6 Easy Tips On Writing A COMPELLING LinkedIn Summary To Attract More Clients

Your LinkedIn summary is in many ways your key to success. It’s the first thing people see when they find your profile and, as in so many walks of life, first impressions really do count.

A LinkedIn summary should establish you as an expert in your field, the go-to-person when others need assistance. There’s more to it that simply boasting about your past achievements. It’s about sharing your past, present and future. But if you want to share any of this, you need a summary that compels people to read more.

Here are six easy tips that will help you optimise your LinkedIn summary so that it’s compelling.

1. Write in the First Person

Remember when you were taught how to write a CV you were told to use the third person? Well, on LinkedIn that’s a big no no! When you optimise your LinkedIn summary you should always write in the first person. It sounds less perplexing and more, well, normal.

2. Express Your Personality

You can hark on about all of your skills and experience as much as you like but at the end of the day it’s your personality is what makes you stand out from everybody else. Try to let your personality shine through when you’re optimising your LinkedIn summary. Add a little flair and humour but above all else, be authentic and honest.

3. Keep Jargon to a Minimum

Jargon and technical language is hard to read, even for people in the same industry as you. Try to limit its usage, instead focusing on creating free-flowing sentences utilising layman terms. This will make it easier to read and therefore more appealing. You can always talk shop later down the line.

4. Make Use of Keywords

Like everything else on the internet, if you want to truly optimise your LinkedIn summary you need to make the most of keywords. Research those that are commonly used in your sector and scatter them throughout the summary. Make sure they’re a natural fit though; keyword-stuffing is a huge turn off.

5. Use Short, Sharp Sentences

The internet has changed the way we read and write. A solid block of text can prove particularly daunting, so make sure you write in short, sharp sentences and limit a paragraph to two or three sentences max. This will ensure enough ‘white space’ to make reading that little bit easier.

6. Less is More

Finally, try to be as succinct as possible. Most people reading a LinkedIn summary will simply scan what you have written and move on. The trick is to make a quick and lasting impression. You can’t do this by sharing reams of information. Your LinkedIn summary can be a maximum of 2,000 characters, which equates to about 400 words. You should really aim for around about 250 words though. This is succinct enough not to bog the reader down.

Put these six tips together when optimising your LinkedIn summary and you should at least stand a fighting chance.