LinkedIn is one of the commonly overlooked social media platforms but, when you’re working in a B2B environment, it’s a huge missed opportunity if you’re not making the most of it.

From its foundation in 2002, LinkedIn sees an average of 260 million active users per month (25 million of which are here in the UK) with over half a billion users overall.

It’s a playing field loved by recruiters, marketers and potential clients alike and whilst we all know that we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, we are hard-wired to do exactly that.

There’s a psychological tendency called thin-slicing which means that people make a lot of decisions based on a very narrow window of information.  People viewing your LinkedIn profile will make a lot of decisions about you in the first second of seeing you.  From your intelligence to your socio-economic status, that impression is born in the blink of an eye and while prolonged exposure to your image might confirm the initial assumptions, it will very rarely change it. So you genuinely don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

When it comes to selling your products and services, or even yourself, on your LinkedIn profile, you are the asset.  Profiles with professional quality headshots are 14 times more likely to get found and receive 9 times more connection requests than those without them.

So it has to be worth investing in a great first impression with a quick and easy head shot photo shoot.  A recent Hubspot survey found LinkedIn to be 77% more effective at lead generation than other social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter so you really do have everything to gain.