When you send out a connection request to someone on Linkedin, the first thing they notice is your Linkedin profile picture.
Here is a fun fact. A study conducted by Social Psychological and Personality Science stated that “a single glance of a person’s face for just 33 to 100 ms was sufficient to form a first impression”. So to get yourself noticed you need to have the best profile photo that makes you look approachable.
We have got you covered in the first step of optimizing your profile. In this guide, you’ll find the top tips to get the perfect profile photo for Linkedin. To start with, let’s look at the basic guidelines.
Linkedin Profile Pic Size and Dimension
Here are the guidelines provided by Linkedin for uploading profile photos.
- Profile picture size should be between 400 (w) x 400 (h) pixels and 7680 (w) x 4320 (h) pixels.
- The file size should be a maximum of 8 Mb.
- The file type must be PNG or JPG. They do not support GIFs.
In addition to these guidelines, it is highly recommended to use high-resolution images. You don’t want to make your profile picture look blurry. Taking far away shots and cropping them to fit the frame is something you should avoid.
To get the perfect shots we have made a list of top tips that can help you.
5 Linkedin Profile Picture Tips
1. Dress Professionally
The first thing to look at is your attire. Wear a dress that you would wear to work. Linkedin is a place for professionals and you need to look one among them. Here are some tips for getting your attire right.
- Go for plain colour attire. Solid colours look great for profile pictures.
- Avoid too many prints and stripes.
- Avoid casual outfits.
2. Take Headshots
You want people to know what you look like. So it is better to avoid far away shots. This might look good for other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. But, try to keep it more professional on Linkedin.
Make sure your face takes up almost 60% of the profile picture. Your head, neck and the top of your shoulders should be seen. You can either look straight at the camera or look away.
An interesting research was made by OkCupid looking at the profile pictures of over 7,100 users to study which effects brought the most contacts. It was seen that for women, results were higher when looking at the camera. For men, it was the opposite.
3. Expression Matters
You should look approachable and smiling can help you with that. Let your expression reflect your brand. Ideally, it is best to smile in your picture to look more friendly.
There are a lot of studies showing that profile pictures with people smiling were found more likeable and influential.
4. Background and Lighting
Good Background and lighting are important to make your pictures look attractive.
When it comes to the LinkedIn profile pic background try to avoid busy backgrounds. That can look a bit distracting. A plain background is the best choice here so that your face will be in the focus.
This does not mean that you should stand in front of a white wall. You can also take pictures outside in nature. This can make it a little more attractive. You just have to make sure there aren’t too many things in the background.
For any picture, dull lighting can make pictures look very boring. Ensure there is proper lighting from all sides. Natural light works well. An overcast day is preferred as too much light on your face can make you squint.
5. Use the right filters
You can use editing tools and play around with filters to enhance your photo and make it look more attractive.
If you are not using any editing tools you can do it directly from Linkedin. Linkedin has six filters that you can use to apply to your profile picture. To apply filters from Linkedin:
- Go to your profile.
- Select your profile picture
- Click on the Edit button in the bottom right corner of the page and click ‘Filter’. Select the filter you like.
- Click Save photo.
Try them and see if it goes well with your photo. You don’t need to be a pro in editing. Just adjusting the saturation, brightness and contrast to the perfect range can get you beautiful shots.
Some More Additional Tips
#1 Use Snappr Analyzer
There are tools like Snappr Analyzer which helps you analyse your photo. Combining image recognition and machine learning, this tool analyses your photo and provides a score based on it.
It evaluates your photo quality, composition, expression, and editing in your Linkedin profile pic and gives an overall quality score. If you are so keen on improving your photo quality this tool can help you out.
#2 Consider hiring a professional photographer
If you are really serious about getting a good quality photo for your Linkedin profile pic, you can hire a professional photographer. For business owners who use Linkedin often to grow and market their business, it is a good choice to invest in this.
To hire a professional photographer you can look at listing platforms like Zenys.
Zenys has a list of professional portrait photographers. You can search for photographers based on location and view their profile and connect with them.
Here is another advantage of using Zenys. Zenys also is a business management tool that allows you to manage your contacts and sales, collect payments, automate your tasks and do many more. Once you start getting leads from Linkedin you can use Zenys to manage them and schedule followup to increase your conversion. Start your free trial and win more sales.
Summing Up
If you are looking at generating leads through Linkedin, then optimizing your profile by adding the right profile picture, Linkedin profile pic background, descriptions and headlines is very important. After you have got the first step right follow the best practices for optimizing your profile and see great results for your business.