Your LinkedIn profile picture is one of the major factors that come to play when you make your first impression. If you are going to fail to make it good, you’ll miss out on a lot of potential connections and followers.
People judge books by their cover and they are going to judge you by your profile picture as well unless your brand is so strong that people know who you are before they even come like the one from Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
If that’s the case you can put a big peanut as your profile picture and get away with it. Otherwise, you’ll need to pay giant attention to this little thing as it makes a BIG impact.
That’s why in this article, I’m going to reveal to you the 6 best tips to pick the right profile pictures for LinkedIn. So, are you ready to begin?
If so, let’s dive in…
3 Personal Profile Picture Tips
There are going to be slight differences between the things you should pay attention to when picking a profile picture for your personal profile and picking a profile picture for your company page.
So, let’s look at the best LinkedIn profile picture tips for a personal profile…
1. Make It Professional
Ok, I mean you can use a selfie of yourself in a forest, but that’s not going to make a big appeal to anybody. Looking professional is essential for positioning yourself as an authority and making a good first impression – especially on a B2B platform like LinkedIn.
Just look at the difference between my first profile picture, and my current profile picture (yes, I’m talking from experience, I did it the wrong way myself):
I bet the second one is far more appealing than the first one, isn’t it? And on LinkedIn as a B2B platform, you’d likely connect with a guy on the second picture than with a guy on the first one, right?
Well, that’s exactly why it should look professional. It is going to make a big difference. So, wear something nice, make the lighting good, set up your camera, and take the shot.
It’s far better than if you use a picture of yourself walking through the woods.
2. The Profile Picture Should Show Your Face
This is a must-do for any personal profile.
Again, unless you’re Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or somebody else with a brand so powerful that everybody knows them, you can’t put a peanut or a logo as your profile picture for LinkedIn.
Your profile picture should clearly show who you are as a person, making you identifiable and relatable.
There aren’t many people who want to connect with a logo. There are a lot of people out there who want to connect with other people.
3. Don’t Overedit It
Usually editing a profile picture is not a good idea. If you took a professional photo and the background is one-color, then you’re likely good to go. However, if it’s not then you can change the background of the profile picture just like I did.
It makes it look more attractive, you will stand out on the profile picture instead of getting lost in the background and it will be far better.
However, some people also overedit the profile picture. That isn’t good as well.
When you overedit the profile pic, it again starts to look bad and it won’t work. Here’s an example of that:
So, keep it simple, and don’t overdo it with editing. Usually just replacing a background with something of one color is more than enough.
3 Company Page Profile Picture Tips
Company profile pictures are going to be picked a bit differently than personal profile pictures for LinkedIn with the main difference being in using a logo and not a headshot. That way you’re going to need to focus on different things to make it look attractive and make your company page get new followers.
So, let’s look at the best tips for picking the right company profile pictures for LinkedIn.
1. Use The Logo Of Your Company
Again your profile picture needs to be easily identifiable and that is not something you’ll accomplish by using a photo of your office building or something else. Always use your logo.
That way people will be able to easily tell just by having a slight look at the profile picture what is the company. Don’t skip this step.
2. High Contrast
The last thing you want to happen is a logo to blend in with the background. That’s why it has to be high-contrast. For example, don’t use orange background and a golden logo. Use black background and gold logo (or white).
Or, for example, don’t use a dark blue logo on black background. Use a dark blue logo on a white background. It must clearly stand out if you want your company profile pictures for LinkedIn to be effective as nobody can clearly see what blends in.
And what doesn’t get seen has no impact.
3. Just Picture, Not Text
Yes, most logos have text as a part of them. Don’t use this type of your logo for your LinkedIn company page profile picture. First of all the text is not going to be readable at all and it’s just a waste of space.
Second, when you use text, it takes a space in the profile picture that you could use to make the logo more visible and stand out.
So, leave the text in your logo out and use just the image. It’s something definitely worth doing for the biggest possible performance of your company profile pictures for LinkedIn.
Filip Konecny 