Buzzwords Are Buzzkills

Does your LinkedIn profile say that you are a “strategic, creative, passionate expert skilled at leading innovative and effective programs driving impact across the organization”?

Please say no.

If that is you, you sound like a million other professionals (literally!) on LinkedIn: The world's largest professional network has more than 830 million members—about the same number of miles Saturn is from Earth.¹

We've talked about using words that best describe you, and not just words that could describe anyone else, in previous sections of this book. That includes being more intentional with the words we use in our social media bios—and especially our LinkedIn profiles.

LinkedIn sporadically releases a list of the top buzzwords and phrases culled from LinkedIn member profiles. The most recent U.S. list includes these gems: specialized, experienced, leadership, skilled, passionate, expert, motivated, creative, strategic, and successful.²

Don't sound like everyone else. Instead, let's seek out bold words that differentiate us from others. Let's then tie those attributes to tangible results.

“Differentiate yourself by uniquely describing what you have accomplished … and back it up with concrete examples of your work by adding photos, videos, and presentations to your LinkedIn Profile that demonstrate your best work,” writes career expert Nicole Williams, adding: “Providing concrete examples to illustrate how you are responsible or strategic is always better than just simply using the words.”³

Here are three more suggestions:

1. Use active language, citing tangible outcomes. Be specific about what you've done, and use active language to describe your accomplishments.

   Instead of saying you are “responsible for content marketing programs,” you might say you “increased blog subscribers 70% over three years, resulting in a 15% increase in leads generated and a 30% decrease in the average length of a sale.”

   Or instead of saying you are “responsible for chucking wood” at Woodchuck Industries, you might say you “hit the quarterly goal of chucking more wood than a woodchuck chucks if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

2. Mirror the language of the companies you want to work for or with. Tailor your profile on LinkedIn by selecting the right words for specific opportunities, based on an aspirational role in a company you'd love to work for.

   One of the best ways of standing out is to mirror the language of the organization you're applying to, Nicole says in an email interview.

   “Follow the company you want to work for on LinkedIn and you'll not only discover what their business goals and priorities are, but also the words and phrases they use to describe these objectives,” Nicole suggests.

   “Companies want to hire people who have an understanding of who they are and what they do,” Nicole says. “If you already sound like them they'll be more apt to reach out to you if you're already talking their talk.”

   Go to the source. Adopt its language.

3. Use your job title as more than a title. Stephanie Tilton is a freelance writer. But her LinkedIn title reads: “Arming B2B companies with buyer-focused content that drives engagement and revenue.” I love how Stephanie recasts what she does as what she could do for you.

   Nina Interlandi Bell is a marketing manager at a B2B technology company. But she uses her title as a rallying cry that shouts out what she's all about. The title on her profile reads: “B2B Marketing does NOT have to be boring. Servin' up demand gen with flair.”

   What else reinforces the story: Nina's we-ride-at-dawn rallying cry is accompanied by a profile photo of her dressed as Freddie Mercury for a B2B rock music video she and I made together.

Other tips:

• Turn your summary into a narrative. Write from the first-person I, not the weird third person.

  Not: “Jefference Applecockles is an award-winning customer-obsessed sales executive who possesses an uncanny ability to brag about his top skills in the third person, as if this paragraph might've been written by his international fan base and miraculously appeared here on his LinkedIn profile.”

• Claim your LinkedIn custom URL. Basic advice. But I see noncustom URLs with surprising frequency. It's easy. It's free. Just do it.
• Consider the keywords you want to be known for. Polish and optimize your profile by including those words in your headline and summary.
• Customize your profile rather than using the LinkedIn defaults. The LinkedIn profile format is a standard template, of course. But you can move parts around, embed examples or other media, and include descriptive headlines.

Let's sum up:

The key to a more engaging profile is to take one giant step back and look at your LinkedIn profile holistically: Are you telling a consistent, compelling, audience-centric story about who you are? When I come to your profile, do I immediately understand WiiFM? (What's in it For Me?)

Does the header image speak to what makes you unique, or is it the LinkedIn default image that looks vaguely like an extreme close-up of a blue-green rainbow—what I call the “Header of Nope”?

Does your description broadly frame what you do in terms of the customer/prospect/audience?

Does each job listing or description frame your accomplishments not as a giant high-five to yourself but as what you did for others?

Sweat the small stuff. It adds up to be big stuff.