When you start creating your professional LinkedIn profile a key area that is seen by everyone is your professional headline. Some will put owner, sales representative, or technical support as their professional headline. These do define your job but do not tell anyone who you are. Many contend, and we strongly agree, that the professional headline property within LinkedIn is the most important part of your professional LinkedIn profile. Your headline will determine whether someone will take the effort to continue to learn more about you.
Your LinkedIn professional headline is critical as it's the only customizable personal information people will see of you in listings, group discussions, homefeeds. When you appear in search results for instance, your name, location and headline will be the three visible bits. This information is also appearing within regular search engines as well.
Be Real About Who You Are!
Before we go into a catchy LinkedIn professional headline we want to iterate a key purpose of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not Facebook! Many people will embellish who they are on Facebook. This is not the place to do that. LinkedIn is a professional setting and speaking and being truthful needs to be foremost on your mind. As many of JM2 Webdesigners customers know that we live by rule #1 "No lying". When working on your professional headline be truthful in everything that you do.
Is Your Headline click worthy?
You have a mere 120 characters in your LinkedIn profile headline to grab the attention of people. You should be utilizing every character strategically to get them to view your profile and learn more about who you are. When people are looking for qualified experts for a given field make certain that your headline stands out and describes who you are.
Quality LinkedIn Headline examples
- Serving Valparaiso Indiana for quality web design using proven techniques that generate sales using best practices.
- Social media expert in Northwest Indiana · LinkedIn and Social Media seminars for groups and organizations
- Creates systematic use of Social Media in Ventures since 2013 | Social Media Manager | Consultant | Author | Coach
- I train and coach businesses and individuals on the benefits of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter integration for growth
- Reliable pet-sitter in Valparaiso that reports back to you exactly what your dog is up to when you're not home.
- Copywriter who knows how to craft information from Chesterton, Indiana. Oh and you'll never beat me at scrabble!
Does your headline include keywords?
When someone takes a glance in search results will a prospect be able to quickly identify that you offer what they're looking for? If you wish to see how well your profile works type in a chosen keyword that you would like to be found on. If your profile shows up and looks like how you want it to then you're golden. If it doesn't or your competition shows up better than yours then you need to make some changes.
When you create your headline you do not have the ability to use bold, italics or colorful fonts so the only thing that can make your LinkedIn headline pop is your words to get your point across. The one item that you do have is UPPERCASE to help make your text standout.
Getting Attention
To have a headline that talks to your prospects is the key to your profile being found. When determining what headline to use here are some of the key ideas for implementing a headline that conveys the information you need to get attention.
- What have you accomplished in the last 12-24 months for your clients?
- Have you been mentioned in magazines, newspapers or other industry pertinent core areas of focus?
- Are you rebranding yourself? Use the keywords that you want to be found under.
- Are you an expert in a specific content area?
- Do you talk at conferences, seminars or other group functions?
Search Engine Optimization
When using LinkedIn you will find that it is truly a search engine optimization (SEO) friendly site. Many only think of SEO as part of website design. SEO is also integral for your LinkedIn profile account. The search engines will actually index your name, your headline and initial biography and show it in the search engine result pages (SERPs). When you have your profile properly optimized you will be able to show not only within the LinkedIn result pages by the search engines as well.
Other Tips
When it comes to creating your headline you've already read a lot of great information. What we haven't covered are items that can lead to a great first impression. That is what your headline is all about anyway isn't it?
- Make certain to your proper grammar when creating your headline
- Spell words correctly in your headline
- Don't make every word with uppercase letters. "This is a headline" is a lot more professional than "This Is A Headline".
- Forget about having a constant "sales" pitch and work on providing a leading value proposition for the prospect.
- If there are keywords that you want to be found under don't just list them in your headline. Add them in the rest of your profile as well. Not only your welcome message but also previous jobs, projects, etc. that you've worked on.
- Be specific in what your headline says and conveys only what you want it to convey
- Be creative! People will remember your headline
Conclusion
With minimal effort you can change your profile from good to GREAT by utilizing some best practices to sell yourself. After all, that is what being on LinkedIn is all about. Take your time and vet your headline ideas off of some of your family and friends. They will give you some great advice and look at your headline in a different way than you did. If you would like some assistance in writing your profile you can check JM2 Webdesigners out at any of our social media seminars we have in Northwest Indiana, contact us here, call us at @BUSINESSPHONETOLLFREE@ or email us at @BUSINESSEMAILADDRESS@.
