LinkedIn Tips: How your headline can attract clients.
Channel: Dean Seddon
Date: 2019-07-19

So, we're going to look at your headline today. And before you switch off and go, "Oh my, I don't care about headlines," headlines really do matter on LinkedIn. They have the potential to put you in front of, and to get you engaged with, some of the key people in your market who can buy from you. So, we're going to look at it. Short and sweet, and I'll tell you how this thing works.

So, here's my headline. I've got my profile picture, my name and my headline here, which is I can teach you to attract sales. And then I've got keywords marketing, sales, LinkedIn, conference speaker, trainer and consultant. So I've filled my headline here with some great keywords that are relevant to the things I do. I help people with sales, I help people with marketing, I help people with LinkedIn, I speak at conferences and events, I train people, and I consult with companies. 

I've really tried to cover the keywords that people would want to find and would relevant. And then you notice my job title isn't here at all. There's not enough space for my job title, so it's really for me about communicating the value I can deliver to the people who are interested in the keywords that I put on my profile.  So I can teach you how to attract sales. That add curiosity, it adds interest, and it doesn't just say I'm the CEO of Maverick, or MD of X Co. It really gives some interest into what I do. 

Now, first things first. There are three things about your LinkedIn profile that follow you no matter what you do on LinkedIn. The first one is your name. Your name goes everywhere you go. The second thing is your profile picture. Your profile picture follows you everywhere you go. And there's another video I'll do about the profile picture so that you don't waste any time, but you get the best outcome from your profile picture.

So the headline is the third thing that follows you. And if you write a message, if you do a post, if you comment, if you like something, all of that stuff starts to follow you. The headline is the only thing that goes with your picture. So your headline really does matter. More so than all the other waffle on your profile, the headline is key, because people will see that everywhere you go. 

So you need to spend a bit of time thinking about how can I concisely share the value I can bring and what are the keywords that matter to my customers. And that's what ought to go in your headline. That's what's got to go there. Now, if you have a sales related title... one really important thing. Nobody likes connecting with sales people other than people who want to sell to sales people. So, I don't mind connecting with sales people, but if you're a business owner, you probably dread the thought of getting a connection request from a sales person, because you know what's going to follow. You're going to be pitched. 

So think about removing that title and just putting the value you deliver. I don't advocate cold pitching to people, or pushing pitching, but sales people, even if you follow all of our training, that title in your headline will put people off. So deliver the value, show the value, put that in your headline. If you do that, by the way, you will see a massive change in who is finding you on the search features of LinkedIn. So based on your profile, LinkedIn will put you into searches that other people are looking for. And if you change your headline, you will change, you will literally change who finds you. And most people don't do this, they don't get this. So I'm going to put in here, and if I go into my search appearances, and this is updated weekly, so I've 1042 people see my profile picture, my name and my headline in the search features.

And these are where they work. Obviously Maverick is my company, so hands down that's going to happen, but then you've got four other companies. And every week this will be different, and LinkedIn just gives you a snapshot. It's not really kind of anything scientific. But it gives you an indication, are the right companies looking. Now for me, it's B2B businesses. I don't really get involved in B2C, I have some custom projects, but no really, so everything I am looking at is B2B.

So these fit perfectly for me. And then I look down here, and I can see a selection of the titles of the people who are looking. So again, these titles here are really great for me. And then as I scroll down again, I can see the keywords that people have put in, and how I'm being found. And again, these keywords are great for me. I could probably improve them, so every couple of weeks I tweak my headline and see what happens. Tweak, see what happens, tweak, see what happens.