LinkedIn has become an incredibly popular platform for professionals to network, build their personal brand, and drive business opportunities. With over 740 million members worldwide, LinkedIn offers a massive potential audience for content creators and marketers. One of the key content formats on LinkedIn is video. But how effective are videos for achieving goals like engagement, brand awareness, and lead generation on the platform? Let’s take a closer look.
What are the benefits of using video on LinkedIn?
There are several reasons why video can be highly effective on LinkedIn:
– Increased engagement: Research shows video leads to higher engagement rates on LinkedIn compared to other content formats. Videos are more likely to grab attention in the feed and motivate viewers to interact through likes, comments, and shares.
– More brand awareness: Video allows you to showcase your brand personality and values in a more dynamic, memorable way. Viewers get to literally see your company and employees in action.
– Higher conversion rates: Studies show video content can significantly boost conversion rates compared to text-based content alone. Following up promotional videos with clear calls-to-action can drive more leads.
– Improved SEO: Videos tend to rank well in LinkedIn’s algorithm and Google search. Optimize videos with target keywords to improve discoverability and traffic.
– Thought leadership: Posting expert interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and educational videos establishes your brand as an industry authority.
What types of videos perform well on LinkedIn?
Certain video formats tend to see higher engagement on LinkedIn than others:
– Educational videos: How-to tutorials, expert explainers, skills demos, and thought leadership talks. Helps position your brand as an educator.
– Case studies: Show how your product or service solved a customer’s problem or added value for them. Builds trust and social proof.
– Event coverage: Share recordings of speakers, panels and activities from your in-person or virtual events. Extends reach and impact.
– Employee spotlights: Let team members introduce themselves, discuss their work and passion projects. Puts a human face to your company.
– Testimonials: Have happy customers share their positive experiences with your brand on camera. Adds authenticity and credibility.
– Behind-the-scenes: Give viewers a look inside your company culture, office environment or product development process. Creates transparency.
– Animated videos: Use visual storytelling like infographics and motion graphics to explain key ideas. Can simplify complex topics.
What video length performs best?
Generally, shorter videos tend to see higher engagement on LinkedIn. Some ideal video lengths to consider:
– Less than 1 minute: For teasers, trailers, social media spots, quick tips
– 1-2 minutes: For explaining key points, product overviews, employee introductions
– 2-3 minutes: For simple case studies, testimonials, highlighting an initiative
– 5 minutes or less: For interviews, presentations, event highlights, how-to tutorials
Research suggests engagement drops significantly after the first 3-5 minutes. So it’s best to condense your core message and value into a tight, succinct video.
When should you post videos on LinkedIn?
Posting at optimal times can help maximize views and engagement for your videos. Some top times to post on LinkedIn include:
– Tuesday-Thursday: Midweek days see high engagement, especially Tuesday and Wednesday.
– Morning or mid-day: 8-10 AM and 12-2 PM tend to perform well. People often browse while drinking their morning coffee or over lunch.
– Non-working hours: Early morning, evenings and weekends drive views when people are off work.
– Beginning and middle of month: Posting early or mid-month ensures your videos don’t get lost at the end of the month.
– Avoid Mondays and Fridays: Engagement tends to dip at the very start and end of the workweek.
Test different posting times to see what resonates best with your target audience. Maintaining a consistent schedule also helps build anticipation.
How can you optimize videos for LinkedIn?
Here are some best practices for optimizing videos to boost results on LinkedIn:
– Compelling preview image: Choose a visually striking thumbnail that sells the value upfront. Include minimal text.
– Targeted headline: Use keywords people are searching for, highlight the core benefit, and incentivize clicks.
– Detailed description: Expand on the value proposition with a concise, scannable description to improve SEO. Include a call to action.
– Closed captions: Make your videos accessible and boost SEO by adding subtitles and captions.
– Hashtags and tags: Strategically include hashtags and @tag relevant companies, influencers, or employees to expand reach.
– Link mentions: hyperlink to your website, products, resources or other LinkedIn content within the caption.
– Native video: Upload videos directly to LinkedIn instead of linking out to maximize play time. Keep videos under 10 minutes.
What level of video budget do you need?
Producing engaging, professional-quality video content does require an investment. But you can get started with a relatively modest budget and equipment:
– Budget cameras: A decent smartphone, DSLR, or mirrorless camera can produce solid HD footage when used right. Invest $500-1500.
– Editing software: Apps like Adobe Premiere Rush or iMovie provide robust editing tools for $10-50/month. Can also outsource editing.
– Lighting: Improve video quality dramatically with a simple reflector, LED panels or stand lights ($50-500). Audio is also important.
– Production help: Consider hiring freelance videographers, editors and writers early on, budgeting $500-1500 per finished minute of video.
– Stock footage/images: Save money by mixing in stock clips and templates. Sites like Videvo or Storyblocks offer affordable subscriptions.
As your needs grow, you can expand into more advanced equipment, software, production professionals, animation and original music. But you can achieve great results starting out with a modest $2-5k initial investment.
