Today’s simple: your photo and your banner. Two images, five minutes — but they’re doing more work than almost anything else on your profile.

Your photo.

Ask yourself three things:

• Is it current — taken in the last year or two, not a photo from a decade ago?
• Is it clear — good lighting, no shadows across your face, high enough resolution that it doesn’t look blurry at LinkedIn’s size?
• Is it just you — head and shoulders, no group photo you cropped yourself out of, no sunglasses, no logo covering half your face?

You can keep this easy and just upload a photo you already have from your phone, or level it up with an app like Canva to crop, resize, and edit it — maybe cropping the background onto a solid colour or gradient, like I’ve done with my own profile photo.

Your banner.

This is the part almost everyone skips, and it’s free space. If yours is still the plain LinkedIn gray, that’s a missed spot. Your banner should say something about what you do or who you help — even without reading a word, just from the colours and the image. It doesn’t need to be fancy. A simple background in your brand colours with a short line of text works better than nothing at all. Canva has templates you can start with and customize to make it personal to you.

Your task:

Look at your current photo and banner. If your photo fails any of those three checks, fix it today. If your banner is blank or generic, start thinking about one line that could go on it — what you do, or who you help.

Tomorrow: your headline, the line right under your name. One of my favourite parts of the whole profile — it can make a huge difference in attracting the right connections, generating leads, and showing people exactly who you work with.