Movin' On Up Resumes

Why and How do I Put Special Characters in My LinkedIn Headline?

September 27, 2012 at 6:19 am 2 comments

Have you ever seen special characters in someone’s LinkedIn or other social media profile or updates and wondered how they did it?

The characters are “unicode” and are meant to be viewed on almost any platform. You can find a list of them here.

I put special characters, stars to be specific, in my LinkedIn headline so that it stands out. Notice in the stream of updates above that two people have recently connected with me. I stand out amongst their other recent connections as the stream is scanned because of the stars in my headline.

My eye is usually drawn to updates from social media guru Kim Garst as I scan my Facebook and Twitter feeds because she’s used unicode characters to create a smiley face next to her name.

A word of warning: even unicode characters don’t always show up well. If you go to the unicode link above, you’ll see some of them look like gibberish. To make sure your characters are coming through properly, you can copy characters from other people’s profiles (if they show up for them, they’ll likely show up for you too) or just be sure to have some friends and family view  your profile and let you know what they see.

The other danger is that special characters are not considered by all to be “business conservative.” You can choose how conservative or “out there” you wish to be. Circles, stars, or smiley faces–it’s up to you. But I’d rather be cheesy and found than business conservative in obscurity.

Entry filed under: LinkedIn, Networking, Social Media. Tags: facebook, linkedin headline, linkedin profile, special characters, twitter, unicode characters.