Your LinkedIn profile serves as an online representation of your professional brand and abilities. Just like an elevator pitch, it should quickly and effectively communicate who you are, what you do, and what makes you stand out. But with limited profile real estate, what are the most essential sections to make your virtual elevator pitch?
Summary
The Summary section, located right below your name and photo, is arguably the most important part of your LinkedIn profile for your elevator pitch. This space allows you to briefly encapsulate your professional background, abilities, accomplishments, and goals in just a few paragraphs. Treat it as your branded professional story.
Some key tips for an impactful Summary section:
- Lead with a powerful opening sentence that gets attention.
- spotlight your most relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.
- Emphasize what makes you unique – your special sauce.
- Use clear, concise language that is scannable.
- Include keywords that relate to your target roles.
- End with a call-to-action to connect or view your full profile.
The Summary section offers prime real estate to make an elevator pitch-like first impression on your profile visitors. Take advantage of it to succinctly highlight your professional brand and value proposition.
Headline
Your LinkedIn Headline, the short phrase under your name, packs a punch in very few characters. This small but mighty section acts like a mini tagline for your personal brand.
An effective Headline should:
- Incorporate important keywords related to your profession and skills.
- Summarize what you do in a compelling, branded way.
- Spotlight your competitive differentiators.
- Entice visitors to keep reading your full profile.
For example, instead of just listing your job title, create a unique phrase like “Product Marketing Leader | Audience Growth Strategist | Passionate Brand Storyteller”.
With creative flair and strategic keywords, your Headline makes quick first impression as visitors land on your profile.
About
The About section gives you another opportunity to showcase your elevator pitch with a more detailed professional narrative. While your Summary is a high-level overview, the About can provide more context about your background, skills, accomplishments, and passions.
Effective tips for the About section include:
- Expand on your Summary with richer detail and examples.
- Share your career progression story and lessons learned.
- Discuss technical and soft skills that make you excel.
- Highlight successes, awards, testimonials, and qualifications.
- Explain what motivates you and share professional philosophies.
- Use clear section headings to create scannability.
The About section enables you to provide depth and personality to your elevator pitch. Don’t just repeat your resume; share your authentic story and qualities that make you the right fit for your target opportunities.
Experience
While not unique to you, highlighting the right experience can strengthen your professional elevator pitch on LinkedIn. Curate your experience section to feature roles most relevant to your current goals.
For maximum impact:
- Lead with your most recent and/or most applicable positions.
- Tailor bullet points to emphasize transferable skills and relevant accomplishments.
- Use keywords and metrics that demonstrate your value add.
- Keep descriptions concise, clear, and scannable for each role.
- Only include positions that positively showcase your personal brand.
Strategically featuring your most important experience enables you to quickly communicate your value in roles that align with your future growth aspirations.
Skills & Endorsements
Your Skills & Endorsements sections serve as social proof of your elevator pitch claims. When other professionals endorse you for relevant skills, it helps validate that you truly possess those abilities.
Tips for Skills & Endorsements:
- Populate your Skills section with keywords that reflect your expertise.
- Prioritize including skills that align with your target roles and goals.
- Proactively endorse connections for their legitimate skills in return.
- Thank endorsers by endorsing them back or messaging your appreciation.
- Display your most endorsed skills prominently on your profile.
Social validation goes a long way in cementing your professional brand and value proposition. The Skills & Endorsements sections enable you to showcase real people who can attest to your abilities.
Recommendations
Earning Recommendations from colleagues and managers provides more in-depth social proof for your elevator pitch. These written endorsements include details about working with you along with positive commentary about your contributions, skills, and impact.
Recommendation best practices:
- Ask colleagues who know your work well to write you Recommendations.
- Aim for a mix of recency, variety (colleagues, managers, clients etc.), and relevancy.
- Thank recommenders and highlight key snippets in your Summary and About section.
- Write Recommendations in return for connections who appreciate them.
- Proactively ask for new Recommendations with each major job change or achievement.
Well-written Recommendations that speak to your qualifications, work ethic, and results help back up your professional brand claims with trustworthy testimonials.
Projects
Showcasing relevant Projects provides tangible evidence of your skills and accomplishments in action. When selected strategically, your profile Projects become virtual portfolio items that reinforce your elevator pitch.
