LinkedIn matters.  Your profile appears in Google search results. Clients, colleagues, prospective employees, partners, press, and shareholders are among those using it to assess your credibility. And people use it every day for new business development and relationship building.
Your positioning on LinkedIn informs how they perceive you. Does it communicate:

• “Just doesn’t get it”?
• “Trying too hard”?
• “Too salesy”?
• “Out of work”?
• “Boring”?

Or does it communicate:

• “That’s my kinda guy”?
• “We should really meet with her”?
• “Lets invite him to speak”?
• “You should interview him for your article”?
• “Now this is someone I can do business with”?

Before reading further, go to your LinkedIn profile. What message is it communicating?

By reviewing examples of LinkedIn profiles, you can more easily identify the message you want to send. Recently, I reviewed hundreds of profiles. Here is what I’ve found:

1. Writing a profile is easy. Deciding what you want to communicate isn’t. Use these tips to guide you.

• Which three qualities have your colleagues noticed about you, which you are most proud of?
• Which of these business personalities do you want people to associate with you?  LinkedIn Title. The most common option is to state your title and company. Other options include

2. Job title / company  (i.e., CMO – Pepsi); (Author – book)

• Who you are (i.e., “that guy”)
• What you do (i.e., International business expert, rainmaker, brander, marketing professional)

3. Profile picture = your visual brand

• A professional head shot is most common.
• I’ve seen fun action shots like the Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi NY listening to music, Alex Bogusky Co-Chairman of CP+B with his bike, the forehead of Ray Longoria, creative director at GSD&Ms, Steve Weinreb, CIO of Global Technology Solutions at Metlife in front of the Great Wall of China, or the CTO of Cloud Solutions at Novell Moiz Kohari’s profile picture with his young son.

4. Summary = your story

An effective summary section shares your personal brand. Leaving it blank leaves the reader to infer your personality based only on where you’ve worked. Unless you’re Warren Buffett; then you can leave it blank.

Industry norms differ with summary sections. I often see clients in financial services that want to leave theirs sparse, whereas creative directors are inclined to write narratives.

Here are a several examples of professionals using summary sections to share their personal brand.

- Sir Richard Brandson writes a short narrative in the first person, “In 1970 I founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer…”.

- Guy Kawasaki’s LinkedIn summary shares his personal mantra “empower[ing] entrepreneurs,” with unpretentious language, “When all is said and done, I’m a marketing guy.”

- Sandra Nielsen, Chief Software Systems Engineer at Boeing, uses the LinkedIn summary to share her personal mission statement, “tomorrow’s solutions today.”

- David Radeke, VP at J&J, uses a more traditional approach that summarizes his background with factual language.

- Vance Strader, Chief Engineer, at Harley-Davidson Motor Company, also summarizes his background. His language is passionate with phrases like “Driven to create a compelling vision of the future”.

- President Obama’s summary section uses his personal profile as a springboard to discuss collective responsibility.

- Business author Marshall Goldsmith’s summary reads like a script for someone introducing him at a conference.

- Bill Gates writes with a sincere, personal style, starting his summary with “Melinda and I believe that every life has equal value.”

Key take away: Write your LinkedIn profile to communicate your personal brand, not your employment history.

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