I am a firm believer in social networking and general business networking. Just a few days ago, I was able to connect with old school friends, I haven’t seen in twenty years via Facebook. Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook connect me with people, I would not have met any other way. It is simply amazing!

There are a few things that I learnt over time, on what attracts visitors of your profile to connect with you via your profile picture.

Image

Make sure you have profile picture. It is so more difficult to connect with people, if they can’t get a visual impression of you. I like to see, who I am interacting with. It builds trust and allows strangers to learn something about you. A picture can be one of the strongest ways in building initial trust. It also helps, if you want to connect with old friends to give them some indication on how you look. It is something that worked for me on occasion.

Context

Pay attention to the context of the networking site and your image. A casual image taken in a pub and posted on a professional networking site like Linkedin or Xing will not help you finding a new job. On the other hand, a too conservative portrait can be also a problem. Find the right balance. What is the standard dress code in your profession? Are you modern or conservative? Professional portraits can be fun as well.

Quality

Snapshots with your cell phone are in general not a good idea. As so often, there are exceptions to the rule. Your images need to be in focus, correctly exposed and mostly show your face. Often, your contacts will see your portrait only at 50×50 pixels (when you Tweetdeck for example).

Keep these points in mind when you create your profile picture. Put a little bit effort in and either ask a talented friend or hire a photographer to help you create your online image. Let me know, if you want me to take your portraits.

Here are a few recent examples of portraits, I did for my clients.

Blogpost 22 February 2010 – Images by Jurgen Banda-Hansmann