5 Rules for a STAND-OUT LinkedIn Banner!

Summary

In this video, Delaware ShoutOut walks through how to revamp a LinkedIn profile banner to make it stand out and align with personal branding. Highlighting five crucial rules, the video stresses the significance of focusing on your industry or value, minimizing words, keeping big logos at bay, avoiding self-portraits, and dedicating ample time for design tweaks. Using tools like pixabay.com and Canva, the presenter demonstrates the creative process of adjusting images and colors to ensure the banner visually represents the brand without cluttering it with unnecessary elements. The key lies in making a strong, visual impact suitable for professional networking on LinkedIn.

Highlights

• The banner is a critical part of the first impression on LinkedIn and should be industry-focused. 🌐
• Horizontal or landscape images are best for LinkedIn’s awkwardly narrow banner space. 🖥️
• Words clutter the banner—it's better to use images that resonate psychologically! 🧠
• Big logos don't sell your services; highlight the value you provide instead. 💪
• Your own image on the banner can backfire; stick to having it in the profile picture. 🤳

Key Takeaways

• Focus your LinkedIn banner on your industry or the value you provide for a lasting impression! 🌟
• Keep words to a minimum in your banner to avoid visual clutter and showcase more impactful imagery! 🖼️
• Ditch the big logos on your banner; they don’t close deals, your skills do! 💼
• Avoid putting your own photo on the banner—it’s already in your profile picture! 🚫
• Spend quality time perfecting your banner; everyone visiting your profile will see it! ⏰

Overview

The video starts with a much-needed update of a LinkedIn banner. The creator stresses the importance of the banner in creating a strong first impression and highlights the first rule: focus on your industry or the value you provide. Using personal experience and examples, the creator explains what not to do, like using irrelevant images which you might find nice but don’t serve the purpose on a professional platform like LinkedIn.

In the middle part of the video, the creator experiments with tools like Canva and Pixabay to play around with colors, images, and designs that best represent their brand without overwhelming it. They touch on the importance of using minimal words and explain the psychology behind why images stick better than text. Logos and wordy banners are a no-go, emphasizing the message that visuals should do the talking, not words clutter.

Towards the end, the video dives into the common mistake of putting one’s image on the banner, which can look narcissistic. Instead, the creator chooses to focus on the message that the banner conveys visually. They demonstrate their step-by-step approach in tweaking the banner to their satisfaction, proving that while tools like Canva are useful, the time spent wisely can lead to a perfect professional outlook for a LinkedIn profile.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: Update Your LinkedIn Banner In the introductory chapter "Update Your LinkedIn Banner," the importance of maintaining an updated LinkedIn profile banner is highlighted. The outdated banner clashing with brand colors can lead to potential business losses. Therefore, revamping the banner to better align with industry focus and the value provided is crucial. The chapter emphasizes the significance of making a strong first impression on LinkedIn, as decisions by potential clients or business partners are made swiftly. The author plans to walk through the process of updating the banner and shares five fundamental rules that all banners should adhere to, with the first rule centered around showcasing industry focus or value proposition effectively.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Rule 1: Focus on Industry The chapter emphasizes the importance of focusing on industry-relevant content, particularly on LinkedIn. The author points out that while some people use images like mountains or pretty pictures as their LinkedIn Banner images, these do not serve the professional purpose of LinkedIn. Instead, the banner image should be industry-focused to play a significant role in professional networking and first impressions.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Using Canva for Design This chapter discusses the process of redesigning a banner by incorporating elements that represent multiple social media platforms, instead of focusing solely on Facebook. The initial concept involves a dynamic scene with a computer monitor featuring social media icons, a concept that's been done before. The speaker suggests using pixabay.com for free stock photos, and mentions a resource video with favorite websites for acquiring royalty-free and copyright-free images.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Rule 2: Use Few Words The chapter discusses the importance of selecting images with the right dimensions for LinkedIn to ensure that they fit within the awkwardly narrow space provided. It highlights the necessity of using horizontal or landscape images and advises against placing any important elements in the bottom left corner due to the headshot placement. The process involves finding a suitable image, in this case using Pixabay, and then using Canva to visualize its integration with the LinkedIn layout.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Rule 3: Avoid Big Logos In this chapter, the author shares their experience with creating a LinkedIn background photo using Canva. Despite playing around with brand colors and incorporating social media icons, they find themselves dissatisfied with the design. The process highlights the importance of careful design decisions, particularly in choosing color schemes that align with one's brand identity. The narrative underlines the chapter's title, 'Avoid Big Logos,' by emphasizing a nuanced approach to design rather than relying on prominent branding elements such as large logos.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Design Challenges and Iterations This chapter discusses the challenge of maintaining a clean design in the context of personal branding, specifically in banner creation for profiles like LinkedIn. The author highlights the common temptation to fill up banner space with excessive information, despite the known rule of using minimal words. The chapter explores the psychological urge to maximize use of available space and reflects on the importance of resisting this urge to keep the design clean and effective. The author acknowledges the frustration with seeing this rule broken frequently but also relates to the difficulty in resisting filling up blank spaces.
• 05:30 - 06:30: Rule 4: Keep Yourself Out of the Banner Rule 4 emphasizes the importance of keeping your visual presentation impactful by focusing on strong imagery rather than cluttering it with words. It highlights the psychological principle that images communicate more effectively to the brain and heart compared to text. Therefore, it's advised to avoid using excessive words or logos in your banner to maintain visual appeal and make a strong impression. The chapter discourages the temptation to fill spaces with unnecessary elements, advocating for a clean and impactful visual statement.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Rule 5: Spend Time on the Banner The chapter emphasizes the importance of focusing on meaningful content in marketing banners rather than just displaying big logos. The speaker shares insights from their over eight years of business experience, where customers never chose to buy because of a logo but because the product or service filled a void they had. Therefore, if a logo is to be used in a banner, it should be small and unobtrusive, directing attention instead to the value offered.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Final Adjustments and Mobile View In this chapter, the speaker discusses their thought process in finalizing the design for a banner. They decide against adding a logo to the banner as it doesn't convey any additional message and adds unnecessary clutter. The speaker feels stuck with their current design approach and considers searching for a more dynamic version of their original banner. They turn to Pixabay for inspiration and find an image that appeals to them. This image is then imported into Canva, acknowledging that similar quality images could likely be found on Canva itself due to their Canva Pro account, which grants access to a wide range of images.
• 08:30 - 09:30: Conclusion and Additional Resources The chapter discusses the advantages of using Canva Pro, specifically the background remover tool, to enhance social media graphics by allowing users to customize backgrounds.

