The number of people visiting your LinkedIn profile and the number of searches you appear in is an accurate way to assess your visibility. The critical component of your profile is the headline. It’s your introduction to the user visiting your profile since it’s the first thing they see. Depending on the quality of that headline, it can make or break your LinkedIn branding. Find out how to write LinkedIn headline in our related article.
What is a Headline on LinkedIn?
Your professional headline on LinkedIn refers to the text below your name in the introduction section. Your headline displays in search results and is separate from your current position title.
Typically, LinkedIn users leverage headlines to promote an area of expertise or showcase a new or current position.
LinkedIn headlines are essential since it:
- Tells visitors your chief job and strengths
- Offers them a reason to connect with you
- Portrays you as an industry leader
- Motivates viewers to click on your profile
What Should My LinkedIn Headline Say?
The perfect LinkedIn headline should expand on your job title and company, regardless of whether you’re trying to attract recruiters or putting your skills in the spotlight.
After that, you can use the remaining characters to specify your specializations, goals, and hard skills.
How to Write a LinkedIn Headline
Stand out from your competition by creating the perfect professional SEO optimized headline. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a professional headline on LinkedIn:
Keeping your LinkedIn Headline Simple
Curate a relatable yet attention-grabbing headline to encourage viewers to click on your profile. Remember, your main goal is to convey your primary skills and how you do your job.
Be Clear, Compelling, and Specific
LinkedIn provides its users with approximately 120 characters to explain their roles. Focus on being clear and specific about yourself, your job, and your skillset.
Offer Unique Value
Ensure your LinkedIn headline offers viewers unique value when they land on your profile.
Be a Little Boastful
Consider showing off your skillset in your LinkedIn headline to draw attention to your profile. Boasting about your honors and awards is an easy way of telling visitors about your accomplishments.
How to Edit a LinkedIn Headline
Here’s how you can edit your LinkedIn headline:
- Visit your LinkedIn homepage
- Select the ‘Me’ icon present on the top of your LinkedIn homepage
- Choose the ‘View Profile’ button
- Click on the ‘Edit’ icon
- Select the ‘Headline’ field within the Edit intro pop-up
Profit from the Good LinkedIn Headline
Creating a keyword-rich or benefit-focused headline is an excellent way of demonstrating your creativity and expressing value.
Once you create the perfect LinkedIn headline, consider adding a video testimonial and resume to make it increasingly engaging and unique.
A good LinkedIn headline incorporates the users’ job title, value, and skillset. It also gives prospects and recruiters a clear picture of your position, value, and current role.
Biggest Mistakes People Make While Writing LinkedIn Headlines
Your LinkedIn headline is your brand statement and hence needs special attention when curating one’s profile. It’s the statement that tries to sell you to viewers, yet most people fail to give it the significance that it deserves.
It’s quite easy to get the headline part of your profile wrong by omitting crucial details or merely misunderstanding the context and purpose of the headline feature. Here’re some of the biggest mistakes users make when crafting their LinkedIn headlines:
1. Current Job Title
Most people make the typical choice of saving their current job title and contemporary employer as their headline. While it provides a quick idea about your current designation and commitments, it fails to give enough useful information that could have been accessed through an adequately customized headline.
Employers look for more info, such as your skills, experiences, and specializations. A good headline for LinkedIn will include these details and do significantly better in generating engagement than headlines containing just the company association and occupation title.
2. Not Even Creating One
Headlines left empty will be set to the current designation title and the name of the relevant employing organization by default. If you do not wish to bear the same potential losses as the mistake mentioned earlier, be sure to create a personalized headline yourself rather than leaving it for the app to handle.
3. Not Implementing Keywords
Keywords play a vital part in showing up your profile in search results. It is a good idea to include keywords related to your career objectives or the jobs you want to target. If you fail to do so, your profile will have little or no chances to appear at the top of search results in your niche. It means failure to use keywords in your headline can hinder your LinkedIn visibility.
4. Lying
Being dishonest in your headline is probably a sure-fire way to burn the bridges to career growth and business opportunities. Discrepancies between your profile and working experiences are easy to spot and impossible to forgive.
5. Not Catchy Enough
Your headline is your primary selling point. It’s the only thing separating your potential employment or lead from visiting your profile and engaging through communication. If your headline is dull, monotonous, lacking information, or devoid of key skills, LinkedIn users will be less likely to interact with you.
Employers often surf the platform in search of candidates to hire, and if the headline is not appealing or catchy enough, the candidate will probably slide out of consideration and fail to make the shortlist.
The same holds when it comes to prospecting. As a salesperson, you may send connection requests and messages to your prospects on LinkedIn. If your headline isn’t catchy, they’re more likely to ignore your request and messages.
Octopus CRM will help you to create the best headline for your LinkedIn profile. Our professional LinkedIn profile makeover service is what you need, just contact Octopus team.
