Captivate Your Audience with a Powerful and Intriguing LinkedIn Summary

Over 500 million professionals know the necessity and value of a LinkedIn profile and, at the core of each profile is the Summary – your chance to shine, stand out, and showcase your skills in order to grab and maintain the attention of your audience.

A LinkedIn summary should be written less specifically and on a larger scale than a resume, which may be targeted to a particular position or discipline, in order to capture your “professional essence” as well as to appear in search engine results.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when crafting your Summary:

• Audience: Who is the reader? Although it may seem targeted to individuals, your summary is really written for search engine optimization, and this is important to keep in mind when contemplating language and profession-specific terminology.

• Keywords: Research and identify the right keywords specific to your skillset and profession by comparing them to the profiles of other respected professionals in your field.

• Platform: Be mindful of the platform on which your summary will be viewed and how that will impact its appearance. A desktop has 220 characters visible while a mobile view shows 92 characters, so make sure your beginning words make the reader want to know more.

• Authenticity: Don’t hesitate to include details that are distinctive to differentiate you from your peers.

Look for inspiration from what you see in other profiles, job postings of interest, and the multitude of examples you can find online while writing or revising your LinkedIn Summary.