How to write the perfect LinkedIn headline

“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy”

Those words from British advertising oligarch David Ogilvy are a copywriter’s worst nightmare. We can spend hours crafting something we’re truly proud of, knowing full well that most people won’t even have made it this far.

This is especially the case on LinkedIn, where you have between half a second and a full second to convince someone to stop scrolling through their feed and click through to your article.

When people’s time is this precious, the importance of a headline that immediately attracts attention cannot be overlooked. 

So, how do you write the perfect LinkedIn headline? By following these three basic rules.

Don’t ask questions 

Answer them. 

It’s common practice amongst LinkedIn users to flood our posts and articles with questions and conversation starters. After all, questions get engagement, right? Wrong.

The figures show that LinkedIn articles with question titles receive 14.6% less views than average. Although asking questions can feel like a natural means of encouraging readers to start a conversation with you, this natural tone doesn’t necessarily extend to the headline. 

Instead of suggesting what you have to offer, headlines that end in a question mark introduce doubt. Be certain and sure with what you’re saying, and have the confidence that what you are suggesting is the definitive solution to a problem.

Remember, decision-makers don’t load up LinkedIn looking for more questions. They come looking for answers.

Get to the point

In general, articles with titles between 40 and 49 characters receive 17.5% more views than average (this article’s title has 42 characters if you’re checking). That’s because they’re concise and to the point, saying all they need to say and nothing more.

Now, 40-49 characters might not seem like a lot of room to work with, but it’s more than enough to get the key information across. All anyone needs to know from your headline is:

1. The topic
2. The motive
3. The outcome

Yes, it’s good to add a hint of mystery and intrigue to your headline so that your reader has to read on to find out more, but if they’re going to fall asleep halfway through the sentence, was it really worth it?

Show your worth

Your LinkedIn headlines need to do more than just add a generic label to your articles. They need to be value-centric, and immediately identifiable as such.

This means that the central message of your headline should be about the main benefit your reader can expect to gain from clicking through to your article.

For example, what’s the difference between...

‘Do you know the top 5 mistakes people make on LinkedIn?’ vs ‘STOP making these top 5 mistakes on LinkedIn’

The difference is that the latter headline explicitly shows how the article will be of value to the reader. It’s all about giving your reader more reasons to read your article, and fewer reasons to scroll past it.

If you follow those three simple rules of headline writing, then you should see the reach and views of your article start to consistently climb. And if you want more reassurance, then CoSchedule offers a great online tool for analysing how effective your headlines are before you publish them.

This article’s headline got a score of 74. Think you can do better?