“A picture is worth 1000 words” – ring a bell? Well, we all have a piece of prime real estate at the top of our Personal Profile that is the ideal place to make the most of exactly that.
You may recognise the grey / green looking image that I’ve added below as the default background or banner that still introduces so many profiles …. what a waste!
What does your say about you or what you offer?
With a little bit of work (or a visit to somewhere like canva.com), we have the opportunity to create something that gives a very powerful visual message to introduce the rest of your profile.
In fact the banner makes up about 40% of what LinkedIn calls the “Introduction Card” – that top part of your profile also containing your photo, headline and Contact Info … and your Services or Job Preferences if you have activated those.
It’s a perfect description though because that’s what it does. It introduces you or your company or the products and services you are representing – whatever your focus might be.
The banner could be:
✅ Company and Product focused
It’s a great way to reinforce corporate branding and set the scene for the conversations to follow – it’s your profile I grant you, but for the professional ‘You’ and if it helps get your message across to potential clients then that’s good
✅ Skills, services or offerings
This is much more about you, the service provider. You are the product at the end of the day, so make it more personal to represent your skills or offerings as a consultant or independent provider. Give keynotes or presentations like myself, then why not a picture of yo in action?
✅ Jobseekers skills focus
Highlighting skillsets or key areas of expertise as part of your Job seeking activity – great place to get that message across and focus people’s minds nice and early on the key elements you want them to take away
✅ Promoting an event or announcing an award
Either on its own or, better still, as part of an overall message, what better place to make sure visitors to your profile “get the message” and allow you to announce your success
✅ Contact details with a call to action
You could build (non clickable) links into the banner as a signpost to external resources – be careful on text size though, given that 55% of profile view are through mobile devices
✅ Displaying of your portfolio or products
Independent or corporate, what a brilliant place to show your wares! Building in a lively or bright visual representation of what you offer is a great lead in to conversations
We have lots of options depending on what our focus or audience (See A is for Audience! https://lnkd.in/dpDbAwz9) is and what message we are looking to convey.
Essentially whatever you want.
Just don’t leave it as generic. Please. 🙏
