Add a profile picture - LinkedIn Tutorial

- [Instructor] The first thing that people notice when they land on your LinkedIn page is usually your profile picture. For this reason, it's crucial that you take the time to add a profile picture that represents you the way you want to be perceived. LinkedIn members with a profile picture receive many more views, messages and interactions compared to profiles with no photo. So again, this is an important step. Let's take a look at how to do this. Now we've created an account as Carmen Morales, but we don't have a profile picture yet. To add one, I'm going to come here where it says me and click view profile. So this is Carmen's profile page, but again, we have no photo here yet. To add one, we'll click this camera icon that brings up this pop-up box saying, "No professional headshot needed. Just something that represents you." This is important to mention because oftentimes people don't include a profile picture because they don't have a professional headshot to use. Now, although you do want to have a high quality picture that represents you well, don't let this be an obstacle. If you do have a professional headshot, use it. If not, current smartphones and cameras allow you to take high quality photographs, which will work just fine. You can even take a photo right from here by clicking use camera. But in this case, I do have a photo saved to my desktop that I want to use. So I'll click upload photo. I'll select the photo on my desktop, and click open, and now the photo is open inside of this editor. And from here I can drag to reposition it or zoom in and out. I can also straighten that picture or tilt it if necessary. Ideally, you want people to see your face, but you don't want to be zoomed too far out or too far in. In addition to these tools we find under crop, we also have filters where you can select different looks for the photo. Just go with the original in this case, and you can also select adjust to adjust other things like brightness, contrast, saturation, and so on. Just play with the settings until you have it looking the way you like. Down here at the bottom, you can also set your visibility settings to specify who will see this photo. I think in most cases, you'll want the default setting of anyone, which makes sure your photo will show up to anyone who comes across your profile. But you can set your visibility based on your preferences. You can also change these settings later. When you're done, click save photo and I'll just refresh the page. So you can see here that Carmen's profile picture now appears on her LinkedIn account. Now, when selecting a photograph of your account, these are a few things you should consider. First of all, is it a recent photograph? You want people to be able to recognize you based on this picture. This means you'll probably need to update it every once in a while. Also, bear in mind that even though you don't need a professional headshot, you also don't want a blurry or pixelated one. It should be a sharp, well-lit shot. Also, remember that LinkedIn is a social media platform for professional connections, so you likely want to have your photograph reflect this by showing you dressed professionally or smartly, and not one of you in vacation attire at the beach. Again, if you've already had a professionally done headshot, you want to use that. However, you can easily take your own picture using a digital camera or smartphone. Just be conscious of the framing, the lighting, the background, and the overall tone the image conveys.