How to Write a LinkedIn About Section That Shows What You Know

How to Write a LinkedIn About Section That Shows What You Know

Why most experts' About sections sound the same, and what the first 220 characters need to do instead.

October 21, 2026

Open ten LinkedIn profiles from people in your field and read the first two lines of each About section. "Results driven professional with 15+ years of experience." "Passionate about helping organizations grow." "Strategic leader with a proven track record." By the fourth one you can't remember whose was whose.

In my experience, the person with the blandest About section is usually the one with the best stories. They've just never put them anywhere.

Your About section is often the first thing a stranger reads when they're deciding whether you're the person to call. A recruiter, a client, a conference planner, a podcast host. Most experts treat it like a résumé summary. It works a lot better as the first few minutes of a conversation.

The short answer: A strong LinkedIn About section opens with something only you could say, a moment or a point of view from your actual work, not your title. LinkedIn shows roughly the first 220 characters before "see more," so those lines decide whether anyone keeps reading. Write in first person, keep it to a few hundred words, and leave the full list of credentials to your experience section.

What should a LinkedIn About section say?

It should tell a stranger what you see in your field that other people miss, and why they should believe you. Your headline already says what you do. Your experience section already lists where you've done it. The About section is the one place on the profile where you get to sound like a person.

In the 2025 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 86% of hidden buyers, the people who shape a buying decision but never talk to your sales team, said they favor perspectives that challenge their assumptions. A list of competencies doesn't challenge anybody. A point of view does.

So the job isn't to describe yourself. The job is to give the reader one reason to think, "Huh. I haven't heard it put that way."

How long should a LinkedIn About section be?

LinkedIn gives you 2,600 characters, which is roughly 400 words. Most good ones use somewhere between 200 and 400 words. But length is the wrong thing to worry about.

What matters is the top. According to AuthoredUp's breakdown of the About section, LinkedIn only shows about the first 220 characters before it cuts off with "see more." That's two sentences, maybe three. Everything below only gets read if those earn the click.

In journalism the opening of a story is called the lede, and you learn fast that most readers never get past it. Same thing here. If your first 220 characters are "Experienced professional passionate about..." you've spent your best real estate on words everybody else in your field already used.

Should a LinkedIn About section be first person or third person?

First person, almost always. Third person on LinkedIn reads like you hired someone to write about you, because it's your own profile and everybody knows it. A line like "I've sat in on more than 300 exit interviews" sounds like somebody I want to talk to.

Third person still has a home. Your speaker bio, the paragraph a conference prints in the program, the intro an emcee reads. I get into that version in How to Write a Speaker Bio That Gets You Booked. Different job, different voice.

Why do most experts' About sections sound the same?

Because they describe the topic, not the person. In my keynote work I call those leaves: leadership, growth, strategy, customer experience, innovation. They're real, they're important, and they're interchangeable. A root is something you learned the hard way in your own work that most people in your field haven't figured out yet. I explain the difference in How to Write a Keynote Speech, so I won't redo it here.

Picture an elementary school teacher with twenty years in the classroom who wants to start consulting with school districts. That's a hypothetical, but you've read this profile. The leaf version opens: "Dedicated educator with 20+ years of experience, passionate about student success and lifelong learning."

Now try this: "Every September I get kids who've already decided whether they're 'a math person.' They're eight. I've spent twenty years figuring out how to change that answer before Thanksgiving."

Same teacher. Same twenty years. But the second one has a kid in it, a month, a number and a belief you could argue with. And a superintendent reading it wants to know how.

And the hard part isn't the writing. That teacher didn't need better adjectives. She needed somebody to ask the right follow up question until "student success" turned into eight year olds who've already given up on math.

What are the biggest LinkedIn About section mistakes?

Most of them come from writing for an algorithm or a hiring manager instead of a curious stranger.

The credentials one trips up the most accomplished people. You earned them, so of course you want them seen. They just land harder after the reader already cares.

A quick test for your own: cover your name and photo, read your first two lines, and ask whether they could belong to anybody else with your job title. If the answer is yes, you don't have a writing problem. You have a "nobody's asked you the right questions yet" problem.

