I just spent an hour doing live LinkedIn profile teardowns with Jillian Richardson, one of LinkedIn's top ghostwriters, and we found the same problem in almost every profile we looked at.

They were professionally perfect.

And completely forgettable.

Generic headlines. Resume-speak. Confusing as to what they actually do for clients.

There's a difference between writing your LinkedIn profile as a job-seeker and one that gets you clients.

Most people are optimizing for the wrong one.

Here's the typical pattern.

"Marketing Consultant | Helping Companies Grow"
"CEO | Scaling Startups"
"Head of Growth | SaaS Enthusiast"

These headlines tell me nothing about whether you can help me.

They're professionally safe. And they blend into every other profile on the platform.

If you’re using LinkedIn to help your business grow as a founder, consultant, or agency owner, that’s a problem.

Your headline shouldn't say what you do, it should speak to what your ideal client needs.

Here's what that shift looks like in practice:

Before: "CEO | Helping startups scale"

After: "I help bootstrapped founders hire their first marketer without wasting $20K learning the hard way."

Same person. Completely different signal.

The second version is specific (bootstrapped founders), concrete (hire their first marketer), and shows proof (you've helped others avoid that 20K mistake).

Being clear converts. Specificity builds trust. And building trust at scale is the goal of LinkedIn!

Most About sections are resumes with paragraph breaks. They talk about what you did but not how you can help someone.

Instead, write it like you're talking directly to your ideal client.

Use "you" language. Address their problem. Prove you understand what they're dealing with (and this is where you can brag by adding proof to show you are credible).

And yeah, show some personality. The kind that makes the right people think, "Finally, someone who gets it."

Jillian's famous for going viral with a banner that said "Relax your butthole." (Yes, really.)

It wasn't random weird. It was strategic weird.

It signaled to her ideal clients, founders and execs who are tired of corporate-speak, that she's not like every other LinkedIn ghostwriter.

You don't need to be that bold. But you do need to sound like yourself.

Because sameness doesn't sell. And professionally boring doesn't book calls.

This conversation reinforced something I've been thinking about.

LinkedIn profiles aren't static billboards. They're client-generating assets.

And most people treat them like digital resumes that sit there collecting views instead of generating business.

In this episode of the pod below, we do live teardowns of 3 real profiles (don’t worry, they consented!), walking through exactly what to fix in headlines, about sections, and how to position yourself so the right people feel like they already know you.

If your profile feels too polished to be real, that's your red flag.

Listen now: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

This is the first episode of our new season! And this is exactly the type of conversation I want more of in Season 2.

Not just "here's what's working on LinkedIn," but tactical, in-the-weeds breakdowns of how smart marketers are building trust and generating business through content.

Profiles that sell. Offers that land. Posts that feel human.

More to come.

Thanks for being here ❤️

Let’s keep building and keep that caffeine flowing!

-Christine

P.S. Read your About section out loud. Would you actually talk like that? If not, rewrite it. Then forward this to someone whose profile still sounds like 2017.

Find season 1 on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Know someone great I should interview next? My inbox and DMs are open!

Jillian Richardson: “So even just a small shift to like, I help your company. 10x your sales in six months or like whatever a thing might be that someone would be interested in, put that in your headline and same thing with your about section, address it to a human being, prove to them that you can support them in some way.”

Jillian Richardson: “So the quick background on making LinkedIn weird is I had a job at a content agency where I was helping founders with their LinkedIn content and I produced more LinkedIn posts than one human ever should in two months, which is 200 LinkedIn posts in two months. And a theme that I noticed was the posts that were funny and the posts that the founders were maybe a little bit hesitant to share ... performed really well.”

Jillian Richardson: “Yeah, well I would say that if you're in a crowded industry figuring out how you can have a tone of voice that's different than other people in your industry, and I'm very biased of course towards humor for that, because LinkedIn is still so seen as such a stuffy professional platform ... And it won't be this way forever, but you're gonna get attention on your profile because of that.”

Jillian Richardson: “But if you're working in an industry where you have any examples of people who do this well, like who use humor or personal stories, maybe you want to get this approved by your head of marketing, your head of HR or whatever, be like, hey, here's somebody in our field, they use this style of posts, it performs well, it's getting them business and traction. I want to experiment with this.”

Jillian Richardson: “So for featured content, I always recommend that people have a case study ... a link to your website with a lead magnet if you're trying to get emails, and then a link to a LinkedIn post, because you can have a LinkedIn post featured that's like a story about your business, why you care about it, a client you worked with, something that shows who you are, why you care about your industry ... and how you support people.”

Jillian Richardson: “I'm very biased towards writing in the first person, because I'm like, who is this third person? We all know you did this. ... when I read a bio or an about section like this [in the third person], for some reason I assume, this person isn't that active on LinkedIn, because they're not writing from the first person. ... if I send this person a message, I'm never gonna hear from them.”

Jillian Richardson: “Yeah, I would say focus on what you're doing now the most and you can use your previous experiences to support why you can help people now. Like in my about section, I'm like outside of being a LinkedIn ghostwriter, I've developed my own personal brand. So I know what it's like to grow yours. ... if it's really not supporting your current customer, there's really no need.”

Jillian Richardson: “To me, it looks suspicious if somebody has a recommendation from 2013 and then nothing else. So if people compliment you, reach out, ask them for a testimonial, especially if they already have them on your website, just add them.”

I'm Christine Orchard. I host Marketers Do Coffee to learn how LinkedIn actually works from the people who do each part best. I also run Orchard Strategy, a LinkedIn strategy and content agency. We handle the whole channel for B2B founders, executives, and consultants, from positioning through to publishing.