Pictures On Profiles

LinkedIn hasn’t always been media friendly.

Heck, that’s an understatement – LinkedIn has been aggressively unfriendly to most forms of media, and perhaps better for it – think of all the photos in poor taste that people put up on other sites (that come back to haunt them!-).

But putting a picture on your profile – I can get into that.

Professional image

So – here’s my advice – if you have a good digital photo of yourself, go ahead and upload it.

If you don’t – don’t.

I’ve seen a few scary photos on profiles and wonder what that person was thinking – the idea is to get people to contact you, not send them running for the hills!

Keep it professional

LinkedIn is not the place for family, party, beach, and pet photos.

(Unless you happen to be in a business related to those or have some equally strong reasoning – because you like to live casual is probably not reason enough…)

((And as in all things, this is just advice – if you can pull it off, more power to you;-))

No animation, logos, or non-people images

In addition to not showing yourself in a professional manner, it violates the LinkedIn rules. If others report you, I’d hate to see you get dinged (though I have no idea how that might happen).

It’s worth the expense

I didn’t have much of anything to use, so several years ago I had a local photographer take my picture and provide me with the digital images – and the rights to use them however I wanted.

See what you can find – it’s got to be better than what you’ll do in the hallway…

Viewing the video

And as you might expect, here’s the video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajbCpS06_g]

Comments on the youtube copy of “Favorite Linked Things” appreciated.

To your continued success,

steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com