LinkedIn Quick Tip: How to Add Bullet Points to Your Summary

For more LinkedIn Quick Tips, check out The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors, available on Amazon now!

Your LinkedIn Summary section determines how often you will come up in keyword searches and introduces people to your firm in 2,000 characters or less. But lengthy summaries can be intimidating and tedious. While you’ll want to include relevant keywords and tell your story, your summary shouldn’t read like a novel.

The solution? Add bullet points to your summary to break up your profile and focus your reader’s attention. Bullet points have been proven to increase sales in advertisements and help convey complex ideas more clearly. Well-written bullet points can:

Make your summary less intimidating
Highlight important information
Focus your reader’s attention
Clarify complex ideas

Bullet Point Best Practices

Before you add bullet points to your summary in excess, let’s review some bullet point best practices. First, you’ll want to keep your list short; between four and seven bullet points is ideal.

Second, you’ll want to keep harmony within your bullet points. Try writing bullet points of the same length and use the same grammatical format.

Finally, never use sub-bullet points. They add confusion and remind me of the year I spent working for the Department of Defense, sitting through the worst PowerPoint presentations ever created.

What Should You Bullet?

Use your bullet points wisely to highlight the most important points of your summary. Because the eye is naturally drawn to bullet points, your bulleted content will get the most attention. Be sure you’re featuring what you most want prospects to know about you. Here’s one example:

At Thomas J. Dobransky & Associates, we’ve been helping scientists and researchers at UC San Diego and The Scripps Research Institute prepare for a secure retirement for over 30 years. Our firm puts our clients’ best interests first with our commitment to:

Independence
Fee-based advice
A fiduciary standard

We only take on new clients who we believe we can help. To learn more about our firm or to get a second opinion on your retirement plan, contact our office today.

How Do You Get Bullet Points to Show Up on LinkedIn?

There’s little chance you would uncover this trick unless you went searching for the answer (or read my book), but it’s actually really easy to add bullet points to your profile. There are a few options available when editing your summary section.

First, you can cut and paste this bullet point symbol ● directly into your profile. Second, you can use the built-in formatting for Windows or Apple. For Windows, put your cursor where you’d like to add the bullet point, then hold down the “Alt” key and type 0149 on the keypad, then release the “Alt” key and the bullet will appear. For Apple, press “Option/Alt” and “8” and your bullet point will appear.

Give it a try!

Need Help?

I hope this Quick Tip was helpful to you. If you have questions about this topic or anything regarding LinkedIn, schedule a free call with one of our marketing specialists today! And if you’re curious about more LinkedIn strategies, check out our webinar on Unlocking the Power of LinkedIn to generate referrals.