Did LinkedIn kill the video star?

I confess that video content will always be my favourite. If you follow my posts, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of creating videos because I know they are the best way to connect with your audience.

In this edition, I'm talking about why I think LinkedIn is lagging behind in the video stakes. Is it the platform or is it the users? Did LinkedIn kill the video star? ??

Can it change? Should it change?

Let’s press 'Play' and find out…

Video content growth

Video content on social media?is going from strength to strength. Cisco, reported that 82% of global internet traffic will be from video downloads or streaming this year.

TikTok, the video platform influencer, has seen the biggest growth reporting more than 1 billion users in Sep21, up a whopping 45% in less than a year. Compare that to Instagram's growth of just 6% in 2020 and that puts it into perspective. TikTok has dominated the trend for short-form, vertical videos and this now pervades across all the major socials.

Like it or not, more video content and streaming will hit our LinkedIn feeds this year.

So, how does video on LinkedIn compare to other socials such as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok?

LinkedIn the video laggard

LinkedIn is definitely not a front runner in the video stakes. In fact, it’s lagging behind every other major social in terms of reach, creator tools, channels, accessibility and user experience. ?

Reach

Organic video reach on LinkedIn isn't great right now and it's because of how LinkedIn's algorithm works. Reach is constrained by how the algorithm tests your content with a small selection of your first-level connections. It has to pass that test before it will consider showing your video to a wider audience. Your reach is affected by whom you’re connected with and whether your content resonates with them.

This is why niching and developing relationships with your connections is vital!

Far better organic reach can be found on places like YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels.

TikTok's algorithm also tests your content but across a much wider group of people (no - they are not all dancing teenagers!) and it learns extremely quickly what someone does or does not like. If you're ever scrolling on TikTok, be careful not to linger too long on stuff you don’t want to see. You will see it immediately reflected in your For You Page feed.

The active TikTok user base is ageing up fast and growing exponentially ??

YouTube videos have the advantage of being found by a search query. It's huge search engine allows it to show anyone, whether they are subscribed to you or not, a highly relevant video. Videos posted on YouTube are easily discoverable and remain evergreen content.

Dedicated space

There’s no real channel or home for video to 'live in' on LinkedIn. Unless you’re a Company Page – where you can sort posts via a Video tab.

If you post a video on LinkedIn, then the next day it is lost in the feed. Facebook and Instagram both have Reels which is a highly scrollable feed dedicated to video just like YouTube Shorts and TikTok.

Then there's still the demand for Stories which is video content that only displays for 24 hours. Usually highly topical content. TikTok has just pushed out Stories to its user base so the ephemeral nature of Stories isn't going anywhere.

YouTube encourages you to create playlists to further aid the discoverability of videos.

Unfortunately, LinkedIn has nothing similar to Reels, and LinkedIn Stories was taken down in 2021. There was talk of something new coming to replace Stories but it's just been crickets...??

With no way to categorise or sort video content on LinkedIn or present video in a timely (Stories) or relevant way (searchable), it does affect discoverability and reach.

Accessibility

I have to mention the lack of accessibility because LinkedIn is the only major social that doesn’t provide platform-wide auto-generated captions yet. ??

I wrote an open letter to Ryan Roslansky and Daniel Roth questioning this status and I was informed that they are ‘working on it’. We can only hope they will arrive soon. In the meantime, we rely on creators being compassionate, as well as commercially savvy, to add captions via third-party tools.

Hot off the press! ??An interesting screen capture from a very recent LinkedIn News post. Could this be them testing out Auto Captioning?

I'll be so thrilled if they are??. About time too!

Analytics

There is very little data available for individual LinkedIn members who create video content. Unless you're Company Page you'll only get a view count if you get over 500 views.

If you right-click on the 500+ view figure you can see the Total minutes played (including less than 3 seconds), the Number of times the video was watched for more than 3 seconds and the Number of unique viewers who watched for more than 3 seconds.

There's an Audience tab that shows you a top level selection (why does LinkedIn not show all of them?) of some of the companies your viewers work for (mine is nearly always from Upwork or Fiverr!), some Job titles and rough Location. Not really very helpful!

No info on drop off points or the percentage who watched till the end, Did they get to the end to see your CTA? Who knows! ??

Incidentally, did you know that video views here are counted differently from the views on other post format types?

Take your actual video view and x5 to get a comparable view figure for all of the other posts types*.

This is because video views are only counted when someone clicks Play and watches the first 3 seconds of the video. Other posts types are counted as a view when the post is displayed in someone’s feed (like an impression). It does not necessarily mean the post was read because the person could have just scrolled by without reading.

* Thanks to John Espirian for this data from his experiment. ?

By comparison, the analytics on TikTok gives you:

• Total Play Time
• Average Watch Time
• Watched the Full video %
• Reached audience number
• Where in TikTok the video was seen (your Followers feed or For You Page feed
• Region of the viewer (by country)

TikTok is helping creators to understand who their audience is and what their actions and behaviours are. This helps creators to make improvements to their content which in turn increases engagement.

Video format and size

Get ready for an opinion that goes against the grain here...??

A few weeks back I was watching a LinkedIn Live about video content. One person said they thought the square 'letterbox style' video often seen on LinkedIn signified that it was 'a boring video', probably repurposed from a podcast or Live recording.

