Most often on LinkedIn your picture and your headline are the first ways others will meet you digitally. 

It is your digital introduction to a prospective customer.

It is your first impression. It is your first encounter like shaking their hand and introducing yourself. This is why your personal brand is so important to social prospecting and digital selling. This is why a strategic plan for your headline is so important to helping you generate more first conversations with ideal customers. 

Here are 3 important things to consider when crafting your social headline. Especially as part of a social prospecting and digital selling strategy.  

1. Using Your Title. Buyers don’t want to be sold. They want to be served and helped to make a good decision. When a headline is only a title, especially when it is a sales oriented title, it screams to prospects that you are a sales person more than a trusted advisor or industry expert. 

2. Move Towards You or Away From You. Your headline should refer to you as a person and not just your title. As in #1 above, your headline is part of your prospects first impression of you. When your headline says something personal about you it does two things for you. 

 a. It gives visitors a sense of who you are as a person. When a prospect visits your profile they are immediately thinking, “is this someone with whom I would like to speak?”  Does your headline help break down their barriers or does it support a notion that all sales people want to do is sell something? 

b. Does your headline help you stand out from your competition? Most people just add their business title. A unique headline or one that shares a bit more about you as a person helps you stand out and be different. 

c. Does your headline make visitors curious?  A headline that is not about a specific job or industry is very unique. When it is different than the norm, they tend to slow visitors down to take a deeper look at the profile. A profile that makes visitors curious also helps them want to speak with you or accept a connection request.

3. Assumptions. When we don’t provide details about who we are or how we serve others, we leave their impression of us up to chance. When we don’t provide clarity, they will make a decision based on their previous experiences with sales professionals. Quite honestly, most people don’t have a great impression of sales people. We want to avoid that by giving clarity for them. 

4. Don’t tell others how great you are. Unless you are looking for a new job, your headline should not sound like a resume. Your prospects don’t care how great of a sales person you are. In fact, it has the opposite effect that you want. You want them to engage with you and want to talk with you. You don’t want them to run from you. 

5. Be Creative. Your headline speaks to visitors about who you are more than about what you do. Buyers want to work with people who they know, like and trust. Your headline is your first opportunity to influence how they perceive you and whether their initial impression is someone they want to speak with or want to avoid. 

Here are a few examples of some great headlines to help you get your own creative ideas for your headline. 

When you review these, ask yourself, would you like to know this person or avoid this person?