I was doing research on one of my target companies (Vimeo) so I went to LinkedIn and did this search:

Midway down the second page of results something jumped out at me… either a misspelling or something fun:

Cute… then I noticed another one:

That is freaking awesome (my background is software development and I LOVE this description!)… are there anymore?   Alas, there is one more:

A farmer… LOVE IT.

This sounds like a fun bunch of people to work with… if you saw this at your target company what would your thought be?  Cool or lame?

I’m reading through the post on the LinkedIn professional headline and Peter Osborne’s great feedback to those who have left comments (I’ll probably close the comments in a while).  One thing that jumps out is … how to put this… BORING.

Why is it boring… that’s the question I’m asking myself.  Perhaps it is boring because it reads like this:

Jargon cliche boring jargon boring cliche fancy-pantz just-like-everyone-else.

If you have it in your professional headline, or your summary, or your email message, or your ___________, it makes you sound:

• like everyone else
• boring
• cliche

Jargon is useful in certain places (perhaps where everyone speaks the jargon), but NOT in marketing yourself or your product.

Go through your profile, and the last few emails, and your email signature and see how much boring, cliche jargon you are spewing.

Then, change it

Yesterday I wrote about LinkedIn Professional Headlines as a marketing opportunity and said you could put yours in the comments and “I (we?) might critique it.”

Then, I buckled down and went to work on some big deadlines.

THEN, people started putting their headlines in…. I critiqued three but had to get back to work.

That’s when Peter Osborne, creator of Consultant Launch Pad, jumped in.  Peter has executive experience and has written some very smart responses to people’s professional headlines… I still plan on going over and weighing in, but I have to get some other work out of the way.

For now, if you want yours looked at, you might still have a chance – leave a comment on THAT post

So many times I see LinkedIn Professional Headlines that … well, suck.

Yours probably sucks (unless you got my LinkedIn book or my LinkedIn DVD, as I talk about this quite a bit in those).

Here’s a quick test:

(a) Does your LinkedIn Professional Headline have your TITLE?

(b) Does your LinkedIn Professional Headline have the name of your company?

If it has either of these you have a great chance of having a sucky professional headline.

Why do I say this?

1. The title doesn’t tell me a whole lot.  If it’s a big title in a small company I’m not impressed.  If it’s a regular title in a company or industry I’m not familiar with, I might not really know WHAT YOU DO.
2. Beyond that, though, your title doesn’t tell me WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). I don’t care that you are a CEO, or analyst, or any of that other stuff.  If I SHOULD care, I can find that in the rest of your LinkedIn Profile, right?
3. Use your Professional headline as a change to educate me on why I should care about you.  Title/company doesn’t do it.
4. With regard to the company, most companies I see out there have cute names… that mean nothing to me.  They are not branded enough to tell me anything.  Thus, putting the name of a no-name company in your headline does not help me understand your value proposition… IT ONLY TAKES UP SPACE.

How’s your LinkedIn Professional Headline?  Leave it in the comment and I (we?) might critique it

Let’s get started, from the top of the LinkedIn Profile to the bottom:

1. GOOD: just the name – not an email, not how many connections you have, not telling me you are a LION, etc.  Clean, not distracting, not noisy.
2. OK: I like to think of the LinkedIn Professional Headline as an opportunity to share your very condensed elevator pitch… not just tell me your job titles.  Imagine we meet and you say “Hi, I’m Thom, web designer, information architect, entrepreneur.”  That doesn’t do much for me.  Think of this as an opportunity to give me a marketing message.
3. NICE: it’s a good picture – the key is that it’s a closeup headshot… that’s what LinkedIn (and I) want to see.
4. NOT BAD: updated in the last 4 days.  This is a great opportunity to tell your LinkedIn contacts what you are up to – I’ve been amazed at how many people actually see your status updates.  Think about keeping this updated at least once a week (or tying it in with your Twitter Tweets).
5. HMMMM: I got a lunch invitation, which lead to two speaking opps and some book sales, because I had CEO in my profile.  But aside from that I encourage people to put something more value-add as a title.  Don’t make something up just for SEO, but I wonder if you change the title to something your target audience is searching for if they won’t find you more often?
6. HMMMM: I don’t like the LLC… it does nothing for me.  I have no idea what your company does… where can I find out more?

1. HMMMM: 13 LinkedIn Recommendations is fine – nothing wrong with that.  However, since you have 500+ connections I would hope to see more Recommendations…. just my thoughts, like I said, 13 is OKAY, especially if they are well-rounded and well-crafted.
2. NOT BAD: 500+ is fine, but the thing that makes me question the quality of any of those is the ratio of Recommendations to Connections.  At least I look at that and say “okay, he knows some stuff on LinkedIn, enough to be connected to a lot of people.”
3. OUCH!!: Dude, get my DVD.  Or listen to any of my podcasts or webinars.  This is one of the easiest, fastest things to change.  Go to your Profile page and next to the links click the EDIT link, and then in the drop down click OTHER, and then freehand something more descriptive about your company “My iPhone Development Company,” your blog “My Professional/Photography Blog,” and … My Facebook?  How about “Connect with me on Facebook.”
4. NICE: Cool, and you are very active there.  I LOVE this new field so I can learn more about you, and interact with you better on Twitter.
5. PERFECT: You got your vanity URL… nice job.

