

‘Big data’ refers to data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using regular database management tools and applications that businesses would be using for their daily processes. There are specialized tools that programmers can use to basically wrestle down big data sets and find meaningful insights from.

But don’t get overwhelmed…again, data is data. And your approach to data shouldn’t change, regardless of how MUCH data you are dealing with. It’s very simple:

• Define WHY you are collecting data…what are you trying to learn?
• Decide what sources of data think will best address the ‘why’ (start small and expand later)
• Figure out where you will store the data (start small and get more sophisticated later)
• Set a plan for analyzing the data (how, who, how often, etc.)
• Decide who needs to be informed about what you’ve learned (think across the organization)
• Repeat…