Video Stops the Scroll
Your audience is ignoring you, and so are the algorithms. According to our buddies at LinkedIn, unless you are using video, people just scroll right by you with the algorithm pushing them along like a baby in a pram.
LinkedIn can be the land of the screed, and from a user behavior perspective, that’s generally offensive. We do not go on social media to read long posts – we don’t have time to. Our metrics show this, and LinkedIn is telling us this. People and algorithms want movement – and good, optimized video can satiate that want.
Video deals dwell time – viewers consuming your content. That signals the algorithm that something good is going on – the content is relevant, and therefore shareworthy. The gifts the algorithm gives relevant content are a higher reach and longer shelf life.
There are also a bunch of stats that LinkedIn passed along, showing that video leads to more shares and better click-through rates (a lot better). Those shares are important too. They represent business people sharing your content with their colleagues. Clicks are cool, but shares are sovereign.
When creating a LinkedIn video, our secret sauce is to focus on the customer’s success and how our client contributed to it. We get powerful brand endorsements using this approach, and the success metrics from our video campaigns for the Rush Insurance Group proved its effectiveness. It’s not a terribly complicated approach, but most businesses ignore it and instead talk about themselves. We have run several successful Business Success Series campaigns for PeoplesBank, and our Springfield Spring video really performed well!
Here’s how we get LinkedIn video to rock the analytics.
- Purpose: The video needs to inspire, inform, influence, or create an experience. All those things are possible on social media platforms like LinkedIn. Sales is not on that list. Social Media engagement is generally considered interest-based – they are considering your content, but not buying. They don’t want to leave the platform either, and the platform doesn’t want them to leave.
- Length: It needs to be short. Our sweet spot is 60 seconds, but sometimes we push for shorter. That really does something cool to the creative (the video). It forces it (you as producer) to be really focused and very interesting – from the perspective of your audience.
- Stack it – the first 10 seconds need to really be interesting to your audience.
- Sound will be off. So don’t forget the captions.
- Load not linked. Videos uploaded to LinkedIn will perform way better than those served from another platform.
