Effective LinkedIn headlines for freelancers. With examples.

What will you learn in this article?

Get practical tips for your LinkedIn headline, one of the most important parts of your LinkedIn profile.

• What is the LinkedIn headline and why it is so important to optimise.
• What and how to add things like your title, freelance status, value proposition, call to action and more to your LinkedIn headline.

Why should you use LinkedIn as a freelancer?

• Get connected with (potential) clients and other relevant professionals
• Show credibility and expertise by having an optimised profile
• Stay top of mind of your network with publishing content regularly and engaging with your connections.?
• Stay up to date with your network and industry.
• Learn best practices, get trusted recommendations on tools and resources and get advice to perform better as a professional.?

What is a headline??

The LinkedIn headline is the sentence right below your name on your personal LinkedIn profile.

Why is the LinkedIn headline so important??

• It is the first and foremost thing people look at on a profile
• It’s an easy way to differentiate from your competitors
• It entices people to look at your profile and connect with you
• It helps to get you accepted when sending connection requests
• It acts as a filter towards desired connections and against unrelated connections
• It can put you higher in searches

Why listen to me??

I’ve used LinkedIn as my main marketing tool as a freelancer since I started in 2017.?

It worked so well that people started requesting me to give training on how to get relevant connections and publish engaging content on LinkedIn.?

Since then I’ve trained hundreds of people; freelancers, students, company founders and teams in how to profile themselves better on LinkedIn.?

I’ve posted content almost every weekday for more than two years and they have gotten more than a million views. More importantly, I’ve connected with 1000s of people in a meaningful way. Assignments and opportunities land in my inbox every week.?

I also use LinkedIn to raise awareness about freelancing and the community Freelancers in Belgium which I’m the co-founder of.?

Good to know about the LinkedIn headline

Length?

You can add up to 120 characters of text. If you have a short name you can also add text after your name. Beware it might look funny when people tag you in posts.?

Visibility

When you comment on someone's post, a small thumbnail of your profile picture, your name and the first half of your headline is visible. Please note that your headline is cut after about 70 characters.

You can and should customise it?

LinkedIn adds your latest current activity as the headline as default, but you can customise this.?

Search

What words do people use when they look for people like you??

Pretend to be a potential customer or a collaboration partner. What words do they use when they look for someone like you? Or even better, ask your clients.?

Or ask the members in communities like Freelancers in Belgium for tips and ideas.?

These words are your keywords and should be included in the headline.?

Language

If your target audience speaks multiple languages you should set your profile in multiple languages to increase your chances to get found in searches.

What to add to your LinkedIn headline??

• Title,
• Company name,?
• Description,?
• Value proposition,?
• Results achieved,?
• Hiring status,?
• Credibility,?
• Call to action,?
• Something cool/personal,?
• Emojis??

Let’s dive deeper into each factor and include ideas, inspiration and examples for each one of them.?

Title

Base your title on the keywords your potential customers might use to search for you, or that is descriptive enough for people to understand immediately what you do.?

Don’t use words that are not searchable.?

People search for photographers, project managers and UX designers, not “I take beautiful pictures”, “chief officer of everything” or “human-centred designer”. If these verbs and adjectives add value to your headline and help you differentiate, you should add them with your title. See below for tips regarding this.

Don’t be too generic

E.g. “Marketing consultant” or “freelance designer”, “software developer” is probably too generic as a title. Add your specific expertise.?

Unless you don’t want to be found in searches... This can be the case if you get contacted too often by recruiters, or you get a lot of spam or sales messages.?If this is your situation, make your headline very generic.

Don't use words, jargon and abbreviations your connections don’t understand

But do use them if they are common knowledge to your target market. It can look like you don’t know your business if you explain too much.?

Ludo Corrijn adds many searchable terms in his headline.

Company name,?

Most likely people don’t know the name of your freelance business. If you add a company name to your headline, then you need to follow it with a description of what you do. Most people are not interested in whether or not you own your freelance business (hello to you who state that you?are CEO of [my own company]), they want to know if you can help them or not.?

Personally, I find adding the company name of your freelance business in your headline section a waste of valuable space. You can add it in the Experience section, preferably connected to a company page.?

If you have worked with famous brands or have been featured in well-known media, you could add this if it adds to your credibility and fits your brand, see below for more tips on this.?

Description, Value proposition, Results achieved

An easy way to stand out from your competition is by adding a meaningful description and your value proposition to your headline. Don’t just state that you are a photographer, or copywriter or an innovation consultant. Add something more.?

Describe:?

• How do you make your customer’s life better??
• How do you save time and money for your customer??
• What is it that the customer wants you to achieve? What are their pain points? What are their ambitions? What results do they want to achieve?

