Write a Better LinkedIn Profile Headline for Your Personal Brand

Your LinkedIn headline is a pivotal part of the shop front window of your professional personal brand, so make sure it showcases your value.

Your LinkedIn headline forms the first impression of your personal brand. Make sure this sums up your unique value proposition in a perfect pitch for potential contacts, clients and career moves.

Here are my top 4 tips to make your LinkedIn headline pop for your professional personal brand:

1. Put your personal brand expertise in headlights

As they say, riches are in the niches. Make the unique expertise your professional personal brand brings to the marketplace clear in your LinkedIn headline. When I am writing a LinkedIn headline, I prefer to place this up front. Keep in mind that despite the 220-character limit for your LinkedIn headline, this cuts down considerably in preview modes. So don’t bury the lead for your personal brand’s most essential value.

Think outside the box of your current title with your current employer. Let go of any attachment you might have to this identity and think bigger instead. Consider the value you have to offer your industry. If you have completed the professional experience section of your LinkedIn profile, you’ll already be searchable for queries relating to your current workplace. So, use your headline to show the impact you have on the marketplace overall.

By highlighting your expertise instead of just your current title, you show passion for your profession. You’re more than someone who just does their job. You see how this work fits into the bigger picture of your industry.

2. SEO your LinkedIn headline

Since you can have 220 characters to work with in your LinkedIn profile headline, use them. But use them wisely. What keywords do you most want to align your professional personal brand with? What are recruiters or potential contacts or clients searching for? Include these in your headline. I prefer to place these after your expertise. If your expertise is the headline, think of this as the subhead. If the headline is what you do, this might be more of the technical detail about how you do it.

3. Highlight your why

As Simon Sinek said it best in Start with Why:

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

With the generous character count of your LinkedIn profile headline, this should leave you just enough room to concisely share your Why. Remember that bigger picture thinking we mentioned earlier? This is where you anchor the impact that has on your industry, or the people you work with or for.

With storytelling formulas in mind, this would be showing them the success story or what the “promised land” of your work looks like. It’s more than what you do, it’s why it matters. It’s the answer to the question “So, what?”.

In an ideal world, following Sinek’s Golden Circle formula, you’d start here and move outward to your how and what. However, given that the preview mode of your headline cuts some of this off, I would be careful here. If you can get your purpose down to a few key words, lead with these. If it needs a little more, I’d move it to the back of your headline.  Extra points if you write a purpose that’s clear and engaging and also links to other target search engine optimisation (SEO) words.

4. Create visual interest

If you’re capitalising on the character count, your LinkedIn headline is likely to look too text heavy. This will reduce its ability to catch the eye and be easily digestible at a glance. So, once you’re done writing, do a visual edit.

Capitalise some areas. For an extra long LinkedIn profile headline, I prefer to capitalise the expertise of the first keywords up front. This can also create visual contrast, which the human eye is naturally drawn toward.

Add emojis and symbols to create further visual contrast and interest. This also serves to break up your text better. Find an emoji relevant to your expertise or personal brand promise, or use symbols or emojis that help to act as a pointer to move the eyes along the rest of the headline, such as arrows. Just make sure you use your emojis wisely and that they are professional and engaging and not too childish.

Your LinkedIn profile headline is prime real estate for your personal brand. Invest your efforts wisely for the perfect pitch for your professional value.  Stay tuned for more tips on building your personal brand on LinkedIn in my next blog.