What to write on LinkedIn: tips and words to avoid

Among the tips that the platform has never tired of sharing with subscribers is to use a "show, don't tell" approach for your LinkedIn profile: rather than dwell on long-winded descriptions of previous professional experiences or studies, it is better to fill in the appropriate field of goals achieved or upload projects and jobs followed and which can help recruiters and potential clients to get a more concrete idea of their skills. This does not mean that a more (self)descriptive part can be completely dispensed with: to paraphrase the words of the company itself, the LinkedIn profile is a sort of resume that never sleeps. What to write on LinkedIn, then, to make it captivating and effective and what to avoid at all costs?

What are the most used words on LinkedIn and why the platform recommends avoiding them

For several consecutive years, the platform has compiled a top ten of the most used words on LinkedIn and therefore to be avoided as much as possible because «if you are boring, lazy and unoriginal in how you write, how can you think that someone will pick up the phone and call you to an interview?".

Some insights have remained unchanged over the years. The verb "to develop" - and the same goes for the English equivalent "develop" - appears on average four times in every LinkedIn profile and, no less interestingly, each time with a different meaning or connotation. For a long time, Italians described their work as "creative", at least until in 2017 when the term dropped out of the ranking of the ten most used words on LinkedIn in Italy, perhaps also because the profound transformations taking place in the labor market forced then Italian workers to look at their careers with more disenchantment and aware of having to focus above all on highly technical skills to be competitive.

In 2018, among the most used buzzwords on LinkedIn were in the order “specialized“, “leadership“, “passionate“, “strategic“, “experienced“, “focused“, “expert“, “certified“, “creative ", "excellent".

Better not to use them, as the platform points out (which in a motivational impetus addressed its subscribers with an encouraging «you're better than buzzwords»), even if you were really out of ideas about what to write on LinkedIn. When one resorts to commonly used words even if there are others that would do more justice to one's professional skills, the risk is in fact of appearing lazy or listless: for a recruiter an even more capital sin, especially in the case of candidates who do not intend to work in content production, making grammatical blunders or having a limited vocabulary. Last but not least, one could give the impression of having copied from other LinkedIn profiles or of being excessively tied to a "slang" typical of certain traditionalist, plastered and in many ways anachronistic working environments.

Why pay attention to what you write on LinkedIn

What to write on LinkedIn must be studied strategically, both in the case of students and recent graduates entering the job market for the first time, and if you are looking for new opportunities to boost your career, and if you are a freelancer looking for new clients and partnerships.

Building a network of significant professional relationships, which can be exploited as bridging capital, and above all strengthening one's personal brand should be the macro-objectives of one's presence on LinkedIn, in addition to the decidedly more pragmatic ones of finding new offers more easily work and have a good business card, a good digital portfolio with which to "attract" recruiters or customers, almost in an inbound marketing logic. In fact, one of the first things recruiters do is check the candidates' social profiles, just as those interested in a freelance service often inquire and also check on LinkedIn that the professional they have identified is really the one they want. it fits the bill.

If storytelling is an indispensable component of any branding strategy, also telling - and knowing how to do it in an original, creative, effective way - one's personal brand serves to strengthen it and to strengthen its memory: a well-written LinkedIn profile is, in view of this objective, as necessary as an equally well-groomed curriculum vitae.
Headline and summary: how to effectively write your "business cards" on LinkedIn

The most accredited experts and the most accredited LinkedIn guides recommend paying particular attention to what and how you write in two sections of your profile: the headline and the summary (or summary). Those who visit the profile of a candidate or professional they intend to rely on are the first pieces of information they will encounter and the ones they are most likely to read, also because they don't need to scroll to do so. The more well-written they are, the more they will also be able to provide essential information and place the right focus on the user's salient professional skills and experiences and, in an era of scarcity of time and attention, knowing how to be concise but effective is a rewarding feature.

Furthermore, the more headline and summary will be able to "capture" the attention of the recruiter or anyone looking for a professional on LinkedIn, the more they will be able to push him to continue visiting the profile. In many ways, in short, it is as if these two sections were your business card on the platform: what to write on LinkedIn in the headline and in the summary, therefore, to make your profile more effective and performing?

What to write on LinkedIn in the headline

It is necessary to think of the headline as if it were the payoff of one's personal brand, a sort of specification that will accompany all one's activity on the social network. In fact, among what to write on LinkedIn in the headline section, qualification and professional role cannot be missing.

Being precise is at least as important in this sense as being clear and this is why, especially in the case of the newest digital professions or very technical tasks that may be unknown outside the reference market niche, it might be worth giving up to official titles and use a professional specification that has more to do with what is done every day in concrete terms.

