Headshots for LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business networking/social media platform. LinkedIn’s primary audience is business people and companies – it’s a place where promoting your business, job search/postings, articles/posts related to business or employment topics are the majority of the activities. When someone visits your LinkedIn profile, they want to know more about you from a business perspective – your education, experience, interests, and so on.

As such, your LinkedIn profile picture should reflect the this focus – and this is likely different than your profile on other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.. The LinkedIn photo should amplify the rest of your LinkedIn profile. For example, if you’re an attorney or financial advisor you likely want to have the look be a professional one – solid color background, a confident smile with approachability.

But what you probably don’t want to show is a picture of you with your family or dog, on a golf course or at the beach, etc – those images are better suited for those platforms that are more socially oriented.

Take this image of John, a transitioning military service member (thank you for your service John!) with extensive leadership/management experience. His updated LinkedIn profile headshot shows his professionalism, confidence and experience.

For his Facebook page (not shown) his image shows the family outside of Fenway Park, likely before they were going to watch the Red Sox absolutely dominate whomever they were playing that day (well, we can dream can’t we?).

LinkedIn is all about business - be sure your profile image is contextually appropriate for your audience.

To learn more about headshots and branding, visit my YouTube channel at https://lnkd.in/eTk-Kt7s
To learn more about my work, visit my website at https://lnkd.in/e5-tnsx