We all want to get more people to visit our LinkedIn Profile and connect with us, so optimising your personal profile is key. As part of this optimisation, we must not forget to include the addition of a creative banner for your profile. You would be amazed how many people don’t bother with this, and I think it can make all the difference to show potential customers you are an avid user of LinkedIn and totally aware of your business.
Back in the day, many non creative users were unsure of what to put in their banners or how they could create it, which was a huge block for some, luckily we have many easy to sue tools we can now employ or get your friendly social media manner or designer to give you a hand.
Back to the beginning – when you open your Linkedin account, you will be provided with a blank space for you to add your profile picture and your banner. We need to personalise these areas as soon as possible to make sure people can start to connect with us.
The editing process is very straightforward, and once you have created a suitable banner for your profile, you can click on the edit pencil and pop it right in. We have put some easy ideas below on how you make it the best it can be and some additional information to make sure you don’t lose valuable information in the dead zones.
So, where do we start:
Ideally, if you are managing the banner creation yourself, we would advise that you enrol with a design site like Canva where they have prefixed templates you can use to create your banner. If you’re not feeling super creative, Canva will also provide some excellent template ideas, which might be great to get started; changing a few colours, text and images can turn something that has caught your eye into an eye-catching banner.
We can add in our brand collateral, images and logos to a banner in Canva also and create something that really sings about your brand or company services.
The Linkedin banner size for personal profiles is 1584 x 396 pixels.
and is different to the Linkedin Company banner size, which is 1600 x 800 pixels.
We want the banner to make a personal statement about your role or services, so using a template as a guide is one thing, but we want to bring it to life with our own images and brand.
We have put together some ideas of the approach you might want to take to develop the right look and feel for your LinkedIn Banner,
Read on….
- Showcase in your banner, what it is you do!If your role is complex or very visual, your banner could be the perfect way to showcase this combined with the headline you also have to add to complete your profile, a visual representation may be easier for people to review.
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Showcase your brand
Make sure you do add your logo somewhere on your banner, ideally you should have consistent look across all of your social media collateral to provide confidence to customers who may be looking for reassurance of the quality of your brand, so share it here and make the most of these free areas to shout about your brand.
- Add a call to action
People are often short on time, and we want to make the information we share with our audience as simple and as effective as possible, and visual marker you what action you need from them is essential. If you want people to book an appointment with you, say so; if you want them to email you, tell them. A simple but clear call to action can be a great way to shortcut people getting in touch with you. -
Show yourself in your workplace
Showing what you do, is a good way to demonstrate your skills and services, and if your potential connections can see you doing that in your workplace, it helps join up the dots even more. If you have a particularly interesting role, this is a great ice breaker for potential connections to speak with you about.
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A conversation starter
Following on from the interesting workplace scenario, this could lead to another option to consider; the conversation starter may be just what you need to create a conversation starter. Are people curious about what you do? Are people curious about how you could work together? Either way, creating a banner that intrigues people can be a great one to start chatting about.
- Any special offers
The banner on your page is a great space to showcase you or your business. And if you have an offer or promotion on, why wouldn’t you use this FREE space to showcase it?
So we hope this gives you some inspiration to create one or two banner designs you can easily rotate and keep your LinkedIn page looking fresh and interesting to your potential connections.
Once final consideration is also to be aware of the way banners are shown either on your mobile device or your desktop as they can look different; make sure you don’t lose valuable information, just upload and test, test, test!
If you would like to know more about optimising your Linkedin profile for yourself or your business, we are happy to help with training or power hours to look at any niggling issues; please drop me a line at [email protected], and of course, please do follow or connect with me on Linkedin!
Further information on Linkedin can be found here.