5 Rules for a STAND-OUT LinkedIn Banner! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I need to completely redo my LinkedIn profile Banner it's outdated it clashes with my brand colors and I don't want to lose business because I didn't make the best first impression so I'm going to walk you through how I'm changing my LinkedIn banner and explain the five ground rules that all our batters need to follow rule number one we should focus on our industry or the value we provide this is huge remember that when someone's visiting our LinkedIn profile it's probably because they're thinking about maybe hiring us or doing business with us in some way and they're making this decision in seconds and the banner
• 00:30 - 01:00 which is totally in your face at the top of the profile plays a ginormous role in that decision yes ginormous is a word I looked it up in a previous video important side note some people call the LinkedIn Banner image a background image or a cover photo I'm going to call it a banner or Banner image it's all the same anyway I see a lot of banners out there where people are uploading something that isn't industry focused it could be a picture of a mountain because they like hiking or a picture of something pretty because it's pretty but this is not Instagram this is LinkedIn our
• 01:00 - 01:30 Banner needs to make a point so with my banner here yes it's in the right industry and it's a little Dynamic but there's too much focus on Facebook in this banner and I want to show more platforms so my first thought in redoing the banner is showing this nice neat off the scene with a little computer monitor and then I put the social media icons in there because that'll be so clever like no one's ever done that before of course they have so I go to pixabay.com which has a ton of free stock photos and I have this whole video of my favorite websites for royalty free and copyright free stock photos and I'll put the link
• 01:30 - 02:00 in the description but no matter what site we use we have to make sure that we filter our view of the images so we're only seeing ones that are horizontal or landscape and that's because of this super awkwardly narrow space that LinkedIn gives us to put our image in our image doesn't have to be exactly these Dimensions but the main parts of whatever image we choose have to fit within that space and we can't have anything super important in the bottom left corner because that's where our headshot goes so I find this image on pixabay and download it and now I want to put it into canva so I could see how how it all comes together and thankfully
• 02:00 - 02:30 when I'm in canva and click on create a design and then LinkedIn background photo I'll be able to design everything in the exact manner size so it'd be so much easier to see how everything fits and I'm playing with it I'm adding some of my brand colors because I realized after eight years I don't even like my brand colors and that's on me and then I add some social media icons that I have from another graphic and put them in the small computer monitor but I'm not liking this it doesn't feel like the right design I even take off the colors on the left hand side and it still doesn't look right now with all this
• 02:30 - 03:00 empty space I am totally tempted to fill it with words like my tagline or my contact info or if I happen to think of any brilliant text that would blow people's minds because I know rule number two use few words or no words in the banner now this rule is broken on LinkedIn even more than the last roll and it drives me nuts but if I'm gonna be fair I do understand the Temptation the banner is this huge station if we could just cram it with a whole bunch of information why not but here's the deal of words everywhere else on our profile
• 03:00 - 03:30 everywhere else including this headline right here which is a great place to put your tagline or the value you offer and pretty much everyone sees this so our banner up here is our one big chance to make a big impact visually besides words just add clutter and they don't hit the brain and the Heart like images do I didn't make this stuff up this is just Psychology 101 so whatever I change my battle to I'm just going to convey it through my Madrid and I do think about adding my logo because my logo is an image and I have space to fill but I'm not giving into that Temptation either
• 03:30 - 04:00 and you know why because of rule number three avoid big logos people don't buy from us because of our logos in my company's eight plus year history no one has ever come to me and said OMG prop your logo is amazing let me hire you for a 10 hour retainer people buy for me and they buy from you because we fill some type of void that they have that's what every good product or service does and that's what our Banner should show so if we're going to use our logo and that's a big if it should be small and tucked in