1. WEAK: “I’ve pretty much been developing”… you can tighten that language up.
2. WEAK: “I’ve done everything from coding to design, to product management.” Clean that up but break it down more.  ”As a professional developer I’ve _________, which helps companies _______.”  ”As a software designer I specialize in ________ and am passionate about _______, which results in ________.”  ”As a product manager for various companies I’ve been able to _________ which resulted in ________.” (see notes below, after the 6th bullet point)
3. WEAK: “I really want to work with” I would find another way to word that… sounds begging.
4. WEAK: this sound like begging too, but you haven’t given me any reason (any meat) to really think you are going to be my CTO or VP.  Also, it would be nice to know what size company you think you are a match for – Fortune 100 or small company?  Funded or entrepreneur… etc.
5. WEAK: See your full profile?  I thought I was on your full profile… where else do you want me to go?  There is very little meat here for me to really know if I want to move forward with you as my CTO or VP.
6. WEAK: Oh yeah… “as a complete afterthought… ”  … this is like listing “and I know how to use Microsoft Office products…”  … it is a “maybe this is an important skill.” If you are good at it then include it somewhere in the Summary.

When you write your LinkedIn Summary I want you to think about using the entire allotted space, which is 2,000 characters.   Tell me stories (like I show in #2, above).  Think Problem-Action-Results.  Give me MEAT.  This summary is way too short to really tell me much about you.

1. GOOD: This is a feed from your blog.  I am not sure how many people actually pay attention to this, but realize it’s on your Profile so make sure that what you are writing about is on-brand with the rest of your LinkedIn Profile.
2. HMMMM: Not sure why this even shows up, I thought it only showed up if you added slides… apparently not. Anyway, I LOVE the idea of YOU adding a visual presentation to your Profile, and this is how to do it.  So make up a 15-20 slide presentation about you and your strengths and put something there… !

You are missing an opportunity to put MORE information about your current company, what you guys really do, who you serve, what your role is, etc.  Look at the difference between the first company (1) and the second company (2).  Why are you giving more info about (2) than (1)??

This list of Groups gives me a really good idea of what you like, who you hang with, etc.  It is on-brand and not distracting… not bad

There you go – how’s YOUR Profile?

Oh yeah, that LinkedIn DVD I was talking about is here.

Brad Attig is a career coach and a JibberJobber Partner – he has a good post titled A little LinkedIn Contraversy where he talks about what you should put in your “employment status” on LinkedIn.  The concepts he brings up apply to the status as well as the LinkedIn Professional Headline.

Want to look desperate? Or are you simply indicating what is true and helping people know how they can help you?

Check out Brad’s post to see what he recommends…

When I first got my LinkedIn Profile “done,” I thought I was good for a while.  And really, I was.

But the more I dug into good great LinkedIn Profiles, the more I realized I could tweak this part or that part.  In fact, there is a lot to tweak….but I knew I wasn’t in any mood to redo the entire thing.  So every once in a while I’d redo a little bit.  Here are some LinkedIn Profile redos that stick out in my mind:

• The Professional Headline. I wrote about that a few times in this blog… right now mine points to my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD, even with a link to the DVD page.
• The Summary. This is what I harp on a lot, and mine has gone through multiple revisions.  The most recent was when I took out my hard-nosed intro that said if you connect with me you will end up on my newsletter.  I replaced that with a link to sign up for my personal newsletter.
• Company (experience) descriptions. This is a great opportunity to put more keywords AND tell a story about why you were such a hotshot there.  I had a lot of these blank…
• Groups. I used to show all Groups, but selectively went through and took off the ones that added no value to my brand messaging.

How often do you tweak your LinkedIn Profile?  Have you forgotten about it?

Most LinkedIn Profiles suck. There.  I said it.  This is why I spent over 20 minutes critiquing five different Profiles on my LinkedIn DVD.  If you have any questions you can hire me on an hourly rate, or for a fraction of that cost you can get the DVD.  Details here.

I posted a “discussion” on a LinkedIn Group yesterday to see what kind of feedback I got.  I got an unexpected good thing (how do you say “unexpected good thing?”) happen to me… can you spot it here?

Check out the first one, starting out as Highly talented… see who posted it, and at the end they put MyLink500.com…. see how it is NOT a hyperlink?

Now look at the second post, and my line, where http://LinkedInForJobSeekers.com is hyperlinked… isn’t that cool?

Another testament to the power of the LinkedIn Professional Headline, and DOING IT RIGHT!

Yesterday I got a question on Twitter about my post on the LinkedIn Professional Headline, and what you should put there if you are in transition.

What a great question.  I think it’s okay to have something like either of these:

Option 1: lay your cards out on the table.

Project manager in transition, looking for my next role in the NYC area, or

Looking for new opportunities as a Project Manager with rich software development experience.

Option 2: be the professional you are (regardless of your employment status).

Project Management Professional providing exceptional value to large-scale software projects in the across multiple industries, or

Project Manager (PMP), actively involved in multiple NYC PMI Chapter – experienced in high-tech funded startups.

In the first option it is clear you are looking for your next gig – nothing wrong with that.  In the second option it is clear you are a competent professional (not that the first option doesn’t portray that).

Remember, this LinkedIn Professional Headline is only one place to share information, the rest of the LinkedIn Profile needs to be used to tell your story!

You know that little blurb below your name, on your LinkedIn Profile?  They call it a “professional headline.”

Most people just have their title, even if it’s a non-descript, boring title.  Probably because we like to identify ourselves by our title (cool if it’s big, horrible if you are unemployed :p).

I recommend you put something more grabbing… think of a marketing hook.  Here’s my old one:

Helping YOU achieve “income security” by implementing career management using JibberJobber.com

That was almost okay, but I was never completely happy with it.  I recently changed it to this:

Helping people organize their job search, and professional relationships, with JibberJobber.com

It’s more descriptive and less jargony.

What does yours say?