Want to know how to change your background image on LinkedIn?
If the answer is yes, keep on watching, as by the end of this video, you'll have
the exact steps for creating a brand new banner and uploading that on LinkedIn.
Okay, let's get started!
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So today I'm going to show you how you can change your LinkedIn background image.
Make sure you watch this video till the very end, because I also have a very
SPECIAL GIFT for you, that I cannot wait to tell you more about in a second.
I'm personally a massive LinkedIn fan and I absolutely believe that having an eye catching
background image on LinkedIn is crucial.
Many people still have this default, blue background banner on their LinkedIn profiles,
that really doesn't tell much about them.
I want you, however, to stand out from the crowd and to help you design a banner that is enticing
and engaging, and really tells a story about you. So that when people land on your profile,
they immediately know what you do and what you could potentially help them out with, which
means they're so much more likely to reach out.
But before we get started with designing our LinkedIn banners,
let's run through the requirements.
Number one, the file size of your LinkedIn cover, should not exceed 8MB.
Number two, the allowed formats are PNG, JPG and GIF.
And finally, number three, the recommended dimensions for your
LinkedIn banner are 1,584 x 396 px.
So these are the official guidelines that LinkedIn has provided, but I have a super
special BONUS TIP for you that I'm sure you're going to be excited to learn more about.
Here's the bonus tip.
You need to keep in mind that LinkedIn displays your profile differently on desktop and on mobile.
And when we compare the two, you can see that on mobile, your profile picture
takes up way more space than on desktop.
And we really want to keep this into consideration when designing our back from batters, because
we do not want important information such as call to actions or maybe your contact
details to be overlayed by your profile photo.
So you might be wondering, how to know how much space to set aside for your profile photo, and
I'm super excited to say that specifically for this video, I've put together a template and
you will be able to use to know exactly how much space to allocate for your profile picture.
I'm going to let you know how to get access to this in a minute, but right now let's
dive into the super fun part of actually creating an amazing banner for LinkedIn.
We are going to use my absolutely favorite tool, Canva to create the background image for LinkedIn.
I am crazy about this platform, because it is so easy to use and they also
have a free version, so all you have to do is sign up to get started with it.
When you're ready, open up Canva and click create design.
Let's now type in LinkedIn banner in the search bar and select it.
The interesting thing here is that these dimensions are not 100% precise, but the
reason why we still selected them, is because they have dozens of amazing templates to
choose from, that are completely customizable.
So all we're going to do is find the template we like and that I'm
going to show you how to resize it.
This one in particular speaks to me, so I'm going to select that, and now the next step for us is
to resize it by clicking the resize button and typing in the dimensions to be 1,584 x 396 px.
Perfect.
Now the banner is the exact size we want.
So just a little side note here, if you did not find exactly what you were looking for, I suggest
that you click on the photo icon and this is where you're going to find a massive selection of images
to choose from in so many different categories.
I am going to keep the template I've picked out at the beginning, because I'm very pleased with it.
What I'm going to do now is go to Elements, which is my favorite part of Canva.
I'm simply going to type into LinkedIn and it's going to bring up so many different results.
So here I'm going to pick the logo I like, and I'm going to resize it to fit the little screen.
Next I'm going to click the text section on the left and type in my message.
The default font here is Open Sans, but you can simply change it at the top to whatever
you prefer, and we can also change the size.
So I'm going to add another line of text here, but as you can see, it's a bit tricky to read.
So my solution for it is, is to add a background to it.
To do this, I'm going to go back to Elements, click shapes, and select the square, and
simply resize it and put it at the back.
What I will also do is change the color for this to be white and make it slightly more transparent.
So I feel like adding a light bulb to my design,
so I'm going to go back to Elements and type in light bulb in the search box.
I'll pick the one I like, and again, you can absolutely change the colors of it if you
like to, but I'm happy with the yellow one.
So let me just quickly speed this up whilst I add a few bells and whistles to my design.
An important thing I wanted to show you here is that you can actually add your own logos
and personal branding to Canva, and you just go to the upload section on the left.
So I have selected the logo I had already uploaded, and I'm just going
to place it on top of this little mug.
So the final, and perhaps the most important thing I'm going to do, is make sure that my text is not
covered by the LinkedIn profile picture section.
So I have created a mock up for it is that allows me to check the positioning of the profile picture
and I'm just going to add it on top of my banner, stretch it out, and I can clearly see that I
am all okay with this and my text is protected.
If you want access to this profile picture mock up as well, just let me know in the comments
below and I will happily send it across to you.
The final step here for us is to export our file.
I'm going to click the publish button, increase the resolution slightly to
make it higher quality, and I will save it as a PNG file and click download.
Perfect.
So now that we have our LinkedIn banner created and download, we're going to go
back to LinkedIn and we're going to go to our profile by clicking on or little icon
that says me and going to view profile.
Now we're going to click on the pencil icon, select that, and select the
other pencil icon on top of our header.
You'll see that when we hover over, it is actually going to show you the recommended sizing, so
it's a good idea to double check it, if you are watching this video slightly later in a year.
So let's click that icon and click change photo.
So now simply select the photo we just created from your files and click apply.
And here you go.
We have updated our LinkedIn background image and it is looking super lovely, and this is
how it's going to look on mobile as well.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
I cannot wait to see how your LinkedIn banners turned out.
Make sure you check out these videos next on how to take your LinkedIn game to the next level.
If this was useful to you, please support me by hitting that like button, subscribing to
the channel and sharing this with your friends.
I will see you again next week.