Take Action: Your Title and Headline
Anzel Botha
I help founders rise above with marketing research and development, creating solutions that are as rare and unique as purple giraffes. Happy founders mean delighted customers.
Want a simple way to increase the visibility of your LinkedIn profile, generate more leads and increase profits?
Look no further than your LinkedIn headline.
Your headline is one of the most visible parts of your LinkedIn profile and it's a huge factor in that person's decision to reach out to you or move on to the next person.
It's also a major factor in LinkedIn's search algorithm. Headlines carry a lot of weight when the platform is deciding which profiles to serve up for different queries. Optimized headlines = more searches, more searches = more views, and more views = more opportunities and deals.
How to write an effective LinkedIn headline that will get you more visibility and more qualified leads.
How to choose the right type of LinkedIn headline for your goals
Sales Headline
If you already have a presence on LinkedIn, (or you're doing a lot of cold outreach) and you're generating consistent profile views, you want to focus on this type of headline.
We're going to talk through strategies, helpful tips, and headline examples for both. But first, I want to talk about some mistakes that many people make with their LinkedIn headlines that are costing them opportunities.
Avoiding the 2 major mistakes people make with their headlines
Before we jump into the meat of things, I want to highlight some mistakes that I see a LOT of people making on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Headline Mistake #1:
Only mentioning your current job title and/or company.
Why It's Bad: This is the most common type of headline. It does nothing to sell your value or differentiate you from the competition.
When someone searches for [Job Title] and they see 15+ people with the exact same headline, why would they pick you out of the crowd?
LinkedIn gives you 120 characters for your headline, you want to use
as much of it as possible to include keywords and sell yourself!
What Are LinkedIn Keywords And Why Should You Care?
At the end of the day, LinkedIn is a search engine just like Google, YouTube, or Amazon.
When people are looking for something on LinkedIn, they type some words into the search box and LinkedIn serves up results it believes are the most relevant.
But how does LinkedIn decide what's relevant and what shows up first? Keywords are one of the biggest factors.
If a prospect types “Product Manager Healthcare” in the search bar, LinkedIn is going to show profiles of people who have the words “Product Manager” and “Healthcare” (along with other criteria) in their profile.
In this case, both “Product Manager” and “Healthcare” would be keywords.
The people who show up at the top of the search results typically mention those keywords frequently in their profile and have them included in specific areas that carry more weight, like their LinkedIn headline.
If you want to show up in more searches, you need to have the right keywords in your LinkedIn headline.
How To Choose The Right Keywords For Your LinkedIn Headline
Your headline actually carries most of the weight when it comes to your profile's ability to show up in searches and get more visibility.
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LinkedIn is tricky because, unlike a resume, we can't tailor our profile for each specific role we want. Your profile needs to be set up so that it captures a range of opportunities without being too general!
Use Your Headline To Illustrate Your Value & Stand Out
The second half of your headline should be focused on a “mini-pitch” that illustrates your value and accomplishments (using action words to include real numbers and results)!
This is a powerful strategy for two reasons:
Take a look at this headline example when I search for “Software Engineer”:
If I'm running this search, the only thing that's differentiating one person from another is the company they work at. You don't want to rely on your company's brand, and you don't want to lose out on a click to someone else's company either!
Imagine if there was another person in here who had a headline that said something like:
“Software Engineer @ Snap | Building AI That's Boosted User Retention By 789%.”
Now, that's interesting! And it would definitely stand out in a sea of “Software Engineer at [Company].”
That's what we're aiming to do on the back end of our headline. You want to use this space to drive home the results you've achieved and illustrate your value in a tangible way.
I know it's not always easy to come up with measurable metrics for every industry
Examples Of LinkedIn Headlines That Combine Keywords & Value
To wrap this section up, I want to show you some headline examples of what a great job seeker headline looks like when you combine both of the principles above.
Example 1:
Now let's say you're a Marketing Manager in the SaaS space and you're ready for a new gig. You run your target descriptions through WordClouds and come up with:
Keywords: Marketing, SaaS, Apps, Growth, Users
Here's a potential LinkedIn headline you might come up with for that:
Example 2:
If you're an Executive Assistant, there are lots of ways you can show your value. You ran your job descriptions through Word Clouds and came up with these keywords.
Keywords: Executive, Leadership, Stakeholders, Management, Relationships
Here's an example of a LinkedIn headline you might use:
If you're an entrepreneur or thought leader, you need to know your audience – and your LinkedIn headline should speak directly to them. Address a pain point, share results, and make it about them.
Need help? Send me a DM or email me at [email protected]