A customer doesn’t want to get graphic designs, they want you to make their company look awesome. A customer doesn’t want marketing. They want visibility, awareness and leads. A virtual assistant takes care of your administration, which reduces time, tedious tasks and frustrations.

What makes working with you different from working with your competitors? What are you really, really good at? Can you combine skill with an industry? Can you combine two or more skills? Is it something about the way you work? Are you super responsive or quick??

Some ways how you can differentiate yourself:?

• Skill & Expertise: What are you able to do well??
• Target market experience: Are you working with a specific industry/sector and know their pain points really well? Do you target specific demographics? Company location, type and size. Does your ideal client have a specific psychographic? Psychographics are the values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices of your customers. E.g that they care a lot about innovation or sustainability???
• Domain knowledge: Are you a press photographer or portrait photographer? Are you great at writing for a specific medium, e.g. blog posts and websites???

How to define your value proposition?

It can be difficult to iron these out. Here are some tips:?

• Do the Value Proposition Canvas exercise.?
• Ask your customers why they hire you.?
• Ask fellow freelancers for suggestions.?
• Check job ads and see what skills and attributions companies are looking for.?
• Hire a brand strategist or business coach to help you.
• Join one of my LinkedInforFreelancers workshops - or book a private 1-to-1 LinkedIn coaching session with me.

Hayley Denker shows clearly what she does and whom she serves.

Rune Devuyst shows the results of her services and supports it with a describing emoji.

Hiring status?

Some freelancers add the word freelance to state they are open for long and short term assignments, but not for full-time employment.?

Some don’t add the word freelancer to appear more professional towards e.g. corporate clients or to appear like an agency instead of a one-person business.?

Some use words like consultant, interim, part-time, project-based, independent or self-employed.?

Some don't mention freelance at all because some freelance professions, such as photographer or web designer are so obviously freelance professions.

Open for hire?

I think it looks a bit desperate to say I’m open to being hired or looking for assignments. I wouldn’t add that on the LinkedIn profile.

If you are fully booked and don’t want assignments at a certain time, this is something that can be added, as it will add to your credibility.?

Credibility

Trust is essential when you want to get hired as a freelancer. Here are some tips for how you can add credibility to your headline and make people trust you quicker.?

• Money made, time saved?
• Years of experience
• List famous brands you worked with
• Featured by [media]
• Amount of customers
• Services or products delivered
• Testimonials
• Awards, degrees, certifications?

Call to action

You should strive to get profile views and connection requests. More views mean more opportunities. State why people should connect with you by adding a call to action in your headline:

• Check/Read my profile to...
• Connect with me if…?
• Follow me to...

Here are two examples:

?Sales Trainer Josh Braun adds a CTA cleverly by using questions.

Hans van Gent shows the value he provides, and to whom. He has also a very clear call to action in his headline. He also has an emoji in his name which filters bots from spamming your account and stands out.

Something cool/personal

Adding something personal to your headline can be an easy conversation starter or something that links you with new people.?

Tiina Jarvet Pereira bundles a special font, emojis, achievements and personal interest to create an outstanding headline.

Font

You can change the font in your heading. It can get attraction, but be mindful that some might find using anything else than the standard fonts ugly and/or annoying.?

Emojis??

Emojis are also a grey area. Use emojis if:?

• you like them and want to use them,?
• it aligns with your brand
• helps describe what you do
• if it helps you differentiate,?
• if your target audience finds it appealing
• if it makes you more approachable.?

It’s discussed if certain corporate clients find emojis unprofessional. I prefer to work with people who are more open-minded so emojis can act as a filter for me.?

Emojis might lessen the chances of being found in search results, but they might also lead to more attention. It is possible to use emojis in your name to detect automated spammy requests.

Several functions? Use the separation line │ ║ ┊ 〣

If you have several functions, feature the one(s) where your potential customers are most likely to find you on LinkedIn, and/or the one you want the most exposure for. Use a line to separate your functions. Copy the above symbols. Or use emojis as a separator.

As an example, check my profile here .

Next steps

Every freelancer is unique. You probably can’t fit to use all suggestions in this article. So pick and combine the tips that work best for you and your business goals. Feel free to share your headline with me, maybe I use it as an example here.

Want more tips on how to use LinkedIn as a freelancer?

Connect with me on LinkedIn, follow the hashtag #LinkedInforFreelancers ?and check out my?workshops ?or book a?1-to1 session ?with me.

Check also my other freelance specific articles?with tips for your LinkedIn profile:

• What do you put in the About section of LinkedIn as a freelancer?
• Do's and Don'ts for your LinkedIn profile picture (as a freelancer)
• 10+ LinkedIn background photo ideas for freelancers