How to Get Traffic from Your LinkedIn Headline

About a month or two ago, I noticed that LinkedIn headlines started appearing in discussions. My marketing radar started beeping uncontrollably. I said to myself, here’s a fantastic opportunity to get the message out to your market and get them back to your website. How can we optimize this!

Well done LinkedIn for adding this. For over a year now, I’ve been itching for a way to get a quick idea about what others in my group do without having to go to their profile. Again, thanks for adding this, LinkedIn team.

Let me show you what the headline is, what mine looks like, and then give you some keys to optimizing it for getting your message out there and getting traffic to your site.

First, what is your LinkedIn headline?

It’s the line of text in your profile under your name. The default text is your most recent position. You can, of course, edit it – and you should – to market yourself.

Here’s what mine looks like on my profile, after I’ve edited it:

It also appears in searches:

And, most importantly, if you’re actively networking in groups, it also appears in discussions:

It’s this third place that excites me most, as I am actively participating in discussions to get visible and build my image around my market – coaches.

Next, three key elements to make your headline market you.

For most coaches, their main goal is to get clients so they can sustain a coaching business. And, a good way to do this from LinkedIn is to direct people back to your main website where you can sell them on you.

And so, with that in mind, here are three keys to making your headline work.

1. Sell yourself in the headline.

Be sure to highlight what you do in your headline – by “what you do” I mean what you do for clients. This means the goals and results you help clients achieve. Whether it is growing a business, getting healthy, or finding happiness in a new career – ensure your headline says the benefits your coaching brings.

Who and what … those are the two things that should be in there.

Use juicy words as there isn’t much space, about 1.5 lines of text or 120 characters. Use your business tagline, elevator speech or other summary as a starting point to get ideas.

My friend Jack’s headline has some juicy words. Here’s his headline.

2. Get keywords in it.

Use keywords that people may use to find someone like you. If you’re a copywriter, get that in there. If you’re a CEO, get that in there. Help people find you when they search.

I would avoid stuffing in phrases that are really not your specialty. If you only blog one time a month for the last 3 months, and you’re really a business coach, I’d not claim to be a “blogger” in an attempt to attract someone seeking a blogger. You’ll only disappoint the searcher and you’ll dilute your message.

3. Call to action.

Marketing works well when you invite people to take action. While the purpose of your headline is mainly to tell what you do, in the context of what we are doing here (getting prospects to come to your site) your headline serves as a great place to ask people to act.

Here are some possible actions:

• Read success stories on my profile.
• Get my free article, report, download.
• Message me for a free something or other.

Essentially, the move to make is to invite people to access something else that furthers the effort to get them from stranger to paying client.

Again, in the context of getting clients, we will want to get them to your website where they can get into your selling system.

Lastly, here’s a breakdown of what I did with my headline.

The main goal of marketing at LinkedIn, for me, is to get traffic back to my website. My website serves as my marketing funnel or sales pipeline. This is why I participate in discussions.

Again, here’s my headline in a discussion:

My LinkedIn headline is “Web designer for coaches. Free stuff on building client-attracting websites at my site.”

So, some key things in my headline:

1. I have the phrase web designer for coaches in there which has my keywords. If a coach in my network is seeking a web designer, my profile will come up.

2. I mention “free stuff” in my headline to give people a reason to go to my site.

3. I have “client-attracting websites” in there to hit on the benefit I bring – that I don’t just build websites, but ones that attract clients.

Here’s LinkedIn’s write-up on editing your headline:

http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2901

In summary, update your headline to market yourself! Get across the benefits you bring and to whom you bring them to. Get keywords in there. Get an invitation to grow the relationship.

Re-done your tagline? Post it below. Got ideas for writing a great one? Please share! Got a funny joke to liven my day – always welcome.