From my experience as a curious LinkedIn user and reader, most people tend to check and edit their profiles one to three times a year. Some seem reluctant to check what they've written about themselves or else they forget they’ve ever written something, since they seldom make any improvements at all.
While many would argue that updating your profile on a business network can take tons of time, here are three reasons why you should never leave your LinkedIn Summary section to its own devices:
1. It’s the entry point to your business profile. The summary section should be a concise, short but effective extract where you display your talents to tell the world who you are and what you do in a manner that is both enticing and well-written. Ask a best-seller where they’ve focused their efforts apart from the title of their books and chances are they’ll say the first chapter: no one would have continued reading unless the first lines of their story had made a ground-breaking impression on them. And making a ground-breaking impression means attracting readers with a text that casually leaves them craving for more.
2. It’s a sample of your communicative self. In a world where we are all posting and sharing content 24/7, we’ve all sort of developed our own communicative tone and style, that is, who we are, what we are like and how we talk or write when we need to do business communications. Well, your LinkedIn summary is like your elevator pitch: it’s your one chance to sell yourself like an awesome [fill in with your profession here]. The text you craft for your LinkedIn summary will be usually considered as a direct reflection of who you are and how you can or like to work in real life. Can you imagine what a potential recruiter or HR manager will think if your summary is full of typos? Sounds obvious? Not to many LinkedIners whose profile is out there giving a far from reliable impression of their work.
3. It’s a way to show you care. After a quick search during which I checked some random LinkedIn profiles of current contacts and people whom I’ve never even e-met before, I can solemnly swear most summaries are either too dauntingly long or literally non-existent. Really, is this how you’d show potential employers that you care about marketing yourself? A good exercise might be: Write your LinkedIn summary in 2-5 lines. Edit any spelling errors or typos. Now re-write your summary considering you will have to read it out loud to your target employer in the next few minutes. Would you change anything? What would it be?
So even if you can’t afford to invest much time on social media to update your profiles every now and then, at least you may want to consider reviewing your LinkedIn summary for a change. Perhaps you can edit the first line so that it’s even more gripping or add a new one where you display why you are a good asset in the fields you work or want to work in. Any thoughts? Hope you’ll find this useful!