Welcome to this weeks LinkedInformed.

Native video posts have become a popular way to share ideas, provide helpful tips and build relationships with your followers, and with the recent addition of Stories, where video typically features heavily, I thought it would be worth revisiting the topic.

David Kilkelly is one of my favourite video experts on LinkedIn. I have followed him for some time for a source of inspiration and helpful tips so I thought I would have a chat with him about LinkedIn video. Interestingly our chat was as much about content as it was specifically about video.

More of that later but first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Forget Your CV: Lucy Dearing Got Her Dream Vegan Job By Doing THIS

This is a great story about a job seeker going the extra mile and being innovative to try and make her dream job happen. It didn’t quite work (although they have apparently given her some freelance work) but she can’t have done her chances of getting a job any harm with the visibility this received both on and off LinkedIn. You can see her post here

3 Actionable Insights with… LinkedIn chief marketing officer Melissa Selcher

This article had me rather amused this week…A senior exec from LinkedIn talking about trust!! I have never come across a company that shows more suspicion and a lack of trust in others than LinkedIn.

It’s actually a decent article, it’s just a bit rich coming from LinkedIn!

LinkedIn Video with David Kilkelly

I started off by asking David to offer some advice to those who are considering making video content for LinkedIn.

The first issue here is that the whole idea of ‘creating content’ can be rather off putting. The best approach is to relax and be yourself, it’s much better to be yourself in video posts than to try to ‘construct’ some special sort of content.

One technique to help with this is to focus on a few of your followers that you know well and create your video (or any other type of post) with these people in mind. Make it for them and be brave – try different ideas.

There are a variety of different approaches you can take to video posts;

• Short and simple ‘off the cuff’ videos of you talking to camera in a relaxed manner.
• More structured videos edited down to punchy bullet points
• Theatrical scenes where you ‘act out’ scenarios to entertain as well as get your point across

The LinkedIn community are generally well behaved, certainly in comparison to other social media channels so this allows you to relax and try things. It’s rare that you would get negative engagement from a video post.

Another idea to ease yourself into video would be to post a few videos to a small group of people perhaps in a group first before posting to all of your followers.

I recalled a video I saw on David’s YouTube channel that has always stuck with me. It’s a great example of authentic, enjoyable content.

OK David is very skilled at producing video and we would be unlikely to produce something as good as that but that is how to sell. Get less serious, be more ‘real’ and honest and tell a story – your story.

David also mentioned that a good starting point for video posts on LinkedIn is to remove any technical barriers and just use your smartphone to record your video. A phone can make perfectly good videos provided you use them in the right way and David has a free course available for smartphone video, click on the image below for more details.

The easiest type of video to start with would be one made on your smartphone and simply talking to the camera. The content should ideally be sharing something you have learnt, something that would be useful to many of your followers. Always personalise the story and advice, it’s so much more effective than ‘preaching’ “do this or don’t do that”

David recommended reading the book ‘Building a story brand’ by Donald Miller

We both agreed that content is always more important than the medium.

The idea has to come first

Content works best when it either;

• Educates
• Entertains
• Enlightens

If a post can blend all three then that is the perfect ingredients for a great post! David mentioned Dan and Lloyd Knowlton as good exponents of entertaining content that delivers important messages in a very disarming way. This video post is a good example

This is not something that most of us would have the time to do but it’s a great example of the principles mentioned above.

Dan apparently gets many of his ideas from TikTok and I have also noticed that some of these less serious social media channels have become places where creativity thrives and we can often find inspiration from them. Not everything will translate to LinkedIn but it’s worth challenging the theory that TikTok content is inappropriate for LinkedIn.

The prevalent ‘serious business’ mindset on LinkedIn can often stifle creativity.

Another observation David had about Linkedin in comparison to other social media sites is how people seem to love positivity. Sharing good news with your audience can work really well provided you have built respect through good helpful content first.

I often cite Simon Bourne as a great example of this. Simon has built his audience by sharing his business start-up story and his struggles with mental health. He comes across as helpful and authentic but also very passionate about his business. This has earned him respect with his followers who are invested in his story and want to celebrate his success and achievements with him.

We also talked about LinkedIn Stories which David has played with a little bit.

It’s clear that stories are best used to keep in touch and stay front of mind with existing audiences rather than establishing new ones but they can also be a great place to experiment with video – small audience and the post is only visible for 24 hours!

Video for Stories should be recorded in portrait format and captions are not as necessary as you can add text to ‘summarise’ what you are talking about – this is also technique that first became popular on TikTok.

It’s still early days for stories but they are definitely worth experimenting with.

Thanks again to David for taking the time to share his expertise. You can contact him on LinkedIn or via his website

As I didn’t post an episode last week I’m going to have two posts this week.

The first is a very moving, brave and important post from Louisa. Some may feel this is inappropriate for LinkedIn, I couldn’t disagree more!

I’m sure this is uncomfortable reading for many of us but her message is important to her, partly as a way to tackle any awkwardness on her return to work (hence posting on LinkedIn) but also to spread awareness.

The second post is a great example of using video in a new way (a style made popular on TikTok) but primarily it’s a positive story that will give hope to those who want to create their own business success in the future.

That’s all for this week.

Let me know if there any subjects that you would like me to cover in the future.