Profile Pictures

[Kevin Kaczmarek]

In the process of reading "Twitter Power 2.0" and one of the interesting things I read about is your profile picture should be a picture of you, not of your pet, or a landscape scene. This got my attention because it made sense, Make a personal connection via your profile picture. I know on biggerpockets alone I tend to not colleague request people without profile pictures and looking through my colleagues I noticed most had a picture of themselves.

Is there some truth to the psychological aspect of making a connection by a profile picture? Are there success stories on here of building a network faster with a profile picture as opposed to something else?

[Joshua Dorkin]

Absolutely! Your profile pic should 100% be a photo of you.

1 - First, it tells me who I'm talking to. If I can't see who I'm talking to, then I can't ever be 100% who I'm talking to. While someone can certainly put up a fake pic, impersonating someone online is illegal, so I assume that most people aren't stupid enough to do that.

2 - It also helps to create a human/emotional connection with that person.

3 - Finally, it allows you to bridge the gap between online and reality. I could be in a room with Mark and Tod, but would never know who they are because they don't have a personal photo. On the other hand, I have an instant connection with Kevin because of his picture. That makes him more approachable.

I've been doing this for almost 6 years now and I certainly believe that people who use an image of themselves are taken more seriously for all the reasons I already mentioned.

We try to encourage members to use personal images by enforcing a few basic rules about avatars here (no ads, promos, pics of famous people), but some people simply don't want to reveal themselves and others may not know how to take a picture. Nothing wrong with that, but I strongly believe that it puts you at a disadvantage when participating in a professional networking site like BiggerPockets.

Finally, any social media expert will tell you that using your own image is good for business and is the key to personal branding online. You should generally be using the same image across the various networks that you're on (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, BiggerPockets, etc.) to create consistency.

I hope that helps.