Can you use ChatGPT to write your LinkedIn About section?

You can, and it'll give you something clean in about four seconds. That's the problem. It'll be the same clean thing it gave everybody else who asked.

People can feel it, too. A University of Florida and USC study of 1,100 professionals, published in the International Journal of Business Communication, found that only 40% to 52% of people saw a message as sincere when it was written with heavy AI help, compared with 83% for messages written with little. And a June 2026 Clutch and Compose.ly survey of 444 U.S. consumers found 66% are more skeptical of fully AI written content. That second one is a small vendor survey, so take it as a signal, not gospel. Both point the same way.

Handing the one part of your profile that's supposed to sound like you to a chatbot, from a blank page, defeats the purpose. As I always tell people, AI is great at organizing what you give it. It's terrible at noticing what you left out. And what experts leave out is almost always the good stuff, because it doesn't feel special to them anymore.

Why does one talk do more than a perfect profile?

Because a profile describes your thinking and a talk lets people watch it. Rewrite your About section ten times and it's still a paragraph people skim between meetings. Stand up in front of 40 people at an internal lunch and learn or a local association meeting for 25 minutes, and they've spent real time inside how you think.

I'd argue one good talk does more for how you're seen than a year of posting. People who were in the room go look you up after. Your About section is where they land, and now it's doing a different job. It's confirming something they already felt.

You don't have to want to be a speaker to get paid to speak.

Antonio Neves

The profile also gets easier to write. Once you've figured out the handful of ideas you'd actually say on a stage, you know what goes at the top of your About section. A construction executive I worked with told me, "I think I have something. I don't know what it is." He'd been in that business more than 20 years. Once we found the sentence he'd been saying the whole time, he had something to build on. He's speaking monthly now and hosting his own paid virtual events.

If being known for something is the goal, I wrote about the bigger picture in How to Position Yourself as an Expert. Short version: it's a positioning problem, not a confidence problem.

Find the ideas your About section should open with

Build Your Keynote is a speaking accelerator built on how I coach people 1:1. Eight sections, asked one at a time. You answer in your own words. When an answer is thin, it asks about the specific thing you said, the way I would across the table, instead of moving you along. You come out with your core insights, a program description and a three act keynote outline, and every word starts as something you said. And you don't have to be a keynote speaker to need a talk. Your core insights become what you post about and what goes at the top of your profile, your program description becomes the clearest explanation of what you do, and the outline becomes the talk you give your team, your association or a podcast host.

To be clear, it's not a course and it's not a LinkedIn profile writer. There are no videos. It only works if you answer the questions and don't clean up your answers. If you want a polished About section in five minutes, it's not for you. If you know you have something and can't name it yet, start with section one. It's free, no card.

FAQ

What should the first line of a LinkedIn About section be?

Something only you could say. A moment from your work, a number, or a belief people in your field might argue with. Avoid opening with your title or "passionate about," since your headline already covers who you are.

How many characters does LinkedIn show before "see more"?

About 220 characters, or two to three sentences. The full About section allows 2,600 characters. Write the top as if it's the only part anyone will read, because for most people it is.

Should I list my credentials in my LinkedIn About section?

Yes, but not first. Credentials land harder once the reader cares about what you think. Use one or two that back up your point, and leave the full list to your experience section.

Is a LinkedIn About section the same as a speaker bio?

No. Your About section is first person and talks to one reader. A speaker bio is usually third person and gets printed in a program or read by an emcee. They can share the same ideas, but they're written for different jobs.

Do I need to be a speaker for this to matter?

No. The same ideas that make a strong About section make a strong lunch and learn, podcast interview or association talk. You don't have to want to be a speaker to get paid to speak, and one talk often does more for how you're seen than a perfect profile.

Antonio Neves has delivered 400+ keynotes for organizations including Google, Amazon, Visa and McDonald's. He's a former journalist with NBC, PBS and Nickelodeon, a Columbia Journalism School graduate, and the creator of Build Your Keynote.