How to Write a Standout LinkedIn Headline

How to Write a Standout LinkedIn Headline Youre on LinkedIn to be noticed for the rights reasons. Potential employers will search for you, and  colleagues, clients and customers are bound to check you out at some point too. Your profile is  your brand,  so dont let yourself be oh-so-bland. When it comes to acing your profile, the headline is arguably the most important feature.  Most users  will spend a lot  of time and energy on  getting their whole profile completed; theyll meticulously fill in their previous employer details, craft a compelling bio and tick all the relevant boxes, then feel theyve done a cracking job, and move on. This is all still important to do, but if there is one little field that is often overlooked, its definitely the headline. Why is the LinkedIn headline important? Your LinkedIn headline is critical as its the only customisable personal information people will about  of you in listings, group discussions and home feeds. When you appear in search results for instance, your name, location and headline will be the three visible bits. That bio you spent 2 weeks writing doesnt make the cut, nor do your Pulse posts. If you havent got something interesting written in your headline, youll just appear like every other Tom, Dick and Harry who does a similar job to you. Unless  your  name is Joe Kickass and you are based in a cool place like  Trollhattan or Xanadu, people wont necessarily feel compelled to click. How do most people  get it so wrong? Its actually very easy to get this wrong.  If you dont change your headline manually, it will default to your job title and company. Sometimes your job title is self-explanatory, but more often it isnt. what does Account Manager even mean? Who is Account, and why are you managing him?  A bad example of a job title is  Consultant at Smithers Smithers. Consultant could mean anything from kettle engineer to project director. Other variations are Founder (do they still work in the business?) and Partner (silent or active?). Smithers Smithers is not a household brand and you cant deduce what they do. This is a typical problem for consultancies, law firms, accountancy firms and other professional services organisations. My default would be to assume  theyre probably funeral directors, it kind of sounds like they are, especially if they added Son at the end. Mediocrity A decent example would be Life Insurance Broker at AIG Insurance. We can pretty much guess what this person does and what they sell. We also recognise the brand. What we dont know is who the target audience is; could be individuals and it could be corporate policies. Or excellence? The best example would be where you manually go in and change the headline to a marketing phrase that is relevant to your target audience. If you have a personal brand statement youll want to use it here. Helping Farmers Sell Truckloads of Turnips is a good start, but still, it can be even more targeted.  Helping British Farmers Sell Truckloads of Class I Turnips is even better. By reading this we instantly know what the person does, whom they do it for and that they have at least some sense of humour. 5  Tips to get you started: First think value proposition how do you provide value? Be as specific as possible here and remember the old saying: the nicher, the richer. Think target audience whom do you provide value for and who will read this? Its not always the end customer that is the decision maker. Unique selling point you are likely to be stacked up against your competitors and you had better have your USP in the headline already to stand out. Now think keywords, pepper your headline with the keywords that you think people will do searches for. The more technical terms here the better (software, standards, certifications etc). Finally, think memorable. Your greatest challenge online is to be remembered so be creative and/or funny so that your headline sticks with the people that matter. Sounds great, how do I actually change my headline? Simple! You login to LinkedIn, click on My Profile / Edit and Headline  then change it. You only have 120 characters so you have to be somewhat concise. Your turn Whats your LinkedIn headline? Please share it  in the comments below! Image: Shutterstock