One of the best ways you can build up your credibility, and put a personality to your brand is through publishing video on LinkedIn. By using these tips, you can vastly improve your LinkedIn presence and grow your network.
Keep It Under 2 Minutes
An MIT study found that viewership dropped off sharply after six minutes for training videos and educational videos, and with people logging onto the site seeking career advice and professional development, many videos are educational.
And although it’s not a LinkedIn specific study, there’s still a lot to learn from the research.
Although there aren’t any public LinkedIn specific studies out, Wistia looked at over 1.3 billion plays on their site. They found 2 minutes as the sweet spot for online video before attention drops off.
Entice Viewers to Play Your Video
You can build anticipation to play your video by writing some engaging copy above it. One sentence “hooks” are what get people interested. Many websites use a form of this called clickbait, which you should avoid, but your video has to have an interesting enough premise for a browser on LinkedIn to watch. Be provocative. Ask a tough question. Give the LinkedIn browser something to ponder on.
Upload with Captions
LinkedIn has joined Facebook and Instagram on the video auto-play train, so you should endeavour to make your content understandable for those commuters stuck on the train without their earphones. This means large text and captions so that the dialogue in the video can be understood.
In fact, as we discovered in another post, the vast majority of Facebook videos are played without sound. You can add captions by using YouTube’s captioning functionality, then downloading the .srt file, then attaching it to your LinkedIn video. This also adds keywords that are searchable through Google, so it gives a full text transcript of your video, which can be handy.
Be Yourself
Show off the best aspects yourself, after all, LinkedIn is a site for professionals. However this doesn’t mean being a corporate robot, no-one has ever missed out on an opportunity by being an interesting person.
LinkedIn is about Reciprocating!
LinkedIn is a site to develop your professional skills, but it’s also a network that relies on everybody taking part, so do your best to help others. You can do this by providing valuable comments on others’ posts, sharing content you like that others have posted. You can send an inbox message to others to thanks them for any valuable advice you have received from them. It’s a simple social site at its core and by being a valued member of somebody’s network, they are much more likely to give value to you as well.
For more advice on video for social media, get in touch with us today.
Ryan Spanger is one of Melbourne’s most respected and sought-after video production professionals. Ryan founded Dream Engine in 2002, and specialises in helping medium to large corporates, government departments, and the non-profit sector to connect with their audience more effectively by using video.
