How to make your text BOLD & Italic on LinkedIn!

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a professional platform and accordingly does not necessarily encourage an outpouring of visual creativity.

But considering that LinkedIn is now an extension of our personal brand, I feel it is important that we are able to control that brand.

Jill Rowley said it best, "LinkedIn is no longer an online resume. It's your digital reputation."

That being said, we should have the ability to style our profile, content and "reputation" whichever way we wish – within reason of course.

The last thing we want to do is turn this platform into a Facebook (heaven forbid). “May LinkedIn never be FB’ed”, as a wise friend so eloquently put it.

You may have seen that you now have the ability to add colour symbols and icons to your profile to really make it pop.

See example of symbols in the image below (credit to Tavis Bucklin for the image) and a simple search of "LinkedIn Symbols" will help you find these symbols and many more to add to your profile.

But how do you make your text BOLD or Italic on your LinkedIn profile, posts and updates?

If you were to do a quick Google search or even ask LinkedIn themselves you will come across the following responses:

·     Unfortunately, it cannot be done.

·     It’s impossible. You can only have standard text.

·     You cannot bold, italicize or format text on your LinkedIn profile.

UNTIL NOW!!

I feel like LinkedIn secret service is going to come crashing through my door, guns pointed, yelling at me to drop to the floor, as soon as I click the “Publish” button and reveal the SECRET.

BUT HERE GOES…

After doing some further research and going down the LinkedIn rabbit hole, I came across a word called “Unicode”.

I can almost picture all the IT and programming enthusiasts rolling their eyes, shaking their heads and saying "Duh" as they read this.

Please keep in mind that I am somewhat IT challenged, so to me this was like discovering the Holy Grail.

In fact, I felt like Neo from the Matrix finding something he wasn't supposed to find.

So......you may see where I'm going with this.

Essentially, we have a way to convert standard text to other fonts, styles and characters.

So here’s how you do it AND it is seriously easy:

STEP 1:

Type “Unicode Text” or “Unicode Text Converter” into your search engine (or Google for those of you who are also a little IT challenged). You will be presented with a number of sites that can convert plain text to Unicode characters.

For the purpose of this exercise I have used a site called “Unicode Text Converter” (see below image). Enter the site.

STEP 2

At the top of the site, you will find a search bar (see below image). Simply enter the word or words into the bar that you would like to be BOLD, Italic or formatted differently, and press SHOW.

STEP 3

You will be presented with many different styles and fonts for the words or sentence you have entered.

As per below image, there are many BOLD and Italic fonts that you may choose from - as well as some other unorthodox fonts:

STEP 4

Simply copy the style that you want and paste it straight into your profile, status updates, posts, headline, summary or any other area of your profile that you feel is appropriate.

Yes, it’s seriously just a copy and past exercise.

PLEASE NOTE:

1.    Do not overuse this tool and do not forget this is a professional platform. This tool is best used in a minimalistic way e.g. As a heading or to emphasise a key point, message or achievement. (Feel free to check out my profile as an example of how I have used it to better structure my summary section).

2.    Using this tool may impact on the text you have formatted being found in search results. Your standard text on your profile, headline and summary are also used as keywords within search engines such as Google as well as LinkedIn itself. Accordingly, it is a brilliant (and free) way to get the right people to find you.

3.    The Unicode text will use more characters than standard text – so you may need to make some adjustments to accomodate it.

Please feel free to share this tip.....don't keep it a secret. After all, this amazing platform is all about helping one another and building each other up.

If you found this helpful, all I ask is that you give a quick Like, Comment or Share so that it can reach and benefit many more people in the LinkedIn community.

With all that being said.

Have fun with it and GO CREATE YOUR DIGITAL REPUTATION!!