For Finding Everyday Inspiration, we’re tasked with mining our own material today – take inspiration from your own social media, posts, photos from your own Facebook profile.
On the weekend, I decided to change my profile picture on Facebook. One thing that annoys me about Facebook is that it insists on notifying everyone whenever you make a change. So I googled “how to change your Facebook profile picture without it showing up in your feed”. On LinkedIn, this is super easy. You just turn off notifications for your followers about your profile changes.
As it turns out, not so easy for Facebook. The solution, according to Google, was to immediately hide the “Desley has changed her profile picture” post from my Timeline. I did so, then checked my profile and sure enough it was hidden.
Then, a few seconds later, someone commented on my profile picture. Then someone else. And someone else. What?! How does this happen? Unfortunately, hiding it from my own Timeline, does not hide it from everyone else’s News Feed
😦
All I wanted to do was change my profile picture, with zero pomp and circumstance, when all of a sudden, there are 17 likes (well, 3 of them are laughing-reactions, which was slightly unnerving) and 8 comments, ranging from “this looks better” to “what’s up?” to “shaggy” to “haha cute”. The funny thing is, it’s a photo that I posted previously in June of this year, and then only 2 people commented, one saying “LOL” and the other “bit windy?”…
Which makes me think, what does your profile picture say about you? If you are trying to develop a brand for yourself (which according to marketing, we all should be doing), then you should have consistent messaging across all platforms. This includes your logo, colour scheme and any tag line you might have. And your profile image.
(Un)Lucky for me, I have a couple of different brands, and my Facebook profile, while public, is not where my business is, I have a separate “company” page for that. But it has made me think about how I want to set up “my brand”.
My last FB profile pic was quite serious, but it was a normal photo of my actual face. This one, I just like it because it’s fun, I like the expression (what you can see of it), I love the way my hair looks, I love the lighting, I love the black and white, it just feels like fun, and it’s different, that’s all.
For LinkedIn, I have a proper, semi-professional head and shoulders shot, which I believe you should have on LinkedIn. For me, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are where I can show my personality a little more.
Perhaps the better question is: What do you want you profile picture to say about you? Social Media represents my creative side, and I want to play with that. People who know me, know that this is me in this photo. But people who don’t know me, or who haven’t seen me in a while, may have trouble recognising me. But is that ok?
I think it’s ok.
But maybe it all means nothing. I mean ten years ago, I had no idea there was any such thing as profile pictures, and now I have about ten profile pictures.
What about you? What does your profile picture say about you? Can you post it here? Or a link? Or post it on Twitter or Instagram and tag me? @desleyjane
And if you know of some secret clandestine way to change your FB profile pic, please fill me in!
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
I’d love to hear from you!