How can you measure the impact of LinkedIn videos?
It’s critical to track key metrics to gauge how well your videos are performing and optimize efforts. Some top analytics for LinkedIn video include:
Engagement metrics:
– Impressions: How many times your videos were displayed to users
– Views: Number of times videos were opened and played
– View rate: Views divided by impressions
– Completion rate: Percentage of total video viewed on average
– Social actions: Likes, comments, shares
Conversion metrics:
– Clicks to site/profile: Traffic referred from video to your website or LinkedIn presence
– Leads generated: New potential customers from video content
– Sales influenced: Revenue attributable to video campaigns
Competitor benchmarking:
– Compare your metrics and rates to competitors’ videos and broader industry benchmarks. This can reveal opportunities to improve.
Regularly tracking performance allows you to identify your best-performing video formats and topics. You can then double down on what works and refine your video strategy over time.
What tools can you use to create and manage videos?
Here are some top tools for getting the most value out of your LinkedIn video content:
– Adobe Creative Cloud: Industry leader for professional video editing and motion graphics.
– Kapwing: Easy browser-based editing with collaboration features to manage team video projects.
– Animoto: Quickly create promotional and social videos with professional templates.
– InVideo: AI-powered automated editing to simply produce videos with effects and smart text.
– Loom: Record engaging video messages and tutorials right from your screen.
– Promo: Curate branded video content from social platforms and manage campaigns.
– Wistia: Host, optimize and analyze video content and viewer engagement data.
– Vidyard: Track video analytics and add interactivity like CTAs, end screens and quizzes.
The right tools allow you to not only create sleek, compelling video content efficiently, but also maximize distribution and optimize based on data insights.
How can you repurpose existing content into video?
Rather than starting from scratch, you can often repurpose existing marketing assets and content formats into video:
– Blog posts/articles: Turn your popular long-form written content into a summary video or series.
– Webinars: Break a long webinar into topical videos highlighting key insights.
– Infographics: Bring visual infographics to life as animated, explanatory videos.
– Slide decks: Record voiceover presentations and add B-roll over webinar or meeting slides.
– Interviews: Edit recordings of podcasts, conferences or media interviews into shareable clips.
– Social media: Compile recent posts into a monthly video recap, or a themed montage.
– Website copy: Use compelling facts, statistics and messaging from your website as narration.
– Testimonials: Film video versions of happy customer quotes and reviews.
Repurposing not only saves production time and costs, but builds on content that’s already resonating with your audience.
What are some low-cost video hacks and shortcuts?
If hiring a professional video production crew isn’t feasible, here are a few budget-friendly hacks:
– Use stock video/images: Subscribe to low-cost stock libraries like Adobe Stock or Storyblocks.
– Buy templates: Save time with pre-made After Effects templates and graphics.
– Screen recordings: Use built-in software like QuickTime or free tools like OBS Studio to record your screen.
– Animated slides: Create simple animated videos from PowerPoint or Google Slides using free tools like Powtoon.
– Employee smartphones: Have staff film video snippets on their phones to compile into videos.
– User-generated content: Repurpose authentic customer videos/photos referencing your brand into testimonials.
– Minimal edits: Record short raw video clips without heavy editing or effects. The organic nature can feel authentic.
– Free music: Use free resources like Free Music Archive or YouTube Audio Library for soundtracks.
– DIY equipment: Use inexpensive stands, tripods, mics and lights from Amazon to improve production value.
With some creativity and tools likely already at your fingertips, you can start making professional-grade videos on a budget.
What video marketing mistakes should you avoid?
When creating LinkedIn video content, there are some common mistakes to avoid:
– Generic, corporate videos with no personality. Show the authentic human side of your brand.
– Overly promotional, salesy videos that focus solely on pushing products. Educate and entertain instead.
– Boring interview videos with static shots of people talking. Use creative B-roll and graphics over interviews.
– Bad lighting that makes videos look unprofessional. Invest in some basic lighting equipment.
– No captions or subtitles. Making your videos accessible improves reach and SEO.
– Cluttered, text-heavy intros and outros. Keep branding clean and simple.
– Skipping calls-to-action. Always include clear CTAs in descriptions to drive conversions.
– Not optimizing for SEO. Use strategic titles, descriptions and hashtags.
– Uploading instead of natively posting videos. Maximize play time by directly uploading videos to LinkedIn.
– Failing to track analytics. Analyze engagement, views and conversions to optimize efforts.
By learning from these mistakes and best practices, you can constantly refine and improve your LinkedIn video content creation process.
Conclusion
Video content, when executed well, can have a tremendous impact on LinkedIn in terms of engagement, brand-building, lead generation and thought leadership. Certain formats like educational videos, testimonials and event coverage tend to perform particularly well. While producing quality video requires investment, even modest budgets can go a long way on LinkedIn using the right creative strategies and tools. Analyze metrics like views, completion rate and conversions to double down on what works. Finally, avoid common video mistakes like overly promotional content, lack of captions and failing to track analytics. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to success with video marketing on LinkedIn.