Believe it or not, visuals play a crucial role in communication on LinkedIn. Yes, you can achieve your goals with a visual that has value. On social networks, working on your graphic identity is essential. This is why a LinkedIn banner is essential.
LinkedIn is the leading professional social network. It is for everyone: job seekers, entrepreneurs, companies, and freelancers. Everyone can offer their content through LinkedIn, and above all establish their action plan on the platform to meet their needs.
This is the reason why it is increasingly used for prospecting purposes to find customers, highlight products and services, demonstrate expertise, an employer brand… and to find a job, of course.
However, in the midst of a vast number of users, information, and features, you have to stand out from the crowd in your own way to ensure consistent visibility on LinkedIn. And if you have followed well, this obviously goes through your graphic identity, therefore your graphic charter, but also your LinkedIn banner.
Whether you are a company, an individual in full LinkedIn profile, a self-employed or freelancer, offer your LinkedIn profile a drastic change! Your banner is indeed one of the most important elements to generate leads!
Before creating a LinkedIn banner, several questions should be addressed:
- Define your target with precision
- Establish a design in line with your graphic charter
- Create a message that speaks to your target
Using good banners allows you, like a company logo, to differentiate yourself from your competitors! It directly catches the eye. Suffice to say that it must be treated!
How to create an effective LinkedIn banner?
Creating a good visual for your LinkedIn profile cannot be improvised. This is an important step in your marketing strategy. Also, it is already necessary to have a certain view of your strategy as a whole before even applying any of these tips.
No improvisation whatsoever! Keep in mind that to learn how to create a LinkedIn banner, you need to keep three goals in mind:
- It is the showcase of your LinkedIn profile
- It must be clear and legible
- She must be professional and sober
- It must arouse the desire of the visitor and make him want to know more about you
It represents a bit of your clothing in real life. Your LinkedIn banner enhances your professional profile, your personality, and your offer.
As the saying goes “it’s the first impression that counts.” This element is the fourth that a visitor considers during a first visit after your photo, your catchphrase, and your title.
LinkedIn Banner: create a valuable banner
Before embarking on the creation of your banner, let’s take a moment to think about it. We will gain nothing by rushing and improvising a visual, quite the contrary. So let’s start on a good footing.
1 – A banner that serves a function
Detail a checklist of the elements you need in order to create the best LinkedIn banner, the one that will best present your content to others. Let’s take a look at the steps to take into account when designing your work:
- Think about your target: who is the target of your web marketing strategy?
- Think about your message: what message do you want to convey?
- Think about your product: what product do you want to highlight?
- Think about yourself: what are your values?
2 – Quality images
When selecting visuals, consider opting for images produced by professionals in the field. All low-quality images are therefore to be avoided.
You have the choice between many image formats: photographs, designs, vector images… and there are many solutions to obtain them for a fee or for free.
Find free and free images on a website
Remember one thing: not all images are copyright free. Copyright also covers all photographs, illustrations, or visual creations. So, to find royalty-free images, you will have to go through specialized banks.
Several choices are then available to you. Free: Pixabay, Freeimages, Stockvault, Startupstockphotos, Flickr, etc. Premium: Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, etc.
3 – A LinkedIn banner designed with ease
If this is not the most important point of the creation, it is still necessary to draw attention to the software that you are going to choose in order to create your banner. Just like stock photo banks, there are many alternatives to choose the software that suits the creator you are.
Photoshop, Photofiltre, Powerpoint, Canva. Four software that could help you produce your content. For my part, I recommend Canva, simply because it is the simplest. You can create a design that looks like your products without expertise in graphic design.
4 – Some creation tips
A few necessary steps in your creation process:
- Select a color palette that matches your brand image and your marketing plan. Remember that you are talking to your customers first.
- If you don’t know which palette to use, you can also select a photo in relation to your personal graphic charter, or even a visual of your profession or sector of activity.
- Remember that the optimal dimensions for a LinkedIn banner are 1584 x 396 pixels and that your creation should weigh no more than 8 MB, in .png or .jpeg format.
- LinkedIn allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your final render as needed. So don’t work too much on this point.
What are the 7 secrets of a good LinkedIn banner?
Difficult to convey a message through a visual. The greatest graphic experts will be able to confirm the difficulty of building a network around a simple illustration.
And yet, I remind you, once again, that it is really important to express your creativity, to differentiate yourself from your competition, and therefore obtain customers.
Now that we have explored the theoretical part, let’s now get into the practical aspect of our article.
1 – The use of text in your LinkedIn cover photo
A simple banner, no matter how well done, might not be explicit enough for other users. As I told you before, this is a real headache for many graphic design professionals.
Your cover must, therefore, just like your LinkedIn profile picture, show you as you are, and convey a message.
In other words, you must explain your visual and prevent the person viewing it from misinterpreting its purpose. It’s a fact: text on a banner engages LinkedIn members more.
And there, we enter a new phase: the same as the one that made you define your punchline. You only have one line to convince. Imagine a freelance web editor: he could very well write “I lend you my pen to convince your visitors”. It’s short, concise, and effective. It speaks to people.
You can also include your company’s slogan if it has one. But be careful, you have to be readable to be visible. So the phrase should be short to fit into your banner.