For the best Project enhancements:
- Curate your most impressive, applicable Projects to feature.
- Use visual elements like images, charts, videos, and presentations.
- Highlight meaningful metrics and specific contributions.
- Demonstrate a range of skills and competencies.
- Link to online Project access or results when possible.
The Projects section gives life and credibility to your elevator pitch by proving you actually did amazing work. Don’t let it go to waste.
Education
While your education may seem standard, featuring certain achievements can strengthen your professional elevator pitch:
- List degrees and certifications that validate your expertise.
- Highlight honors, scholarships, awards, and leadership roles.
- Include coursework and projects relevant to your goals.
- Share training programs, conferences, and workshops you’ve completed.
- Mention your education briefly in your Summary if it supports your brand.
Educational background can influence how people perceive your abilities. Call out key accomplishments that substantiate why you deserve your target opportunities.
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Volunteering and causes sections allow you to add dimensions to your professional elevator pitch by showcasing passions, impact, and leadership outside of work.
To make these sections count:
- Feature volunteer experiences that demonstrate relevant skills and growth.
- Stay focused on strengths rather than trying to check every box.
- Choose causes meaningful to you personally and professionally.
- quantify impact on organizations and communities when possible.
Discussing your volunteer experience and causes spotlights your well-roundedness as a leader and human being. Just make sure they genuinely reflect who you are.
Media
Articles, videos, podcasts, and other media are powerful additions if they validate your professional elevator pitch.
For instance:
- Promote content you’ve produced that showcases thought leadership.
- Embed media interviews featuring your commentary and expertise.
- Link to company content that highlights your contributions and initiatives.
- Share press mentions featuring your wins and achievements.
Relevant media demonstrates that authoritative sources also recognize your brand and impact.
Additional Tips
Beyond specific sections, additional profile tactics can optimize your virtual elevator pitch:
- Choose a professional photo that aligns with your brand.
- Customize your background photo with visuals relevant to your industry, role or passions.
- Keep your tone conversational but polished without oversharing.
- Evaluate your entire profile for consistent messaging that reflects your goals.
- Include keywords and skills throughout based on target opportunities.
- Follow hashtags and thought leaders aligned with your professional interests.
Your full profile serves to reinforce the focused elevator pitch highlighted most prominently in your Summary and Headline. Aligning all sections creates cohesion.
Putting It All Together
With limited time to make an impression, well-optimized LinkedIn profile sections enable you to convey a compelling professional elevator pitch to engage your audience. Consider the following fictional example:
Jasmine Johnson is seeking a Product Marketing Manager role at a consumer tech company. Her LinkedIn Headline reads “Strategic Storyteller | Product Marketing | Audience Growth Driver”.
Her Summary leads emphasizing how she combines creativity and analytics to craft product narratives that speak to what consumers care about most. She calls out previous big brand wins, leading cross-functional initiatives, and qualifications like her MBA. It ends noting that she would be excited to discuss product and brand strategy opportunities.
Her About section provides more details about starting in social media marketing and working her way up over the past 8 years to product marketing leadership for both B2B and consumer products. She talks about her passion for understanding customer perspectives and competitive differentiation. She highlights big campaign successes and metrics under her tenure.
Her Experience section features her 3 most relevant Product Marketing roles. Her Skills section includes keywords like Product Messaging, Market Research, Campaign Strategy, Competitive Analysis, Growth Marketing, etc. These are validated with Endorsements from colleagues. Her Education showcases her MBA and a few specific marketing courses. Her Projects provide examples of product launches she strategized and executed.
Jasmine’s full profile works together to consistently summarize her professional brand and value proposition as a Product Marketing Manager driven by audience insights and innovative thinking. She emphasizes the capabilities most critical for her target role.
Conclusion
Your LinkedIn presence offers a valuable platform to communicate an elevator pitch version of your professional brand. Optimizing your Summary, Headline, About, and key sections with consistent messaging spotlights your qualifications and value proposition to potential connections and opportunities. Develop your virtual verbal business card that makes a strong first impression in seconds. Then, use the rest of your profile to back up that elevator pitch with evidence of your skills, experience, and accomplishments. With a compelling, cohesive LinkedIn presence, you can efficiently share who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best fit in your career journey.