LinkedIn Profile Cover Photos

Continuing with the LinkedIn features discussion….

We have looked recently at using the newer features in LinkedIn mail and the nifty LinkedIn email signature widget. Let’s take a stroll over to another one of my new favorite features—custom profiles!

In a recent LinkedIn announcement, LinkedIn revealed that it will begin rolling out custom cover options for your LinkedIn profile. Custom covers have been around on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for months, and LinkedIn has decided to join the bandwagon.

The cover image will reside atop your profile page and allow you to select one of about 25 provided options, or upload an image of your own. Take a gander at my LinkedIn profile cover photo. Yes. I sold out to the company brand—I bleed green and blue!

If you don’t have your LinkedIn custom profile option yet, you can sign up for the early roll out on LI’s top secret request page.

Once you have access to the new features, you can upload your new cover photo by logging into your account and selecting “Edit” on your profile page. You’ll see the option to upload an image where the custom background should be. If you don’t change your background to an uploaded image or one of the gallery options, the background will default to a blue gradient background.

There are no restrictions as to what can be in your background image. You can incorporate text and calls-to-action as you desire. Although, I’m sure certain types of racier-than-is-professional imagery might get flagged by LinkedIn as “inappropriate.”

As of right now, the new custom backgrounds are only visible on the desktop site—not on mobile devices. Whether or not this will be updated in the future remains to be seen.

The new features are currently being rolled out to LinkedIn premium members across the globe. Over the coming months the feature will be rolled out to all users.