Your LinkedIn Headline is one of the most powerful elements of you LinkedIn profile.
At the same time this is one of the most under-utilised elements of most people’s LinkedIn profile. Sadly. Every time someone has an update as basic as: “Person A is now connected to person B (you)” all their connections will see your name AND your LinkedIn Headline in their timeline! You have 120 characters to make a first impression. Might as well make a good impression!
How do so many people manage to get their LinkedIn headline wrong?
Easy! LinkedIn doesn’t go out of their way to help you. Quite the opposite. By default LinkedIn displays your current position title as your professional headline. What a waste! Its one of the first things people read about you. Name, picture and professional headline are what you see in one glance at for example search results.
Do you show up with just your current job title showing? And is it fairly meaningless too? Any idea how many “owners” are on LinkedIn? Or ‘managers’, manager of what? In 120 characters you can create a beautiful full sentence. Or show various responsibilities. Think from your customer’s point of view. What added value have you got to offer them? Which problem do you solve? Write your professional title in Word so you can easily count how many characters you used. And while you’re at it, you might as well run spellcheck!