With over 100 million users, LinkedIn has become the go to place to find business connections, sales leads as well as new business acumen and professional knowledge. So this leads to the question, how can you be found?
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Your professional LinkedIn Headline is the first or second opportunity to catch someone’s eye or attention depending if that person is a visual (your professional photograph) or digital learner (your headline). What you say here can determine if the person truly wants to learn more about you and eventually send you an invitation to connect.
Glance at the majority of these individual LinkedIn headlines and many of them read the same way. What you find is CEO of this, Project Manager of that, etc. Do you really want to connect with a role or with a title?
Think of a newspaper. If the headlines of that newspaper read like the headlines of many LinkedIn Profiles, would anyone read “the rest of the story” to quote Mr. Paul Harvey?
Now consider what would happen if you integrated some personality into that headline? Or better yet, possibly you could subtly identify an ongoing issue or even psychographic (the why behind the buying decision).
To do this requires you to return to your ideal customer profile and identify some key issues or characteristics that your current customers share. Ask yourself these questions:
- Why do my clients buy from me?
- What have they said about me?
Your LinkedIn Headline can include your role, but having that role wrapped around some other emotionally engaging words can only attract more attention. Again with over 100 million users, the goal is to stand out, to Be the Red Jacket in a sea of gray suits.
One final word of advice or suggestion is to change your headline occasionally. Newspapers change their headlines on a daily basis because the world is changing. By changing your headline on monthly or quarterly basis can also be beneficial.
Leanne Hoagland-Smith, the Strategic Tactician, is an author, corporate coach and executive consultant who supports crazy busy forward thinking leaders at all levels and in all industries who are tired of the current status quo, of repetitive problems and truly want sustainable results for their teams as well as their selves.
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