Crafting Attention-Grabbing LinkedIn About Summaries with Jordan Mendoza

Jordan Mendoza (00:00.014)
Welcome back everybody to the next episode in the LinkedIn series. I hope you guys have gotten value so far. Just to give a quick recap on where we've been, we have talked about the banner image. We have talked about your profile picture. We have jumped into headline text, how to structure it, why to structure it that way, what call to action to use. We have uncovered a couple different features and tools that you need.

to have turned on, including Creator Mode, because that gives you the ability to go live, do audio events, newsletters, and a Follow button. We also talked about the fact that Creator Mode is about to go away in the next month or so, and you'll still have access to those same features. Then we jumped into why you need to turn on the Featured section, how to turn it on, and then what you can actually leverage it for. So that's a recap. If you haven't actually

Listen to each of those episodes. I highly recommend going back. There's some really great stuff and Everything we're doing through this series is sequential Okay, so if you start here my advice is go all the way back to the first episode in the series and start there because we're going top to bottom down your LinkedIn profile and we're helping you Optimize it for success. Okay, and what success looks like to you is probably going to be different than somebody else. I

Again, this could be through the lens of you're a student. This could be you're a business owner. You're an author. You're a speaker. You're a podcast host. There's a lot of different lenses we can look through. It doesn't matter which vertical you're in. This information is going to be helpful for all of you guys. Okay. And today, and I ended the last episode kind of on a little cliffhanger there. I said that this will arguably be the most important content that we cover. And it's arguably the most important section on LinkedIn.

And this is your about summary. And just to give you a little context on why I'm so bullish or why I think this is the most important part of your profile is LinkedIn gives us the ability in 2 ,600 characters, which is a lot of characters. Most people are using about a quarter or a third of that. And they give us the ability to share who we are, to share our story, to share what we've been through.

Jordan Mendoza (02:25.006)
And most people, and when I say most, I mean in the upper 90%, are basically taking their resume, which is over in their experience section, they're copying it, and they're pasting it into their about summary. And there's a few things that I feel, this is my personal opinion, and this is why I coach all my students on how to structure their about summaries the way that I do. If you copy and paste your resume,

What that means is you've basically just duplicated information and there's no point in that. Okay. That's the first thing that I think is wrong about it. The second thing is, is it says about, okay. And if you've ever read a book, right. If you go to the about the author, what is that about? It's about them. It's about their story, what they've done, their journey, their experiences. Okay. If I wanted to know what's on your resume, that's what the actual experience section is for on the profile.

Okay, and if you have an experience section and there's not a lot of data in there take your you know about summary that you copied from your resume paste that over to your experience section because you also need SEO there which we're gonna go into in a future episode as well and and get you guys super dialed in there but you're about summary guys Okay, everyone watching or listening it is about you. Okay, this is your chance to share who you are with LinkedIn

Okay, and if everything else is done, okay, if you if you if you Followed my advice and you went back to episode one and and now we're at this juncture Okay, and if we get this piece, right? This is going to change everything. Okay. This is going to give people Context into you this is going to be able to have somebody actually relate to you in some way because All of us have a story and a journey and we've been through stuff

This is your opportunity to be authentic. This is your opportunity to tell stories This is your opportunity to be maybe a little vulnerable more than you would think on a business platform and then and then you have the opportunity to talk about What you do? Okay, and what you're looking for and have a good call to action. Okay, so let's talk structure guys So if you any of you that listening to this, I highly recommend going

Jordan Mendoza (04:50.158)
Check out my profile because I want to make sure I'm a practitioner of all the stuff I'm telling you guys. If you go to my profile, you better see all the things that I'm telling you are exactly the way that I'm saying it on my profile. So that's one thing I highly recommend. Go read my, from top to bottom and make sure that everything I'm telling you I'm doing as well because it's so important, especially in 2024 as people are coming out of the woodworks with all different types of information, it's important.

that you work with people that are practitioners, okay, that are actually doing the things that they're telling you to do, okay? We've got to model that stuff and I don't think it's being modeled enough in business, all right? So definitely go look at my profile and you will see I've modeled everything that I'm telling you how to structure and how to change and shift, okay? So you're about summary. It should start with a hook, just like any great story, just like any great piece of content.

You want to start with a hook. So if you were to go and read mine, my hook, which is my first line, it says, growing up with a mom that had one lung taught me a lot about what real adversity was. And so most people that read that, I have a lot of people reach out and they're like, wow, I read your profile. I've never seen anything like that on LinkedIn. And so now once I started getting that, I knew I was onto something because, you know,

We all want to be different. We want to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. And just imagine if that first line, that hook was something that you've been through or something that you've learned from or through. Does that make sense? It's part of your story. And I can't tell you how many of my clients and students that I've worked with in coach that have changed their summary to start with a hook and then the rest of the framework you guys are going to learn.

and how many people have actually said, I wanted to reach out because I read about you. I learned about you as a human, your story. Thank you for sharing. Must have took a lot to share that. Okay. And now, you know, if there are things in your story, guys, if there are things that are still really hard to talk about, my goal is not to pressure you to talk about them. I want you to talk about something that you are comfortable talking about. I want you to talk about something that

Jordan Mendoza (07:15.502)
You see the value in talking about because you've lived it, you've experienced it, you've pushed through it. That's what I want you to do. For me, that was my hook. Now you've got to give people some deeper context. I shared some pivotal moments that have happened in my life. Some of these were very tough things. Some of these were hard things to deal with. Then you go into a pivot part of your story.

Okay. And then you go into a closing and then you go into, you know, what you do, who you serve, what you're looking for. Okay. And that really is the structure. But the reason why I said go review mine is go view it, go look at it and use that as the model. And you can essentially start, if you put that side by side on a Word document to what you want to build and you follow the framework and the structure, insert your story.

You're gonna have a great finished product and you're gonna have an about summary that when people actually read this They're gonna say wow, I really want to connect with that person I really think this person is someone that I want to associate myself with Okay, so this process I'll just tell you it's not easy. Okay, it's not easy jumping into the past Okay, because there's some things that hurt there's some things that are painful, but I can tell you I'm

What you're gonna get on the other side of doing that is you're gonna realize that the pain that you have can actually be your platform and you can start sharing it with people and you can start impacting people in a positive way. And so if you kind of look at it and you go into it from that mindset, I think that will really encourage you and you will take the time to make sure that you're structuring your about summary in a way that helps you connect with your audience, okay?

So in the next episode, we are going to jump into some more tactical things you can do in your experience section, some of the features that you may not know existed there. We are going to also dive into skills and awards and certifications and really trying to round out the rest of your profile to help set you up for success. Until next time, I'll talk to you then.