A common goal in every industry on LinkedIn is to get to a position where you can stand out from others and where you attract people’s attention.
There are several ways of achieving this goal, but the most frequently used method is by displaying data that shows how great you are.
And the best way to do that on LinkedIn is to create a compelling LinkedIn summary.
A good summary can help you win the best jobs and deals because it sets up your resume with a strong lead and gives others a better idea of what they can expect from reading further.
And a bad one can cause an otherwise – you being ignored.
So how do you get your LinkedIn summary to stand out?
In this article, we’ve prepared top LinkedIn summary examples and expert tips that will help you grasp the best approaches to writing this kind of content for your own profile.
So if you’re ready, let’s begin!
What is LinkedIn Summary?
A LinkedIn summary is a short description of your skills and experience.
It is also known as LinkedIn Bio or About section and it consists of up to 2,000 words with only three lines visible before clicking the “See More” button.
This section aims to show off your best qualities and convince your audience that you’re the right person they’re looking for.
Why Is LinkedIn Summary Important?
The LinkedIn summary section is often one of the first things people look at when going through your LinkedIn profile.
They use it to get an overview of your skills and experience, so they can decide whether or not they want to read more about you.
This means that if you don’t write a good summary, they won’t bother reading any further!
The LinkedIn summary is important because how it can help you speak directly to employers, recruiters, and headhunters.
What would happen if you could increase your chances of getting a response from your LinkedIn connections and getting more inbound messages?
In case that’s the case, here’s the list of best LinkedIn summary examples and tips on how to write an attention-grabbing description about yourself.
How to Write an Effective LinkedIn Summary: Best Tips & Examples
1. Keep It Short and Sweet
How would you describe your professional self in as few words as possible?
Your LinkedIn Summary serves as a formal introduction to the people you meet on the site, so it must project your professional “brand” using clear and concise language.
The Summary is really where you sell yourself to your connections.
And there’s no better place to introduce yourself and encourage potential connections to connect.
Your goal is to entice the reader, so do it quickly and concisely within the LinkedIn summary.
You can add a descriptive paragraph about your job skills and potential value add to the company, but make sure you don’t get into too much detail that you would bore your audience.
What if I told you that you can condense who you are into one paragraph (120 characters)?
Here’s how David Cancel, CEO of Drift did it:
What’s great about his LinkedIn summary is that he provides visitors with an experience and the projects he worked on.
But, he also supports it with proof, such as lists that featured him, along with guest lectures on different renowned universities.
It’s an efficient way to showcase your expertise, especially when you have social proof to support your words.
Here’s one more example of how Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro did it briefly and in a funny way:
Next to his experience, and current projects, what he wanted to do with his summary is connect with people on a personal level.
2. Write About Skills That Define You Professionally
The LinkedIn summary section for recruiters is a very important part of your profile.
This is where you need to showcase all the knowledge you have gained from different areas (your profession, opportunities, and projects).
Your LinkedIn summary must be edited in a way so that it not only shows you as a professional but also makes you look interesting.
Make sure that the information you present on LinkedIn is backed up with links to online sources.
Here’s how Vedran Rasic, CEO of LeadDelta did it:
What’s great about Vedran’s LinkedIn summary is that he separated his Personal and Company details that briefly describe what his company is about and how LeadDelta helps you stay connected with your network.
On the other hand, he provides his audience with the skills he gained during the journey and history of his career and partially personal life.
3. Add Your Experience and Achievements
Your summary could be more than just a resume, though, as you may have to write about your most memorable moment or experience that’s not necessarily related to work or a degree.
By creatively combining your professional accomplishments with a personal touch, you could stand out from the crowd — especially if you need to change careers or industries.
In fact, you have up to 6 seconds to make an impression on someone before they move on to someone else’s summary.
This means you have to include as much information about your skills, career, and achievements in your LinkedIn summary as possible.
Here’s how Allie K. Miller did it in her LinkedIn summary:
As you may see, this is a detailed summary that explains the big part of Allie’s career and experience and shows that she’s really passionate about what she is doing.
Including all the achievements and awards, along with the skills she provided and all the necessary information someone needs to read and get that she is a valuable connection to have.
4. Use Keywords To Help You Get Found
Everyone wants to be found, whether you’re a freelancer looking for new opportunities and clients or someone looking for so-and-so with a specific skill set.
Billions of searches are conducted every day on LinkedIn.
And what do most people do after searching?
They click that Search Results button, scrolling down until they find the perfect fit. So how do we get in front of these people?
By including keywords in your summary.
The more keywords you can get in your summary, the higher you’ll rank for certain searches.
And the more keywords you have in your profile levels (Experience, Education and Specialties), the higher you’ll rank for others.
Here’s how Dave Gerhardt, Founder of DGMG did it:
As you can see there are a lot of position and industry-based keywords included in Dave’s summary that probably helps him pop up for various keywords in LinkedIn search.
For example, “Chief Marketing Officer”, “Chief Brand Officer”, etc.
That’s why you need to go through your summary and make sure you add relevant keywords to it according to your expertise and industry.
5. Use Storytelling To Build Interest in What You Do
Two thousand words space may seem daunting, but there’s an art to writing good summaries that help people read – and love – what it is you have to say.
People love hearing stories. Especially if they’re interesting.
So providing your audience with an interesting story that follows your career within a summary can certainly help you bring attention to your profile if you do it properly.
Here’s how Justin Welsh, an Investor and LinkedIn influencer did it:
What he did is he combined his private life with his professional one, making it look interesting for readers.
Even though it has a lot of characters, he made it easy to consume by providing huge spaces between the sentences and separating them into small chunks.
So if you want to make your summary easy to consume, make sure to separate your paragraphs into single sentences and see how it works.
6. Include a Call-to-Action That Motivates Your Connections
Finally, it’s important to remember that you want to leave a lasting impression.
Whether you’re a freelance or contract worker hoping to find more work on LinkedIn, or an established business looking for new clients, your summary should end with how to get in contact with you.
Be sure to add a list of your most impressive clients or companies that you’ve worked with so far.
Here’s how Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled Consulting did it:
After providing his expertise, and what he achieved by helping individuals and organizations, he all the relevant people from his audience to follow him on YouTube.
This way, he mostly attracts those he provides value to, which is a high-quality audience.
By qualifying your audience through the LinkedIn summary, you can attract more people to connect with you and maybe even work with you or follow your journey.
Conclusion
A short and interesting summary of your professional experience can give you an edge in the job market especially if you´re looking for your first job out of college.
We hope these tactics on how to create a LinkedIn summary will help you get the most out of LinkedIn, whether for business or personal use.
But besides LinkedIn profile look and presentation, to grow your LinkedIn network, communication with your network is the key.
That’s why we created LeadDelta.
With a LeadDelta social capital manager, you’ll be more productive by viewing and organizing your network the way it suits your needs.
It’s time to stop with overloaded inboxes, feeds, and screaming notifications and instead focus on building relationships.
Download LeadDelta extension and boost your LinkedIn engagement game.
