From the course: Learning LinkedIn for Students
Customize your background image
- [Narrator] Adding a background image to your LinkedIn profile is a great way to convey your personality and to help make your profile stand out. Currently we just have this default background here and it's not very interesting to look at. I want your account to be excellent, so let's take a look at how to change this. Right here, I'm going to go in the upper right corner of the background image and I'll click on the camera icon. When I do this, it allows me to select a background. You'll see down below that there are some pre-made templates that you can use if you want one that represents my home office, juggling work and family, work-life balance, and there's a bunch of other ones here standing for different things. And then up at the top, you have the ability to upload your own photo. When considering a background photo, again, keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional social network, so try to find a photo that captures your personality or your profession. In this case, Lisa is a marketing student with a passion for the outdoors. I want to use a background image that makes her profile look more appealing and gets across her free-spirited and creative personality. So I'm going to go here to upload image. And on my desktop, I already have some images here I've thought about using. Lisa is from California and loves the ocean. So I think this is a good one here to use. I'm going to click here and it opens it up in the image editor. So here again, I can crop it, filter it, and adjust it. Down here, I can zoom it, straighten it, and more. And when I'm done, I can go ahead and click Apply. I'm going to do that and it applies that to the background. Now I realize that you might not have an image ready to use as a background on your computer. So I like to mention here that there are powerful free tools like Canva or Vista Create in which you can create these types of graphics, like a background image for your LinkedIn cover. Here on Vista Create, you can see it's an actual title and they have some templates here, over on Canva, same thing. Here I'm going to click on Create a design you'll see, and I can go with a custom size. This size changes from time to time, but the current size that's ideal for a LinkedIn background is 1584 by 396. So here I have that typed into there and I can click Create new design, and then begin creating my own design where I could just put a solid background, put text in there, use a template, do whatever. So I just like to mention that as another possible way that you can go and create your own background image as well and be creative. So there it is. We've now added both a profile photo and a background image to Lisa's profile page, and it's starting to look much better.
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