There's been an ongoing debate for years.
Should your LinkedIn profile be in first-person or third-person?
In case you need a refresher...
When you speak or write in first-person you are talking about yourself.
It feels like you are talking to me.
Tom Ruwitch writes in first-person in his LinkedIn About section:
I'm Founder and President of Story Power Marketing. Coaches, consultants, and thought leaders choose me to power up their stories so they can captivate prospects and inspire them to buy.
That's what powerful stories do.
And here's what I do:
Through one-on-one consulting and group coaching programs, I reveal how to discover and tell powerful stories designed specifically to match your target market and captivate your prospects -- easily and quickly. No more writer's block. No getting stuck.
When someone talks about you, they're speaking or writing in third-person.
Here's a portion of Angela Duckworth's LinkedIn About section:
Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.
A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.
Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
There's no right or wrong answer.
It comes down to your reason for being on LinkedIn.
Personally, I prefer to use third-person when you are a thought-leader, influencer, or high-level executive.
When you are at the highest level of your profession, you don't have to be clever.
You earned your stripes.
You're not using your LinkedIn profile to sell yourself.
People already know, like, and trust you because you've had media exposure.
I prefer to use first-person when you are selling a product or service, like Tom's profile.
Tom grabs your attention with his headline and transitions into a first-person story in his about section.
His goal is to gain your trust as you read his LinkedIn profile.
What do you think?
First-person or third?