How to Create a HEADLINE that Works
This blog is automatically transcribed using AI and might have typos or grammar errors. It’s not the robot’s fault.
Extra! Extra!
Read all about it! A Headline should capture your reader's attention in 1 second. Why? Because that's all you have.
Okay, you have six seconds total when someone glances over your profile. Banner, Photo, Headline, Hashtags, Livelink if you have it, and maybe your company logo on the right-hand side. If you have 6 seconds total I'm figuring it's one second for the headline. 🤔
I'm breaking down what should be and shouldn't be in your headline and if you're brave enough I might just help you update your headline LIVE! If you want to be the winner of a free headline update, drop your LinkedIn URL in the comments and I'll choose one person's headline to update during the show.
See below the show’s transcription:
Six seconds - that's as much time that you get to capture someone's attention when they're like, I call it lurking on LinkedIn or just scrolling through LinkedIn, six seconds. Are you doing a good job of that? Hi, everyone. This is 15 Minutes of Fain. And this is episode 34 of season two, I can't believe we're at episode 34 Or that it's close to the end of October. I'm Mary Fain Brandt, LinkedIn strategist and career coach. And you can find me here almost every Tuesday at 12pm Pacific Daylight Time. There will not be a show next Tuesday, but I might just put a tip up for you guys to have. So let's give a shout out to StreamYard. Do you like the look and feel of the show? You can have videos you can put comments up on I'm gonna change something here. Let's see. Let's go in. So tell me where are you watching from? So today we're talking all about six seconds in marketing and that is what you have to capture someone's attention and so your headline really needs to stand out because it's in that six second crew. Well, what do I mean by that? On LinkedIn, when you only have six seconds to capture someone's attention, there are three things that you need to be like, it's got to be Rockstar status. You've got to be on point on game for your branding. It is your background banner, your headshot, and your headline. Those are the three most important above the fold items for your LinkedIn profile to capture someone's attention. Now, how's your headline doing? Is it attracting the right people? What is your headline say? We're talking all about LinkedIn headlines and how you have six seconds to capture someone's attention. What should you have in your LinkedIn headline to stand out get found and have someone pause and go, Oh, that's interesting. Or hey, he does exactly what I'm looking for. Right? So I'm gonna just give you some examples. CEO, accountant, graphic designer, those are all titles, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's all you want in your headline, right? So I just looked up before the show like, okay, graphic designer, how many people have that in their headline 2,590,000 people, that's what it said it was a really, really long number, but was worse is I saw this freelance graphic designer, okay, free, you're giving it away. That term is outdated. We don't use that anymore. It really devalues the service that you're providing. So if you're using freelancer, please take that off, you are a graphic designer, you might have contract jobs. But we don't use the term freelancer anymore.
There are three things to consider when you're thinking about updating or creating your headline. People do keyword searches on LinkedIn, SEO is automatically built into the LinkedIn platform. So your headline can be picked up in a search. And I'm going to go over some of these searches. For example, if you are a speaker, and trying to get more speaking gigs, you definitely want to have speaker in your headline. If you are a career coach, you definitely want to have the term career coach in your headline, sales manager, maybe you're looking for a job, you definitely want to have those two words sales manager. And if you're LinkedIn trainer, trying to drum up some business, you definitely want to have LinkedIn trainer, consultant or coach in your headline. But that's not all you want. Let's take a look at some industries and how simple or basic the title might be, and how we can customize that and also put it on brand. Branding is so important, and it really starts at that six seconds above the fold your banner, your headline, and your photo, right?
So let's talk about the mobile notary business. Because mobile notary, that business took off in 2020, right? With a pandemic, I have tons of friends that did it and still doing it. And I've actually coached and trained. I don't know, a couple 100 notaries over the last year and a half or so. And here's what I found is that mobile notary, everybody uses that because that's what you do. But let's put a spin on that, and let's brand you so somebody is the pet friendly mobile notary. Right. So that tells you right away that if you have animals, you're probably going to pick that person, because you know that she's okay with animals, adoption specialist, or real estate notary, let's get all those docs signed on time. You see how you take what you do, but you really customize it, branded, tell people a little more. So even though you're a mobile notary, you might specialize in one thing, if you're an accountant, you might only work with Fortune 500 companies, or maybe you're an accountant, and you love working in the startup world, then you really want to be clear on that.
Let's look at career coaches on LinkedIn, over 120,000 career coaches that I found, but you really want to get more specific, right? So any type of coaching consultant, coach and consultant are very vague, very broad terms to use, you need really need to niche down and figure out who you serve, you know, industry. I'm going to go over I wrote down like four things one age, and I don't mean necessarily number, but if you're a career coach, are you serving college students, executives, middle managers, right? Or maybe you're the C suite level. So who are you serving, the industry get more specific. I'm a career coach for females in the tech industry looking to become the next CEO. That speaks much more clearly to a very identified and specific audience. That's not me. But industry, you could go tech, education, finance, you know, for all the different industries. Gender is also important. I love working with women. That is my passion because I want to lift all women up and I want them to be seen and known for the experts that they are. So that's my passion, location. Maybe you're a career coach, that is an expertise in finding remote work. Or maybe your expertise is in the state where you live, you know, get really specific. So I hope that that helps a little bit. Get right about get you thinking about what your headline should look like. I like to say, and I brought it up, I have an old template, but is still worthy. Who do you serve? How do you help them? And what is the value? So do you serve women, men, tech, health care? Right? Who do you serve? How do you help them? Do you 10 times their sales? Do you find them the perfect starter home, if you're in real estate, there's a gazillion real estate agents. What do you specialize in? Who do you work with the most really niche that down in your headline, so that you're going to start attracting that ideal client that you want to work with?
