Your LinkedIn Summary just shrank from 2000 to 60 characters!

LinkedIn gives you 2000 characters to write your summary! That is great. Don’t let the word ‘summary’ fool you, this place can be utilised much better than by literally summarising your profile. As I said before: “Never use your LinkedIn Summary to ehm … summarise“.

LinkedIn underwent a major overhaul early 2017, this affected how your summary displays big time! Out of those 2000 brilliantly worded characters people get to see either: about 200-230 or as little as 60 characters.

BEWARE EXTREME LOW VISIBILITY

Your LinkedIn Summary is easily overlooked. Two lines of text. You’ll need to find a way to interest readers to click to see more. It gets even worse on mobile, only about 60 characters displaying.

Beware of missing spaces! Notice something strange in the image to the left, thanks Sarah Haïlé-Fida for letting me use your profile. What is a STORYAs? That is when you add a ‘return’ to go the the next line and LinkedIn kindly removes it to display more of your summary!

HOW TO FIX MY ☆ STORYAs

Is your first line shorter than what’ll be displayed? Maybe you started with a heading or short statement? In that case start the second line with a hyphen and a space. In the full profile it is still the next line. In the preview it looks like this: ☆ MY STORY – As a manager. Just a tad easier on the eye.

HOW TO EDIT YOUR LINKEDIN SUMMARY

  1. Click your pretty little face top right
  2. Scroll down to summary (add one if needed)
  3. Click the pencil
  4. Write a brilliant, catchy, enthralling first line
  5. Click save

For more help on brilliantly compelling summaries, read this clever little piece I wrote some years ago.
Still pretty darn useful if I say so myself.

>>> TELL ME what are the first two lines (not sentences) of your summary? <<<