• 04:00 - 04:30 the way in the corner and subtle personally I'm not going to add my logo to the banner because to me it just adds clutter and it doesn't add to the message okay so how am I going to get unstuck with how my design is going because it's not going well and I'm wondering if I should just try to find a more Dynamic and more updated version of my original Banner so I go into pixabay again and I find another image that I like or at least it's the start of an image that I like and I get it onto canva I will tell you I probably could have found an equally good image on canva itself because I have the canva pro account which gives me access to all
• 04:30 - 05:00 their stock photos but I'm human and sometimes I forget about these logical shortcuts anyway I'm realizing that I'd like something nicer than this grayish background so if I could just remove the background from the floating social media pins so all we're left with are the pins then I can add whatever backgrounds I want behind them so again since I have camper Pro I can use a background Rover tool and by the way after making like 100 videos and I can't tell you how many of those I recommend a canva I finally decided now to have an affiliate link which I'm going to put in the description because if I'm going to
• 05:00 - 05:30 recommend them I might as well get paid I have kids to feed and I feel okay with us and in the description I've links to other tools and services that I use and love so check it out anyway back to the banner I'm also playing with the brightness and adding a vignette which makes it slightly darker around the edges so it's a little brighter in the middle and let's see how this looks on my LinkedIn profile so I download from canva go to my LinkedIn profile and click on the pencil icon up here and scroll down to where it says change photo and upload photo and once the photo is up you'll see you can also play with some of the image settings here like filters and whatnot it's kind of
• 05:30 - 06:00 like a mini version version of what canva offers for those like last minute tweaks and once I'm done I click on apply and I wait for the banner image to change and it's worse than before this is not good so I am going to fix this but let's take a detour to talk about rule number four with LinkedIn profile banners and that is keep yourself out of the banner now I know there are many of you who are going to disagree with me on this but please please hear me out unless you're showing yourself really small on a large stage talking to a huge audience is kind of a credibility Factor
• 06:00 - 06:30 thing putting yourself prominently in the banner will most likely backfire because you already have yourself in your profile picture it's kind of like saying in case you couldn't get enough of me on the left hand side check me out on the right even if you're not narcissistic it totally looks that way and if you disagree with me let me know in the comments because every single comment triggers the YouTube algorithm to deliver this video to more people so ring it on anyway I've gotten myself into a mess of a LinkedIn Banner so let's fix this so I'm thinking I need to fill more of the banner with those
• 06:30 - 07:00 social media buttons and get rid of the metal backs of the buttons with the canva Pro Race tool but when I load into LinkedIn it's still not looking right so I need to do more work and now's a good time to talk about rule number five spend time on the banner if you're regular to my channel you know I'm totally big on Waze so you can save time or streamline things with your social media and that's because when you create a social media post only a small percentage of people are going to see the in the news feed so you don't want to make a big deal about every single individual post but when someone visits your profile on LinkedIn there is a 100
• 07:00 - 07:30 chance they're going to see it it is right there so then I add more buttons and I realize I don't like the orange background so I switch it to a blue background and then I want to make it a darker blue so it more closely matches my brand colors and then I tweak the buttons a bit and voila and here's also what the founder looks like on mobile I've done everything I can to make this Banner better but don't put it past me to update it again because that's just how I roll now canvas just one of the content creation tools that I really really like a lot and if you want even more resources check out this video in
• 07:30 - 08:00 the top right corner and these are free resources that'll help you make a splash on your social media thank you so much and see in the next video