Another question I get asked, and this just happened on a coaching call last week, and today, should I use emojis in my headline marry? Now I'm going to say yes and no, I have a couple of emojis in mine and I used to have, thank you. Oh, I haven't talked to you in a while. I used to have more emojis in my headline. But I've really trimmed that down. And here's what I think is a good rule of thumb. You don't want the emojis to take over headline, number one. Number two, isn't on brand for you. For me, coffee and a cupcake is I had the LinkedIn Bakery. And everybody knows have the be show where we drink coffee and talk about career trends and tips. I'm a coffee snob kind of right. And I love a good cupcake, not store bought cupcake I write about that I talk about it. So that's on brand. For me. I was working with a gentleman that has a full blown agency, and whoever designed his headline had a bunch of emojis in there. That didn't sit well with me, because he's like this high level professional. And it really wasn't on brand for him. So he toned it down. And he has like two.
Here's why people use emojis in their headlines. Two reasons. Number one, it's scientifically proven that your eyes cannot read an emoji, right? How you read words fast, and that we actually have to process it a little differently. So there's a little dwell time, it's like, half a second. But every half a second that you get someone to stay on your profile was good, right? So there's the scientific reason of why we use emojis. The other reason is when someone spams you, you know, it will, it'll say the whole headline sometimes, right? So if they're sending you an email or something, they'll drop in that whole headline, I've seen a lot of spam. You can tell you know that there's another reason like emojis in your name. But you're actually not supposed to do that. Don't do that. You're starting a new job. Oh. I love it. Now you're starting a new job and a new business. I want to hear all about it and how I can help you. So we talked about emojis? Yes, no, it's a hard maybe. I like them at the end. I used to put them everywhere. An arrow or $1 sign if you're saying I increase your revenue by 20%. Right. So use them strategically. Don't use them just to use them, plus, they really have to be on brand for you. So I'm not I don't remember Do you have any emojis? In your headline? I have LinkedIn pulled up over here to see.
You know, it can take away from the headline. So don't go overboard. You want to get people's attention. And that helps you get attention, right with a headline. Where's your headline? Are you dropping it in because you're over entrepreneur. Okay, I'm going to put this up. Now also, if you haven't realized, look at this headline. He's using every space you get 220 characters use it all and you are the pizza burger. I don't know what that other one is not I love it. So that's what I do add something at the end that personalizes it, that tells people a little bit of who you are. So not I love the way that you did this. Right right at the end, you personalize it add that little thing. And that's what I want to share when you're writing your headline. It is business focused, it's who do you serve? How do you serve them? What's the benefit or value that they get from hiring you or working with you? But then drop a little something personal, right? So I worked with someone who's in the medical industry, holistic medical, she writes apps and programs to help the smaller doctor's offices like streamline their processes that she loves rock music, like hardcore rock, and we put that in our headline, and it is a conversation starter. So think about it can be a great conversation.
I hope that this was helpful. So who do you serve? How do you serve them? What is the value or benefit that someone gets from hiring you? Or working with you increase their client base, improve their marketing by reducing the marketing budget, increase the sales, find the accounting errors, help you write a book write? What is it that you help them do? And what is that value. So put that in the headline, use all the characters, 220 characters, it's free real estate, so why not use it, just make sure you have keywords in there. Now, if anyone's interested in getting a little help on that headline, there's a couple things that we can do. I do a LinkedIn audit, a video audit, and I go through your entire profile, and it's recorded for you, I send that back over to you and you get a little follow up call if that's something that you're interested in, I am going to drop some links. Let's see if I can do this. If it works, I'm gonna have to do it afterwards. So the links don't work. If I drop them during the live show anymore. I learned that so I'll go back in. I also have a free checklist, a LinkedIn Success checklist. So I'm going to drop those links, you can grab my LinkedIn Success checklist telling you like where to spend your time what you should be doing every day, every week, every month, every year, super easy to follow. I don't believe in making things complicated.
I just want to say thank you all for joining me today. And if you like the look and feel of this show, right? This is sponsored by stream yard, you too can give stream yard a try. I have an affiliate link, I might get enough for a cup of coffee. I'm going to drop that in right after the show on all the different platforms. And if you sign up with my affiliate link, I give you a free 15 minute tutorial just because I love the platform so much. You can bring comments on Play videos. You can really personalize it all and that's what I love about stringer plus the customer service is amazing. So thank you everyone for joining this is 15 Minutes of Fain. I'm Mary Fain Brandt droppin LinkedIn tips, career tips and business development tips every week, you can find me right over on LinkedIn. Go ahead and ring the bell over there and you'll get notified of all my content. Take care.
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