What I learned writing 100s of your LinkedIn profiles

I'm a ghostwriter. Mostly on corporate webinars. 

But every few days, I write someone’s LinkedIn About section. 

Over the years, I’ve written hundreds.

The About section is the toughest part of a LinkedIn profile for almost everyone to write. A lot of people don’t even try. They leave it blank

It’s unlike the rest of your LinkedIn profile.

Your profile is mostly you, stating facts about yourself. (Your headline is you, shouting about yourself.)

Easy.

Your About section isn't about you, though. 

Instead, you’re trying to join the conversation a reader is having with themselves. 

For most of your LinkedIn page, you can go ‘just’ halfway to communicate with the reader. They meet you halfway, and pick up what you dropped. 

“This is my name”. 

Okay, got it.

“This is where I work.”

Okay, got it.

“This is where I went to school.”

Okay, got it.

The only place this doesn't work is you-know-where.

In the About section, you need to do 90% of the work of communicating with your reader.

Want to stand out on LinkedIn? There’s good news… almost no one goes 90% of the way. You’ll have the field mostly to yourself. Instead people populate this section the way the rest of their page is structured — with fact after fact about them. A few try to add some style to show how clever they (think they) are.

But LinkedIn is the coldest and most stand-offish of the social media platforms. No one’s looking for clever writing. Companies come to shout about themselves. Individuals come to solve a problem — by finding a new employee, a consultant, a coach, or a vendor. 

You’re the solution to someone’s problem. 

But no one’s going to work hard to figure that out. You need to make it easy for them to recognize it. 

Unfortunately, that requires one of the hardest things to do in the history of humankind… see yourself as someone else sees you.

No one is good at this. (Including me.)

So in a talk/webinar, I explained the 8 questions I use to help people get outside themselves and write the message that will resonate with their reader.

There are 3 standard marketing-type questions, 4 questions I only ever see copywriters (like me) use, and 1 memory question. 

Here’s what I learned, writing more of these than almost anyone.

Question #1: Who is your reader?

Most people are good at deciding who their target reader is. I get the occasional “But Dean, I can do a lot of different things if someone hires me”. But people understand that they can’t talk to everyone. 

Where they run into trouble is when they think their audience is small, and it’s still too big. One client said her readers were overwhelmed parents… I pointed out that this would be all parents, at least part of the time. Billions of people. 

Tip: it’s hard to go wrong by aiming at an ever smaller potential audience.

Question #2: In their words, what problem are they trying to solve (use “I” statements)?

This question is the most important one. 

And it’s the hardest for many people to handle. Most often, they give me a straw man answer — an answer where they’re the only logical choice. Something like “I’m looking for a manager who has 15+ years working with a diverse team in the retail space and has a history of achievement.”

No.

No one is brushing their teeth in the morning, and describing their problem to themselves, that way.

“I need someone to take over the teens and tweens buyers group. And stay. I'm tired of constantly recruiting for that spot, I just wish someone would dig into it, work with those weirdos, and get them off my calendar.”

That’s a little more like it. That’s a reader we can write an opening line for, and grab them. Maybe with something like this:

“Some teams in retail need a different kind of manager. Someone they’ll stay for, and stay late for. Those are the teams I’ve been leading for 12 years.”

When you have a problem with Question #2, it usually means you haven't tried to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If you’re not ready to answer Question #2, skip it for now, and answer the rest. Then come back. But you can't overlook it, it’s the main source for your opening line. And the opening line is critical.

Question #3: What do you want them to know?

I’ve actually had some people leave this blank. Hoping I could fill it in for them. 

Trouble with #3 means they haven't decided what they want to be next. People in career transitions can have issues here. They can’t see their own positive future yet. But they know they don't want to answer with their present or past.

To tackle this question, look at what you wrote for #2, and answer that imaginary reader. They have a problem you’re interested in solving (or else you wouldn’t have written it for them). Tell them why and how you’d solve it. 

Question #4: Why are you a safe choice for people looking to solve this problem?

Most of us never think of ourselves as the safe choice. We don't think we’re dangerous, we just never put ourselves in the other person’s head and try to figure out why they’d think we’re safe. 

But your next hiring manager, or customer, is looking at several profiles. One of you is going to feel the safest for the next step. That’s the person they’re going to move a little closer to. So, say why that person is you.

Question #5: What can you offer that’d be “big” for them?

Not everyone can answer for Big. Not everyone feels they can promise something big. If you work at this question, and can't come up with anything, that’s okay. But remember that in this context, big can be pretty small. 

No one is looking for you to change their whole world. They’re looking for a big result in a small space. They’re not searching for the next Steve Jobs. They’re looking for someone who can make their specific problem go away, or stop getting worse, or stop sucking up their time. 

Big is pain relief. When someone feels great, they don’t notice the effect of headache medicine. But if they have a headache, the before-and-after is profound. They want the profound feeling, for a specific headache. 

For that, I bet you can offer something big.

Question #6: Why are you the easy way to solve their problem?

I love #6. People with a ready answer have a clear idea of their own value. They know what they’re bringing to the table, and why your table needs someone like them.

It boils down to this. If the reader gave you money, how would you make something in their job or life nicer, easier, or unnecessary? 

“Easy” is as easy as that.

Question #7: What makes you unique, different, or new?

This is really 3 questions. Unique is the easiest to answer … it’s the combination of where you worked, your field, your education, and relevant experience. Put this together like Legos, and that’s unique. If you have something else to add, all the better. Are you the only person in retail management you know who also has a federal Security Clearance? Cool.

Different is the angle you take to solve the problem the reader has. So, other therapists meet with patients in an office — but you meet people at nearby stables, so you both can ride horses while you talk. Other data analysts studied mathematics, you studied painting, and that lets you “see’ the data differently. I bet you have an angle that makes you different.

As for “new’, new is pretty rare. Very few companies can say they’re new, and even fewer individuals. But if you invented something, wrote the classic textbook, were the first to ever..., note it. New is rare, but it still exists. 

Question #8: 24 hours after they read your About section, what one thing can we get them to remember?

I have a confession to make about this one — sometimes in my live sessions (I write these things in real-time, with people in a Zoom meeting observing me ... I like the energy and the time pressure), I let people work on this one to keep them busy.

If I can’t make them memorable with the 7 answers I already have, #8 won’t help me.

The question isn’t really for me, though. Because it’s not a bad idea to approach every writing assignment by asking yourself how you can help people remember it the next day. See if you can come up with an unusual fact. Something visual. It just needs to be enough so you’re not immediately forgotten. In fact, I’ve considered making this the first question, but it freaks enough people out, that I hold off.

Great question, though, right?

Once the questions are answered, fiddle with the formula below until you have a few paragraphs, 100-150 words total. Spend about 50% of your writing time on the first line.

If the reader isn’t hooked with the first line, nothing else gets read anyway. 

Here’s the formula (“your” refers to the reader you’re speaking to”):

[Your problem] + [why I am the bee’s knees for this problem] + [the mechanism I use to fix/prevent this kind of problem]

Follow that, and you’re going to have an easy to read, memorable, “grabby” About section. 

If it’d help to see some real-life examples, there are recent ones at awneo.com (on the left, scroll down, past the recommendations). There are custom-written ones for story coaches, surgery centers, consultants, city planners, project managers, podcasters... the 8 questions work across a wide range of people.

Good luck, and here’s to better About sections!

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Dean Waye, PMP, is a webinar ghostwriter and copywriter.