Headline, Headline: Read All About Me

Welcome to the global newsstand that LinkedIn created. Similar to an urban newsstand, people “passing by” your LinkedIn profile will only stop to consider reading about you if you have a compelling headline that makes them want to read more.

A LinkedIn headline is only 120 characters including spaces. Anything more than 120 and your excess characters fall into the abyss. Thus, condensing “why you” into such a small space is really hard. If it doesn’t challenge you, then you haven’t tried hard enough.

Most people take the easy route and paste their title and company name like “CFO at XYZ, Inc.” or worse, “Owner, Fox Associates.” But do these headlines make someone stop and say to themselves, “Hmmm, sounds interesting. I want to read more about this person”? I doubt it.  

There is no value proposition, no reason to dig deeper. No life, no interest factor, no brand of you is conveyed. And in our attention-deficit world, that’s not getting you noticed, or even seriously considered, as a candidate for that job, that consulting assignment, that big project.

Rather, think hard and edit often and you will come up with a clear and concise headline like the one to the left that reads,

“Helping to add certainty to client financial decisions | Expanding our team of career-minded financial associates”

(Thank you, Susan Glusica.)

Tomorrow we will examine why this is a great headline. Stay tuned.