Whether you are a recruiter, looking for a job, or using LinkedIn to prospect and generate business, optimizing your profile is a priority. Among these optimizations, one is particularly important: your LinkedIn summary. 😉 What is the LinkedIn summary and why should you optimize it? At Waalaxy we will tell you everything! Discover examples of impactful LinkedIn summaries, to better work on yours.
What is a LinkedIn summary?
The LinkedIn summary is a short text which can be found on your professional profile. It is used to introduce yourself, your professional experiences or to talk about any subject that is important to you. By reading it, people online or other LinkedIn users who visit your profile should quickly understand who you are, what you do and what you can bring to them. It is in the “About” section.
The LinkedIn summary can be compared to a cover letter, which would accompany your CV (also present on your LinkedIn profile, if you have completed it well!). You don’t just repeat what’s on your CV. Rather you explain what’s behind it, which is difficult to do in just a few bullet points on a CV.
Summary for LinkedIn can also be similar to an elevator pitch: in a few seconds, you have to sell yourself and capture the attention of your audience (or readership). The LinkedIn summary is completely open-ended, so you can choose to put whatever you want in it.
But if you want it to be effective (according to your objectives), it must be well thought out and organized. You can, for example, focus the LinkedIn summary on your skills by highlighting your professional experiences and achievements.
You can also focus on your personal skills, and talk about your life experiences, your involvement in associations, or any other event that would show your qualities. If you use LinkedIn for finding new leads, you can also give your summary a commercial orientation. Show what you can do, and how you can solve your prospects’ problems. The only limit to your LinkedIn summary is your imagination.
Why work on your LinkedIn summary?
But what makes the LinkedIn summary so important? Seeing as LinkedIn allows you to promote yourself in a thousand ways, including posting great content and sharing relevant information to your professional network, you might ask, what makes your LinkedIn summary an essential part of your profile?
1. The LinkedIn summary helps you build a coherent profile
The first thing to consider is that the LinkedIn summary is part of a whole. When you optimize your LinkedIn profile, whether it’s for prospecting, SEO, engagement, or any other purpose, you’re not optimizing just one element. You’re doing it as a whole.
To optimize your LinkedIn account, work on your URL, your profile picture, your resume, your summary, your posts, your social selling index, and even your title! The LinkedIn summary is part of a package. An internet user who arrives on your profile will look at several elements.
These elements must be coherent, in the information, but also in the tone! If, like many LinkedIn influencers or Top Voices of the network, you use “you” and emojis in your LinkedIn posts, use them in your summary!
Personal branding requires consistency in your profile. By creating a united and original communication strategy, you will be able to reach millions of users online more easily.
2. Work on your summary to improve your LinkedIn referencing
Did you know that LinkedIn also has an internal search algorithm? And a search algorithm means… referencing! When recruiters are looking for new candidates for a position on the professional social network, they can type the title of the position in the LinkedIn search bar.
The best referenced profiles will appear first, and will naturally receive more offers. The same goes for potential prospects who are looking for information or solutions to their problems.
If you are well referenced, you will attract more. As with our previous point, your LinkedIn summary alone won’t get you the top spots.
But if you want to be visible in search results, it’s one of those things you need to work on. So remember to use relevant keywords in your LinkedIn summary. Use synonyms, various expressions that contain your keyword: your natural referencing on LinkedIn will only be better.
3. A good LinkedIn summary is a source of leads
A good LinkedIn summary helps you achieve your goals on the platform. As we said, it can improve your SEO. More visibility also means more connection requests or/and more leads. So there is a direct effect of your LinkedIn summary on your ability to do business on the platform.
It’s a well-known trend on LinkedIn: more people will visit the profile of those who are most prominent! But a polished summary will also help you convert your potential prospects. An effective summary is a selling point for people who visit your profile.
If you show that you are able to answer the problem of a user, whether they are looking for a business solution, a candidate, or simply information, you increase the chances that they will contact you.
As we said earlier, your summary is often the first impression. It might as well be a good one, if you want to engage with the person looking at your profile! It’s also a way to start a conversation with a LinkedIn user who is visiting your profile. With your summary, you have the power to have a conversation with them, without even having to contact them.
Think of your profile as the Landing Page of a website: you want every element to entice the user to engage. You want to make them want to know more – even convince them – without having the right to talk to them. We can’t repeat it enough: a well-crafted LinkedIn profile is a very effective source of prospecting!
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What to write in Linkedin summary?
Now that we have seen what the LinkedIn summary is and how it can help you in your prospecting on LinkedIn, we need to know how to work on it. What should I write in my summary? What tone should I adopt? Here are our best writing tips for this little insert!
How to create your LinkedIn summary?
The first step, if you haven’t already done so, is to create your LinkedIn summary. To do so, simply:
- Go to your profile.
