Get Found On LinkedIn – How To Craft A Clickable Headline And Attract Your Dream Prospects

Your LinkedIn headline is a branding tool that can enhance your professional value. But without a strategy, it can send the wrong message and fail to connect with prospects.

As a snapshot of your best skills and talents, it’s your first chance to grab your reader’s attention. So if one of your goals is to make meaningful connections, your headline shouldn’t be the “cookie cutter” lingo most users slap together in a rush.

You have to make every word count.

Here’s a primer on how to craft a clickable headline that attracts your ideal prospects.

Break the mold and diversify

Your headline isn’t merely a space to paste your job title. Using your LinkedIn profile like a resume is like telling prospects that you’re a commodity among the tens of thousands of members with the same title. But with 120 characters to play with, your headline needs to grab attention with keywords and phrases that will separate you from the pack.

So the rule of thumb to writing a great LinkedIn headline is to diversify.

Ask yourself: “What words do I want to be associated with?” and “What can I say to make readers want to know more about me?”

Say you’re a Software Engineer who’s recently been laid off. You’ve also authored an eBook on music production and want to use LinkedIn to meet more folks from the music industry. Your headline could say “Software Engineer looking for new opportunities | Musician | Author of “Secrets of Indie Music Production” and still have 13 characters to use. Breaking away from the strict “job tittle only” format tells users a story and gives them a more complete image without constricting yourself to a professional title.

If you speak another language, adding “Bilingual Software Engineer” enhances your profile and makes you more marketable.

Diversifying your headline adds more colour and personality and gives prospects a broader picture of who you are and what you can do. So dig deeper than your job title to craft the core message you want to convey to your prospects.

Spy on your competition

You can’t craft a compelling headline without comparing your best competitors’, so here’s how:

Before you spy: if you don’t want others knowing that you’ve viewed their profile, change your settings to select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile:

1. From your LinkedIn home page, select “Privacy & Settings” from the top right-hand menu.


2. At the bottom of the page under “Privacy Controls”, click “Select what others see when you‘ve viewed their profile”. Or, access your account and go straight to the dialogue box from this link to change your settings.

Review how your competition uses their job title in their summary. How many connections do they have? Are they active in different Groups? Are their endorsements aligned with the keywords in their headline?

All of these play a role in how your competition ranks in search results. Because LinkedIn’s algorithm works like a search engine’s, members appearing on the first results page are the most active and well connected. So it goes without saying that being active on LinkedIn will increase your chances of being found. And the first step in making those key connections (who will view your profile, endorse you, hire you or do business with you) and boosting your visibility is with a clickable and compelling headline.

Your competitors with high rankings are doing something right. Study their profiles to see what you can do differently.

Avoid meaningless buzzwords

“Gurus” and “Experts” are everywhere and they run wild on LinkedIn. But given today’s warp speed changes, who can rightfully claim either of these titles?

Self-descriptions such as Devotee, Magician (unless you are a magician), Junkie, Resourceful, Dabbler, Passionate, Humane, Enthusiast, Creative, Driven, Nerd, Geek, Connoisseur, Aficionado, Evangelist and Innovator, to name just a few, should be avoided.

Colourful? Yes. Descriptive? Sure. Will a recruiter or HR manager ever search these terms to find their ideal candidate? Not likely.

If you’re in creative profession, use your profile summary to play with sub headlines, upload documents or samples and add special symbols to spruce things up. But reserve specific, meaningful and factual keywords for your headline. Every character counts – why waste this space with empty, unquantifiable words that prospects will never use to find you?

Growing your LinkedIn network and getting found takes some effort. But you’ll get there faster if your strategy includes an engaging headline that helps open doors.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1gKJKy0