How to Smash Your LinkedIn Summary

LinkedIn is a great social media platform for a variety of professionals, regardless of what you do, have done in the past or the industry you work in. It’s a way of showcasing everything you have to offer a prospective company, whilst also ensuring that your current employer can cross-check your CV against what you list on your LinkedIn summary. 

It’s something that should be seen as a way for people to verify your achievements without carrying out complete background checks. People also use LinkedIn to build trust between themselves and a company they’re looking to get goods and/or services from. So how can you elevate your LinkedIn summary to stand out from the crowd? Let’s take a look.

Focus on your accomplishments, skills & talents

LinkedIn is the perfect platform for professionals to showcase their achievements, talents and skills. It’s the most appropriate place for you to show everyone what you’re made of and why you should be considered for a wealth of relevant roles. Your accomplishments could be anything from a degree in a relevant field to recent first aid training. 

If you’ve earned a qualification or completed a training programme, then make sure future employers know about it and can be made aware of it simply by looking at your LinkedIn summary. The same goes for your skills and talents, if they’re relevant to the workplace. 

Don’t list one of your talents as singing the alphabet backwards on your LinkedIn page because employers won’t be able to benefit from that. However, if you have a talent for creative writing or can make people feel at ease in a pressurised environment, then that would be something you should look to detail on your LinkedIn profile.

Be personal

Adding a personal touch to your LinkedIn summary helps to set you apart from the crowd. Where it’s often seen as an extension to your CV, it’s still considered to be a social media platform. As such, you should do your utmost to add as much of your own personality as possible. This doesn’t have to mean that you constantly post written content to your feed. 

It could be as simple as re-posting something you thought was funny or sharing an infographic that made a particular impact on you. Although subtle, these little personal additions to your LinkedIn profile will help to attach a person to something that would otherwise be somewhat sterile.

Keep things simple

It can be easy to over-analyse what you post to LinkedIn, together with what you share with your connections, but you shouldn’t always think too deeply into it. Not only does it help to keep things simple, but it also minimises confusion should someone come across your LinkedIn summary who wants to learn more about you. 

Make it as quick and easy to read and understand as you can. This is something that can benefit you, especially if you’re being targeted by recruiters looking for relevant skills that would be perfect for the latest role they’re advertising. There should be little effort required to read and understand what you do, what your experience is and your qualifications, for example.

Use keywords

You might think that keywords are only meant for optimisation and SEO, but you’d be mistaken. There are actually several ways in which adding keywords to your LinkedIn summary can be beneficial to you. Firstly, it allows for those searching for particular roles to come across your profile effortlessly. Another benefit is that you won’t just be able to be found easily on LinkedIn, but also in the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

This means that anyone searching for your role or your skills will be able to find you and ask you to join their team. This will then open up a wealth of opportunities to you, perhaps bringing up roles that you would never have found yourself. You never know, you could just be offered your dream job by using relevant keywords in your LinkedIn summary.

Add some creativity to your profile

Whether you’re an engineer or an art curator, you have every reason to make sure that your LinkedIn summary is as creative as it can be. This helps you to stand out from the others, who perhaps present a more sterile, robotic LinkedIn summary in comparison. If you’re looking for a creative role in particular, then a creative LinkedIn summary could be the gateway into your desired role, opening up more opportunities than you ever could have done using just a CV to advertise your skills and talents.

Make sure your details are up to date

You need to make sure that your LinkedIn summary is as up-to-date as it possibly could be, just like you would your CV. If your latest role on LinkedIn was customer assistant in a chain supermarket, but you’ve been a teacher for the past five years, then update your LinkedIn summary to detail your present job as well as your previous role. Some people remove previous jobs from their LinkedIn summary if they’re not relevant to the career path they’re pursuing at the moment, but that’s entirely up to you. As long as you’re regularly updating your roles, then you’re smashing your LinkedIn summary.

Kumo has over two decades of experience in the digital marketing industry. We have a team of dedicated SEO specialists, PPC professionals, content writing experts and experienced website designers who will always be on hand to propel your business into the spotlight. If you would like further information about how we can set your business apart from the crowd, then get in touch with a member of our friendly, knowledgeable team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.