And we are moving along, we're fixing up your LinkedIn profile. And today is a really fun day because it's all about pictures. We're going to be looking at your profile picture and we're also going to be fixing up your LinkedIn background picture. Now, before I get into the background picture, I'm going to give you some tips on your profile picture. What you want to do, you don't need to go to a professional photographer if you can, well and good, but when you do, take a picture, make sure it is against a plain background. You don't want any landscape You don't want any pattern.

Anything else that can distract the viewer from your face. And when you take your picture, you want to make sure that it's a full headshot with your shoulders, okay. And you want to when you take a picture, you want to smile, you want to look straight at the camera, and you want to put on a big smile, okay? If you don't smile I mean, this is the first impression you're making people, naturally the brain is drawn to faces and when they see your face, it's all sour looking. How do you think they're gonna want to even get to know you further, they're not going to. So you want to have an inviting a smile, so no sunglasses, you don't want to hide your eyes.

Eyes are very important for human connection. And you don't want to be far away from the camera, you want to be up close with your headshot and smile. And And guys, you know, your camera is just as good. All you have to do is you know, get in front of a plane background and take your picture a little from the top. So let me show you here. Okay, so if I'm holding my camera here, it's a little from the top so my eyes will be slightly looking up at the camera, lens.

Okay, and take lots and lots of pictures, no different, a little slight tilde, whatever your best angle is. You want to take a picture from there, you don't take 100 pictures and find one that really looks nice, it looks professional, you look beautiful in it, you have a brilliant smile on your face, save that picture and upload that into your LinkedIn profile. So guys, I want you get busy I was just start snapping away and take a good LinkedIn profile picture. That was part one. Second part is I want you to fix your LinkedIn backgrounds. Okay, so maybe some of you are familiar with software online that can help you put together a brilliant background, and they are super easy to use.

So my favorite software is canva.com. So I'm going to walk you through what to do for your background. So here we are on my LinkedIn profile. So if I am going to show you how to edit, move me, okay how to edit your background. So you come to your profile. You see this little pencil here, you're going to click this pencil.

Okay. And when you click that pencil, it should open up like this. And you see another pencil here for the background and the LinkedIn also gives you the recommended dimensions. So 1584 by 396 pixels is recommended. So once you create an image with this dimension, you are going to upload it here by simply clicking this pencil. And then it just says to you, when you change your photo, upload and then apply, you can even drag this little viewfinder around until you have it positioned just the way you want it.

Okay, so I'm just gonna turn this off. I'm going to close it. Okay. So that we're back here again, and I want to highlight some things about my own background picture that I have. What do you notice right away? What jumps out at you when you look at this picture?

Do you see the question? Well, you should because the brain loves questions. And if you have a question on your profile picture here, you are going to start to engage people to look at your profile more closely. And try to put a question that is related to your business area, your expertise, or your philosophy or your values. So my question is, are you at risk? Right?

Oh, everybody wants to know the answer to that question. What am I I don't think so. Tell me more. And then below it I've written the greatest risk in business today is not financial. It's human. And this is my core philosophy.

And that gets a lot of people curious. I've had so many people reach out to me because of this simple statement, because a lot of organizational leaders think that financial risk is The thing that they need to worry about, but no way it's human risk, which is the most critical for businesses today. What else do you notice? Do you notice my logos here? Okay? These are places that I have been featured on.

Either I've been interviewed, or I have appeared on television. Right? And you notice more images here I have a picture of my book that I have written. And I've made this badge myself, which says fortune 500, coach, and consultant and coach, right. So immediately, these are markers of expertise. And since the human brain is visual, it doesn't have to read and try to figure out it like jumps right out at the person who's looking at the picture.

And in the background. I have a lone man standing here staring out into a barren landscape which connects to My question, whatever picture I put is going to trigger subconscious emotions. So risk being alone you know being in the in a desolate place that is triggering the subconscious pain, which I want to present myself as the solution to. There's a lot of psychology guys going on in this picture but what I want you to focus on is putting a question up putting a little statement up that is reflective of your industry and your philosophy, your approach and putting any symbols of expertise. So anywhere that you have been featured on maybe your article appeared in or the types of organizations you have worked in, you can put your the logos over there, so anything that really will make people kind of stand up and take notice.

You want to put it there if you don't have anything that's okay. You can Create a badge like I made a badge like we're here for Fortune 500. You know, make a badge and put something there. Maybe you have a specific certification, put the logo for that certification on to this background picture. And if you have appeared on stage you have presented given a talk and you have a picture of that. That is also a brilliant thing to use as your background picture.

By all means, don't leave your background picture blank. It should be related to your industry. It should showcase you and what you do, because a picture is what people are really going to stand up and pay attention to. Now, how do you create such a background picture? What if you're not in graphic designer? Well, there I have a little tool I use called Canva.

And you're going to go create an account on canva.com it's free, right and you are going To create your LinkedIn banner. So all you're going to do is once you create your account, you're going to go into the search bar and type LinkedIn. And it's going to come up with this option LinkedIn banner, just click that. And the beauty of Canva is that you get lots of ideas, okay? So when you open when you click that LinkedIn banner option to get over here, they have already given you loads of ideas for your LinkedIn banner. Okay?

So whatever like clicks with you, matches what you, you know, the industry you are in or your philosophy, like, for example, what if I use this look at that, how brilliant is that? It's so beautiful. It tells you where you're located or contact your website, you know, you could use this space to put lots of things, do you maybe you don't want to put your phone number you want to put your email address, that's fine as well. Or maybe you want to just take all of this out and write maybe a quote that you feel particularly strong about, hey, well, how beautiful is that? Let's try another one. So what if I go here?

And I choose? Let me see something a little different. Something a little differently. Okay, what about this? Not bad again, you could replace this with your own picture, right? You don't have to use stock footage from Canva.

What about another one? How about this one? Not bad at all. Because here, you could highlight specific skill sets or experience of areas that you have and use locals to kind of represent that as well. Very nice. You know, once you get into Canva, you're really gonna love it because it's so much fun to create these graphics, these backgrounds.

So pick one, tailor it, customize it, make it reflective of your personal analogy of your industry of your expertise. And once you choose one, all you're going to do is you're going to download it and downloading is super easy. Make sure you select PNG which is the image file, select if you created a multiple like I did, select the one you want and then done and download. Now I chose one where there's an image there are images here that you have to pay for you but you don't have to choose one with an image that you have to pay for just choose any of the free ones. Right Go ahead, explore this have fun with it. Once you download your image, go back to your profile and uploaded into your LinkedIn profile.