Welcome to episode 243, this week I want to return to the subject of native LinkedIn video. It’s been a while since I covered this and the techniques for this type of post have developed somewhat. I also have some interesting analysis to share with you on the content in my home page feed. But first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• Are we now going to get Brand Ambassadors on LinkedIn?
  • Oh please no! LinkedIn top voice and video creator String Nguyen has signed up with a video service and now much of her posts are boring promos!
• Microsoft and Adobe strengthen partnership to take on Salesforce using LinkedIn

Feed Analysis

What types of posts most commonly appear in your feed? I don’t mean video, text only etc, I mean why did it appear there? Was it a like or comment from a connection or some other reason?

Last week I was in the rare position of being in the office every day so I decided to spend 30 minutes every day counting up the different reasons posts had appeared in my feed. The 30 minutes was broken down into 10-minute slots at the following times;

• First thing in the morning (c8.30 – 9.30am)
• Lunchtime (12-2pm)
• Early evening 5-6.30pm)

The results can be seen in this document post;

This video post grabbed my attention recently because there are a number of things we can learn from it;

• Attention-grabbing text techniques, the first 3 lines contain colourful emojis and a controversial headline, remember that in the feed this is all the text wee see;

• The text is more than three lines and tempts you to click on the all-important ‘see more’
• Attention-grabbing video techniques. Firstly she uses the increasingly popular (and effective) technique of a top banner with large text ‘If you’re over 35 watch this!‘ Also the first and most critical 3 secs are impactful. Shay says;

Are you making things harder on yourself. I have a story that relates….

• Captions are used throughout
• It’s just over 2 mins long
• Controversial subject matter

Interestingly many of the comments were from people who completely missed the point. This is a classic example of the short attention span people have on social media. The structure of her video led to this problem, the key point she made was not clear unless you watched the whole video but an emotive subject often encourages people to respond before watching the whole video or reading all the text…..or was it? In many respects, this actually assisted the organic reach of this video!

She was so frustrated by the inaccurate response that she created the following response video…which did equally well, despite being over 9 mins long…people do love a good rant though!

Native Video Techniques

Native video on LinkedIn is getting really popular, social media experts like Gary Vaynerchuck are jumping on the bandwagon and recommending it as a fantastic way to gain ‘insane’ (his words) organic reach.

With this popularity comes greater quality, more people with existing video skills and knowledge are using the platform, which is great news for us because we can learn from them!

Who is ‘hot’ right now on native video?

I guess this is fairly subjective but for me, the original video hotshots, people like String Nguyen and Goldie Chan, have been overtaken by people like Shay Rowbottom (see post of the week above).

Take a look at Shay’s feed and you will see a plethora of videos with over 100 comments. I haven’t seen anyone else achieving such amazing results. Please let me know if you do.

The vast majority of video content is the traditional ‘talking head’ style of video and for good reason, these posts gain more engagement than any other type but there are some important techniques that appear to be working;

• Square video format using the top quarter as a title and the lower quarter for captions, this means that the video is the traditional landscape size and can be repurposed for other channels, principally Youtube.
• Captions are essential, at least for the first 30 secs or so (see below)
• Short videos work best, 3 mins seems to be the sweet spot although the trend appears to be getting shorter on LinkedIn (this is in contrast to other channels where video length is actually increasing!)

Here is a great example of using the top of a video for the headline and the bottom for the captions. Gideon only has 629 followers yet this video attracted nearly 200 comments!

Walking and Talking

This will only work well if you have a videographer who is great at walking backwards or you use a Gimball to reduce camera shake, Brian does regular thoughts and tips on his regular walks around his neighbourhood.

The Sitcom

Janine has been posting a series of humorous videos that include tips and advice. I can see the appeal of this as it’s very different from what most people are doing…the downside is that this is a very time-consuming style to produce.

The Interview Format

A talking head video doesn’t have to just be you, an interesting although an often less engaging style is to interview someone, a style made popular by Allen Garrett

Car Videos

I’m not going to show you an example because they drive me mad. I get why people record videos in their car – the light is good and the acoustics work well but it’s a very overused format and very unpopular with many . Full disclosure, I did make one myself once!

Captions

This might seem a pain but seriously, nobody has their sound on so why would they notice your video? Captions are essential if you want to get people to notice initially and then watch your video.

It really doesn’t have to be difficult, I’m not a fan of fiddling about with .srt files when publishing on desktop and you really don’t need to these days. Here are the tools I would recommend for translating your words directly onto your video;

• Desktop – Kapwing
• iPhone (iOS) – Clips app
• Android phone – Autocap app

Whilst talking head video typically give the best results, they are not going to be for everyone.

If you accept that video posts are important but you really don’t feel able to stand in front of the camera, you could just try making short text and image style videos such as the one below. I have had some fairly decent results with these types of videos made with Biteable on desktop or Clips on mobile.

The Alternative to ‘Talking head’ style of video. Made with Clips, square format and took me 15 minutes to make.

So there you have it, video is such a powerful personal branding, influence and relationship building tool and LinkedIn users seem to be responding to them well.

If you haven’t tried video, why not give it a go now? Let me know if you need any help.

That’s all for this week, have a fantastic week ahead and I will be back soon.