burstingI always wrestled with having only 120 characters in my LinkedIn Headline.

It’s really the hardest section of LinkedIn to finesse!

Through the magic of coopetition, Teddy Burriss, a fellow LinkedIn trainer and colleague in North Carolina, showed me how to get up to 212 characters, including spaces, in a newly expanded Headline:

Mine used to be:

LinkedIn consultant, 2x book author, blogger, coach, trainer, speaker | e-payment expert on business/nonprofit cashflow

(119 chars)

and I expanded it to read:

Multipreneur: LinkedIn self-branding pro, 2x book author, blogger, 1:1 coach/group trainer/speaker | e-payment expert to nonprofits, professional practices, e-tailers: 1-time/recurring payments by credit card/ACH

(I maxed it out at 212 chars!)

It now has more keywords (optimizes search), better description of me, and why I do what I do, since I always had more to say than the previous character limit in my Headline.

I am finally really pleased at this work-around, although I could have used a few more characters, but then that would be greedy!

You can expand your Headline if you, too, have been limited in how to adequately self-brand yourself.

It’s easy and fast. Here’s how:

  1. Write your new Headline in Word and count the characters including spaces.
  2. When you really like it and get it down to 212 characters or less, send it to yourself in an email.
  3. Open that email on your mobile phone.
  4. Copy the new Headline from the email and paste it into the Headline data field in when you edit you profile on the LinkedIn app.
  5. Save it.

Shazam!

I just wonder if other profile sections on the mobile app allow more space than the desktop version…I’ll have to play around and I will report back. 

Thanks again to Teddy for sharing.