LinkedIn is a professional platform and according to the LinkedIn police is not a place for visual creativity.
But with LinkedIn becoming a much greater extension of personal brands, there are ways that you are able to control that brand to a greater extent and stand out more within the newsfeed.
LinkedIn has gone beyond the initial realms of being an online resume, it is now a reputation tool. If you Google someone’s name then you will more than likely see their LinkedIn page pretty high up on the first page.
So, within reason this should be an extension of you.
So, while you can add emoji to brighten up even the bleakest of pages why should you then be restricted to the standard font. A font that often lets even the most outstanding post blend into the internet’s version of the island of misfit toys.
If you ask LinkedIn, you will more than likely come up against the answer that is “you can’t”.
But it turns out that LinkedIn does let you change the fonts. You just have to know how. And it comes down to a single word.
Unicode.
It is essentially a five-step process.
STEP 1:
Write your post.
Step 2:
Type Unicode converter into your search engine. For the purpose of this post I have used qaz.wtf but there are a lot more that you could use.
Step 3
Enter the site. Copy and paste (or type if you haven’t done step 1) what you want to change the format of into the box at the top of the page.
Then click show.
This will bring up your text in a range of different Unicode variants.
Step 4:
As you will see there are a lot of bold, italic and even some more unorthodox fonts that you can use. Scroll through and select a style that you like and want to use for you post.
Step 5:
Highlight the one you like then copy and paste into LinkedIn.
It’s that simple.
The warnings
There are a couple of little warnings to go with this.
- LinkedIn is a professional platform so this should be used carefully. Overuse of circled negative for example may make your posts hard to read.
- You might find that your posts have less traction both on and off the platform and are harder to find. This would be because the LinkedIn algorithm would not recognise the characters. Hence the first warning.
- Unicode text will use up more characters than standard text so you might have to edit your work down slightly especially if your standard text version is nudging up to that 1300-character limit that LinkedIn has on posts.
Please share the tip to anyone that you think will benefit from it.
