How to Format Text and Add Special Characters to Your LinkedIn Posts and Profile

(And why you shouldn't do it!)

Ever wondered how to use those 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐘 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 and special formatting that some people use on LinkedIn?

Well, basically they're converting parts of the text into Unicode instead of ASCII. (That's the nerd in me coming out - sorry! 🤓)

Now, you can do this if you want, but my advice is don't! Or at least if you decide to, do it sparingly...

I'll get into the reasons why shortly but first I'll show you how to do it.

1. Write out your post or whatever it is you want to 'spice up'.

2. Copy the individual words, sentences or sections that you want to update one at a time to the clipboard.

3. Open this website and paste your text into the box at the top as shown here, then click 'SHOW'.

4. Choose the font style you want to use from the list and select and copy it back to your clipboard. In this example I've chosen 'Math Bold'.

5. Paste the text back into your post where the plan text was and just keep repeating this process for the rest of the post article or profile section you want to put it in.

And... viola! You now have a 'flashy' post!

BUT... I still say don't do it, or do it very sparingly. Here are the reasons why:

1: It makes text harder to read

LinkedIn, perhaps more so than any other social media is definitely a 'written content' rich platform. For that reason, those clever folks at LinkedIn choose their fonts very carefully and scientifically.

They make sure that all their fonts are easy on the eye so it takes our brains minimum effort to process and decode what the reader is reading.

When you start adding fancy fonts to stuff it has the opposite effect to what LinkedIn intended. Yes, it makes it harder to read. And when stuff's harder to read our brains give up reading it way quicker!

So if you want your stuff to be read, make it easy to read and don't use special text and/or formatting.

2: It can hurt your search results

If you use it in your profile it can hurt how many searches you show up in. Changing keywords for Unicode characters means search engines, including LinkedIn might be reading them differently.

Sticking with ASCII characters (there I go again 🤓) is the safest way to make sure your stuff will be indexed and read properly by search engines.

My advice is not to use Unicode at all anywhere in your profile.

3: It can look like a teenager wrote it

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on teenagers here... But when I see an over-formatted post or profile with prolific use of emojis it makes me think a 14-year-old girl wrote it!

Remember, out of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn is definitely the most professional. It's OK to bold something to draw attention to it, use bullet points or even add the odd emoji, but think of it this way...

If you were thinking of paying someone, perhaps several thousands of dollars, to provide some type of service for you, would you take them seriously if everything they wrote looked like it came from a 14-year-old girl's WhatsApp chat? Personally, I think I'd pass!

4: Some devices and browsers may not display it correctly

Depending on the device and browser you use, Unicode characters can be displayed differently from how you intended. And on some devices they may actually be completely illegible.

This is less of an issue these days but it can still happen if you decide to use a rare character set or special character, particularly when using a non-Latin alphabet.

5: It's not good for accessibility

Most screen readers for the visually impared can't read unicode characters. Apart from making life unnecessarily difficult for the visually impaired it means that whatever you write will take an SEO hit, both on and off LinkedIn.

This is a problem for your profile and for articles so I definitely don't recommend using too much unicode in either.

OK, that's it! Here's the bottom line:

If you feel drawn to using special characters and formatting on LinkedIn, do it sparingly and only in your posts - never in your profile, and avoid it in articles too, if you want them to show up in Google searches...

Oh, and if your computer or mobile device doesn't make it easy for you to use emojis and you want to use them, here's a great website you can copy and paste from: https://getemoji.com/