- Click on “Add Section to Profile.
- Under “Info”, select “Summary”.
- A window will appear, where you can freely write your LinkedIn summary.
What to put in my LinkedIn summary? 5 tips
A good LinkedIn summary contains certain elements. It should convey who you are, what you’ve done, and what you know how to do. Additionally, there are optional elements that you could includ in your summary so as to increase its effectiveness. Here are some examples:
- A tagline. We tend not to think about it, but as we said, your summary must engage users. A dynamic tagline will grab the reader. A question, a shocking statement, a joke, or a direct appeal to the reader are examples of different types of hooks that are possible.
- A presentation: let people know who you are. A user who looks at your profile must understand who you are as a person and as a professional, in order to assess whether or not your profile interests them. Don’t be satisfied with a bland description of yourself: tell them about what drives you, your aspirations..
- Tell them about your experiences. The way you describe them will change according to your objectives. Are you prospecting? Rather than just talking about your experiences, talk about the problems you have solved, your knowledge of a field, your expertise. Do you want to be noticed by recruiters? Highlight your professional achievements and acquired skills!
- Insert media. You can add different media to your resume. A CV, for example, which would illustrate your previous statements, or a link to your website. Bonus: the media tends to be displayed even if the user doesn’t click on the “See more” button that scrolls through your summary. What a great way to catch the eye of the reader and increase interaction!
- A Call-To-Action. Remember that you want to engage your profile visitors. A CTA will allow you to encourage them to contact you, add you as a relationship, or visit your website. It’s a great way to encourage interaction!
Take care of the formatting: tone, spelling, grammar
To be effective, your summary must be well formatted. Avoid spelling and grammatical errors that could damage your credibility, and vary the rhythm of your short and long sentences. Why not ask questions? Or even dare to exclaim!
As mentioned earlier, the overall tone of your summary should also be consistent with the tone of your overall communication. If you usually adopt an academic, serious, expert tone of voice, keep it in your summary.
If, on the other hand, you use a more fun communication style, that includes emojis, exclamations and sometimes humor, keep this spirit in your presentation. Space out your text to make it digestible and readable.
Again, anything that might instinctively repel a prospect is bad: it’s up to you to take care of your image. Don’t make it boring, though: your summary should reflect your personality.
Examples of LinkedIn summaries
There is not ONE good LinkedIn summary format: there are many. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve. We have listed here several examples of LinkedIn summaries, which we consider good for a specific purpose.
1. Good summaries to be found
If your goal is to be found on LinkedIn, then a keyword-rich summary that focuses on the semantics you want to reach will be useful. In the SEO game, who better than SEO consultants?
A great example of a LinkedIn summary, if your goal is to improve your SEO, would be to check out what some SEO personalities are doing on LinkedIn. Check out the profile of Julian Cerisier, SEO Director at Eskimoz.
In his summary alone, we find: natural referencing, web visibility, SEO agency, search engine, SEO consultant. Even if it is succinct, his summary is enriched with keywords. Each term is relevant. The semantics around natural referencing is well worked.
2. LinkedIn summaries to engage
Are you looking for leads? Looking to engage visitors who have discovered your page? Check out the profile of Austin Henline, LinkedIn coach.
Christopher’s summary is a checklist of best practices. His teaser consists of two direct questions, which highlight his added value. He directly adds a link to his calendar to make an appointment with him. He then explains his method, in a few sentences, and outlines issues you may encounter if you’re trying to get known on LinkedIn. He presents them in a bullet-point format, to make for a more fluid and less monotonous read.
Finally, he ends with a series of questions, which present his background and what he can bring you that another LinkedIn coach cannot. Each sentence of his summary is designed to engage the visitor and push them to contact him. In fact, he offers three different ways to do so: by email, by LinkedIn, or by appointment. How can you decline?
3. LinkedIn summaries to introduce yourself
Finally, if your goal is simply to introduce yourself and make people want to follow you, you can highlight the values you hold dear. This way, LinkedIn users will know who you are, and what content you will offer them. Have a look at the profile of Lucie Basch, co-founder and president of Too Good To Go. 
Lucie’s summary focuses on the mission she set for herself when she created Too Good To Go: to reduce food waste, worldwide. She talks about its effects, and how, by founding the company, she fights against this scourge.
She ends by talking about what she is looking for: passionate people who want to give meaning to their life and their job. Of course, there are many other great examples of LinkedIn summaries.
There is no one-size-fits-all methodology: everyone creates a profile and summary that fits their goals. But if you want to increase your visibility on LinkedIn, don’t forget to work on it. It’s a tricky and delicate exercise, but it can pay off!
There you have it, you now know everything there is to know about the LinkedIn summary. 🚀
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