Note, however, that for very expressive visuals, you can do without text, if the inspiration does not come.
2 – Choose free visuals for your LinkedIn banner
Many people mistakenly think that everything on the internet is free of rights and can be used by everyone. It’s wrong.
Like any creation, the visuals that you can find are subject to copyright, just like the logo of a company for example. If you have followed well, you now know a few sites to help you find your visuals.
However, I want to remind you that this point is important. Quite simply because using copyrighted illustrations or photographs will make you lose credibility, and will get you in trouble. Three methods to avoid this kind of problem:
- Use copyright-free content for commercial use. If there is a creative commons license, check if the author does not ask for attribution, that is to say, to mention him or his email.
- Create your visuals from A to Z: the simplest solution but the most technically tedious.
- Use the LinkedIn banner templates provided by Canva: it’s simple, less personalized, but Canva offers many pre-existing templates to create your image.
3 – Stay consistent in the creation of your LinkedIn banner
If you have some notions of the Internet, you know that it is important to display a certain coherence in all your activities. From your blog to your social networks, through the signatures of your email address: your graphic charter must remain relevant and coherent.
So keep the same colors for all your graphic identity. Consistency allows you to be recognized by your network at a glance. It’s very important.
So always choose the same palette, and if you want to diverge a little between your different platforms, only opt for minor changes that will not catch the eye of users.
4 – Opt for a good resolution LinkedIn banner
The quality of a visual is essential to give an air of professionalism to your profile. This is true for all subjects, not just your business. So you have to make sure to produce a quality visual, and therefore, at the right size.
Because a photograph that is too large will be truncated, and another that is too small will be resized to the optimal size, and there, I am not talking about the disastrous quality! No chance of generating engagement, let alone a sale!
So, here are the different optimal resolutions for your LinkedIn banner :
Personal profile: 1584 x 396 pixels.
Company profile : 1128 x 191 pixels.
You can use .jpg or .png format, but for better quality, I highly recommend .png. We use .jpg more for postings on a website, since it is lighter.
5 – How to create a LinkedIn banner with Canva?
What I love about Canva is that it’s easy to pick up. You don’t need any special skills to create a beautiful LinkedIn banner. This graphic design tool, therefore, responds particularly effectively to the expectations of a novice, or an entrepreneur who does not have the budget to call on a professional.
In addition, this tool is available for free!
To create a LinkedIn profile cover with Canva: follow these simple steps:
- Sign up. You can do this by Facebook or Google account, for simplicity.
- Type on the search bar “LinkedIn banner”, in order to discover heaps of models.
- Pick a template you like, rest assured you can edit everything in the process
- Import your image into your creation tool, and then click on “uploads”
- You can find, in the menu of Canva, other free images that you can use. Click on the ‘photos’ icon, next to ‘templates’. Then just drag it.
- Once your visual is ready, you can download it as a file. All you have to do is upload it to LinkedIn and use the filters at your disposal, if necessary, to edit your image one last time.
6 – To find visual ideas to create your LinkedIn banner
Once again, and I know I insist on this: the photos you find on the net are subject to copyright! It’s very important to remember this: don’t ruin your profile and rot your network because of a photo you took without checking first.
So, if you want even more sites that allow you to find a royalty-free photo to use on your social networks, here are a few that I offer in addition to those mentioned above:
For the free ones: Pexels, Unsplash,
For paying:istockphoto
7 – Ask for reviews on your LinkedIn banner
Let’s be clear: our opinion is biased. Whenever we undertake something, it is difficult to give an objective opinion on the content we produce. That’s a fact.
That’s why getting an outside opinion is essential to success. And your LinkedIn profile cover photo is no exception.
So, as with your profile picture, ask others for their opinion! Ask your professional and personal entourage if it fulfills the objectives. Organize votes among your acquaintances to draw up concrete statistics, and make changes if necessary.
Be careful, the goal is to get objective feedback! So avoid opinions just as biased as yours, by people who don’t want to be too critical of you.
How to put your banner on LinkedIn?
That’s it! You finally have your LinkedIn banner ready to post! All you have to do is upload this cover photo to your LinkedIn profile. I’m not letting you down yet, follow these steps:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile at the top right of the banner you have a small picto camera
- Click on the small “pen” at the bottom right
- Click again on the small pen at the top right
- LinkedIn then offers you to adjust your photo as you see fit.
- Click again on the small pen at the top right
- Don’t forget to click on “Save” before closing the page.
Once these manipulations are complete, your LinkedIn cover photo is created and now visible to all LinkedIn users!
Conclusion
Creating a LinkedIn banner, like your profile itself, takes time and thought. You have to organize ideas to put them into pictures, and it can be difficult at first.
And therein lies the catch, because your LinkedIn banner holds a prominent place on your LinkedIn profile. It is one of the essential tools for making a sale.
Good news: it rarely changes, unless you update it regularly to highlight your latest innovations.
Remember that the visual and the text are both important. So work on your catchphrase well. You must ensure that all users identify your professional identity, your activity, your company, and above all your objectives, your added value.
For this, only one tip: take the time to create your banner, with the right thought, and the right tools.
I hope this article has helped you understand the process of creating your LinkedIn banner.
