How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile’s Banner to Grab the Attention of Recruiters

What is a LinkedIn Banner and Why Do You Need One

A LinkedIn Banner is similar to those that Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook have, with the only exception that it is primarily used for branding. As it serves as a Hero image, it’s important to use one that showcases your strengths with visually appealing content. For a graphic designer or a digital marketer, it is necessary to be tech-savvy and attentive to such features. The kind of impact a banner can have on a visitor makes it crucial for users to make the most out of the feature, for leaving the hero section empty can create a bad first impression on your page visitors. To have a better understanding of the topic, we have discussed our top LinkedIn tips in this article for effective banner design.

How to Change LinkedIn Banner

Changing the LinkedIn Banner is a straightforward process. Click on the Edit Background Button, which is the pencil icon below your cover photo. This shall open up your PC directory, where you can select the banner file that you wish to upload as your profile’s hero image. Once you’ve opened it, click save, and TADA! There you have it, a personalized LinkedIn banner for your profile.

How to Change LinkedIn Banner on Mobile

The process of changing the LinkedIn Banner on mobile is very similar to how it is done on a PC. Simply clicking the banner area on your profile will show a prompt for file navigation. Once you’ve selected the file, you can change its position and resize it by dragging the photo within the banner area. Once you’ve aligned it, press saves to successfully upload the banner.

How to Design a LinkedIn Banner

Although LinkedIn has some stock banners to get you started with the hero image feature, designing a customized LinkedIn Banner is crucial for boosting your personal brand. While there are multiple ways to design a LinkedIn banner, the best and easiest method is to design one on Canva. The platform has a user-friendly interface and many ready-made templates that can be easily altered to give them a personal touch.

Moreover, you must make sure not to make an image crowded with elements all across the canvas; the more whitespace it has, the more appealing it is to the visitors. 

Those who have some experience with adobe creative tools can also design their LinkedIn banners on Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop as their advanced tools give more room for creativity.

Whichever software you use to create your LinkedIn banner, it’s important to ensure that you render the image in a high-definition format to prevent blurriness as social media platforms usually compress a file before publishing it, which decreases its quality.

Tips for Using Your LinkedIn Banner to Stand Out from the Competition

To stand out from the competition, you must effectively convey a value proposition to potential recruiters. You can do so by highlighting your skills, area of expertise, or personal brand’s mission statement.

There’s no hard and fast rule regarding how your banner design creates a lasting impression on your page visitors. You can mention a quote or keep the banner free of textual content, focused on displaying your portfolio through a collage of images. At times, employees of a company use their company banner or one that is almost identical to it. This, too, is an efficient way of standing out from others.

Use a High-Quality Image That Represents Your Brand

In order to ensure that your brand does not look unprofessional, you must avoid the use of photos that have a low resolution or fail to represent your brand properly. The images used on your social media profile reflect the professionalism of your personal or employer brand, so it’s crucial to use high-quality content.

Keep the Text on Your Banner Short and To The Point

Essentially, text on a banner should succinctly provide visitors with 2 to 3-word summaries describing your different skills or areas of expertise, as powerful words are more effective in impacting your page visitors. On the other hand, a banner cluttered with text can be quite distracting, so detailed information should always be placed where it is most likely to be read – your LinkedIn headline and descriptive section.

Make Sure All of Your Contact Information is Easy to Find

LinkedIn users usually have their social media account IDs listed on their banner, including their phone number and email id. This is a good way of building connections beyond the LinkedIn platform. However, it’s important to use contrasting text to ensure that the contact information is legible and easy to find.

This means that it should also be well organized, with all the contact details aligned in a dedicated section of your banner, giving a well-organized, neat, and clean look to your banner.

Use Colors and Fonts That Match Your Website or Other Branding Materials

The best approach towards banner designing should be to use a color palette that matches your personal brand, owned business, or employer brand’s signature color scheme. If you frequently promote your employer’s LinkedIn content, having a banner with the same color scheme can create an overall aesthetically pleasing look.

Test Different Banners to See What Works Best For You

Social media is all about experimentation and A/B testing. So, it would help if you tried different banner styles to see which one seems the best fit for your LinkedIn profile. Sometimes it’s hard to predict the end result without applying the said changes.

LinkedIn Banner Size

LinkedIn Banner sizes vary for personal and company profiles. Ideally, one should use a 1584 x 396 pixels image for a personal profile. In contrast, the recommended banner size for company profiles is 1128 x 191 pixels.

In both cases, the file size should not exceed 8MB. Also, the viewing area differs between a mobile and desktop display. So, check the banner on both mediums to ensure that no vital information gets cropped on either display.

LinkedIn Banner Template

Multiple websites host a collection of ready-made LinkedIn Banner Templates to help people save their time.

The first among these websites is, as mentioned earlier, Canva, where you can find more than two thousand templates for your LinkedIn profile’s Hero image. These templates range from different categories of styles, such as minimalistic and elegant to playful and vintage. Whether you work in the marketing, engineering, or medical industry, these templates cater to the needs of a broad audience.

Adobe creative cloud express is another popular source for working with LinkedIn Banner Templates. Here, similar to Canva, you can make custom banners with minimal design effort, all thanks to the high-quality templates that the platform provides.

Conclusion

We hope the tips we’ve mentioned in this article have helped you gain insight into all the important aspects of LinkedIn banner designing. Customized LinkedIn banners are one of the best personal branding examples, thus in our comprehensive guide, we aimed to take a holistic approach to discussing the subject.