What has just been said does not mean that the CEO of a large industrial group should give up calling himself CEO on LinkedIn; however, for a digital evangelist, for example, it could be more strategic to define himself as an expert in digitization in the headline, above all because he is aimed precisely at those who are not very familiar with the digital world.

Precisely defining and mastering the target (or targets) to which you are addressing can help you write the headline on LinkedIn. The advice that many insiders give is to make explicit one's reference public, understood as a customer base or work sector, directly in the professional qualification. Speaking of concreteness, underlines among others Gianluigi Bonanomi in "Guida Calcio di LinkedIn", more and more people, HR managers or customers interested in the services of a freelancer, use LinkedIn as a real search engine: they know what they need and they are looking for someone who can help them solve their problem; for this reason a good headline on LinkedIn cannot be too generic, but must be able to highlight one's unique selling point compared to many other colleagues and potential competitors.

Space therefore for creativity, especially since for some time now the platform has increased the available characters to 220, but without creativity turning into rambling or excessive vision. Not to be forgotten, precisely because LinkedIn is in some way also a "vertical" search engine specialized in the world of work, is to insert the most relevant keywords for your sector, those that your competitors are already using or for some reason become trendy.

Write the company you already work for in your LinkedIn headline

One of the main doubts about what to write on LinkedIn in the headline concerns whether to insert already in the second piece of information, after name and surname, that the people with whom you are connected on the platform will also read about themselves the company where you work or it is worked. There is no golden rule in this sense and much depends on what kind of relationship exists with one's employer, how much one's personal brand intersects with the corporate one and naturally also on the size, notoriety or prestige recognized to the same agency.

It is quite probable that those who founded a startup that later turned into a leading company in the sector, even if they no longer hold any operational role within it, will want to continue to define themselves as its founder also on LinkedIn and have every right to do so. In all likelihood, even those who deal with SEO and do it in Google might not want to give up letting anyone who visits the LinkedIn profile know immediately. Much more negligible information, at least for the headline, is the name of the small family business with which one collaborates sporadically as a copywriter. On the other hand, it could even be avoided to make explicit the name of the company where you work if you are looking for a new job, especially if the reason that led to this decision is not to be looking for a promotion, for greater opportunities growth or more satisfactory salary conditions but bad relationships with managers or colleagues.

What to write in the LinkedIn headline if you are unemployed or a student

The reason why many people have a profile on LinkedIn is to look for work and therefore it becomes necessary to try to understand what to write on LinkedIn in the headline if you are momentarily unemployed. Using the label "unemployed" is certainly not the best way to present yourself, but at the same time lying about your working status could prove counterproductive, also in consideration of the fact that it is very easy for anyone - let alone a recruiter - to carry out a check of this type.

A good idea could be to continue using the most recent professional qualification, which remains unchanged even if you do not currently have an employment contract to refer to and the simplest solution in this sense is to update with the end date of the collaboration the last of the experiences reported in the specific section of LinkedIn. Alternatively, you could use the headline for the desired position, being careful to make explicit in this case with ad hoc formulas that you are actively looking for work or available to evaluate new collaborations. To continue the comparison with the CV, the "holes" on the LinkedIn profile are certainly not frowned upon by those who make the selection.

Even those who are still studying or have just graduated may find it difficult to fill in the headline field. In this case, however, the solution is simpler: just write "student at ..." or "graduated at ..." and add the school, university or institution where the training course was followed to allow those visiting your LinkedIn profile to get an idea of your field of study and what field you will most likely work in. You will have more space in the summary to bring out your own personality and experiences of volunteering or otherwise more akin to the world of work.

Effective summary on LinkedIn: how to write it

With its 2000 characters, the LinkedIn summary (or summary) is the ideal section in which to do personal branding storytelling and tell about yourself, your background, your professional skills.

If there's one thing insiders agree on, it's that this section should be anything but a mere repetition of what's already been said (who you are) or what will be said later (what you've done). . Rather than making a list of the duties or professional qualifications held, it is better to tell one's professional history, or academic in the case of students, and do it in the first person, even using language that is at times emotional and without being afraid to reveal what one's ambitions and one's innermost desires.

It can be useful in this field to focus on the good results obtained, possibly even in order to overshadow small debacles or stalled moments in one's career. An effective LinkedIn summary should not avoid referring to the reason why a recruiter or client should prefer that user over all other candidates or competitors.

Finally, a good idea could be to leave a simple and clear call to action in the summary, such as the one that invites you to contact us via email or messages for further information. Above all, more than what to write in the LinkedIn summary, it is important that you choose a style and tone of voice that is as much in line with your personality as possible.