The importance of your LinkedIn Profile

Recently I talked about how your LinkedIn photo creates an initial impression of you to someone visiting your profile, and how that first impression impacts how the rest of your profile is viewed. In his article in Psychology Today, Artur Dobrin talks more about the power of first impressions  - https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/am-i-right/201302/the-power-first-impressions - it’s an interesting read. Other studies have shown that it takes multiple (as much as 8!) positive encounters to reverse a negative impression. If your profile picture isn’t positive, you may not get the opportunity to reverse that impression…

Some additional information:

The impression of someone’s trustworthiness in a photograph is judged by 2 areas – the eyes and the mouth. A genuine smile is also reflected in the eyes – when you genuinely laugh, the muscles under your eyes contract a bit – aka, “smiling with your eyes”. The combination looks genuine – yet when asked to smile in front of a camera (without proper coaching), most people simply smile with their mouth, which looks fake.  Trustworthiness is an important element in your LinkedIn profile photo.

Many people on LinkedIn don’t have a profile photo -perhaps because they don’t like the way they look in pictures, or they feel they don’t have a good picture of themselves. In our media-centric world, people want to see you, that you’re actually a person vs. a bunch of words. Statistics show that LinkedIn profiles with a photo receive 21X more profile views and 9X more connection requests.

Invest in yourself – you’re worth it!