It got me thinking...how do I react when I see different videos styles in my feed?

Occasionally you will see a landscape video - the traditional 'built for human eyes' format, but more recently you'll see many more vertical videos, the trend emerging from other platforms and built for mobile users. But we access LinkedIn on both desktop and mobile and need something that works for both?

The Square compromise

Using a square (1:1 ratio, 1080x1080 pixels) shape video has become the norm on LinkedIn because it uses up the maximum amount of available space in the feed on both desktop and mobile versions of LinkedIn.

Vertical (9:16 ratio, 1080 x 1920 pixels) is the best for mobile and landscape (16:9 ratio, 1920 x 1080 pixels) is the best for desktop so the compromise of the square fills the middle ground. Fair enough.

Not all recording and editing apps can size video footage as a square so you will often see what I call the 'fake' square. This is the 'letterboxing' when a video is recorded in landscape and then a header and footer are added to create the square shape.

Do I agree that this letterbox style is starting to look very samey and boring? Yes

Mark Williams recently wrote about video formats and he said he thought vertical videos didn't look 'made for' Linkedin. I think the same applies to these 'fake' square videos because they are essentially landscape videos with the black lines filled in - no doubt they are actually 'made for' and destined for YouTube!

The Vertical trend

The vertical video, built for the predominant mobile user base across all socials has landed and it's not going anywhere - even though LinkedIn renders these with blurred lines down either side on the desktop feed (screenshot below).

What I've noticed about my own behaviour is that I am more inclined to click on and play a vertical video over a square letterbox style because I'm associating the shape with more innovative video creators and video creation techniques that I'm interested in.

I realised that I do have an expectation associated with the format of the video!

The case for vertical video

Every platform is doing vertical for a reason. I myself have decided on a video spring clean and I will be creating more vertical video - even though I know square is currently the preferred format.

Why? For several reasons:

• LinkedIn says 70% of people using Linkedin are on mobile and Gary's V's recent poll reflects a similar, slightly higher number - so vertical works much better for the majority.

• I can repurpose my vertical videos much more easily across LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Stories and Reels on both Facebook and Instagram without having to resize. This is a massive time saver for busy social media creators especially given their audience is predominantly on mobile.
• It has a fresher more 'up to date' look about it and the engagement is better!

Recent testing from?Animoto?shows that square videos get 30-35% more views and?80-100% more engagement?compared to landscape videos (16:9) on social media. This is kind of what we knew already, right?

My own poll results reflect this preference even though it's a tiny sample.

I have to admit I was surprised how many people still prefer to see landscape - I'm guessing they were predominantly desktop users. Frankly, I find having to turn your phone each time to watch a landscape video is annoying.

However, Buffer tested vertical video versus square video on Instagram and Facebook and vertical did better! Vertical video content got 6% more 3-second views and?187% more people?watched at least half of the video.

So vertical IS the way to go if you are creating video content

Vertical but what length?

There's also the question of length. People cite different lengths as short-form. Some say it's between 15-30 seconds, some say it's less than 2 minutes. My view is there is no hard and fast rule. Get your message across as succinctly as possible but make sure you have enough time to leave the viewer with something memorable.

Make good quality video! I do think though that for anything over 3mins it's really hard to keep people watching until the end. Perhaps if we had better analytics we could work out the real optimum time!

It's also interesting to note that TikTok now allows 10mins videos so lengths will probably start to change across all platforms if it takes off on TikTok.

I'm particularly interested to see how this all plays out between TikTok and YouTube as they both tread on each other's toes! ??

LinkedIn user laggards

As well as the LinkedIn platform itself, I think LinkedIn users contribute towards video lagging behind compared to other social media platforms.

Video content barriers

1?? The biggest one is probably the fear of getting on camera. People worry about what they look and sound like and for some, it’s just paralysing and they never get any further. The rather slow takeup of the Profile Video (formerly Cover Story) confirms this ??. Personally, I think it's one of the most important parts of your Profile now because it is 100% unique to you and a way to stand out from the crowd.

2?? Then there is making the video content accessible by adding captions. For some creators, this seems to be a step too far?

Either they are worried about the technicalities of how or they simply don’t plan in the time needed in the creation process.

I could go on here (those of you that know me will know I’m an inclusion advocate) but I won't.

I’ve covered the why and the how regarding captions in my last newsletter edition. If you need to catch up, then it's here.

Older versus newer

I think old habits die hard here and there is a reluctance to embrace the new - perhaps this is why Linkedin Stories failed?

We still get the 'this isn't Facebook' police monitoring our content and perhaps generations have something to do with it?

Millennials and Gen Z have grown up with mobiles and social media, so vertical is instinctive to them not landscape or square. As more of these generations become the majority here (LinkedInForCreators are actively promoting Gen Z now) and become our industry leaders will LinkedIn shift to be more pro video and vertical?

My conclusion

With a combination of both the laggard technical platform and the user base being slow to accept social media trends in general, I believe Linkedin and its creators are not optimising for the most important content category - video content/ads and streaming.

Whilst LinkedIn is trying to get involved in the creator economy with the launch of tools such as Creator Mode and the Creator Accelerator Program funding, it's simply not there yet. Big brands are moving to TikTok and business follows.

LinkedIn needs to launch a home for vertical video and more video-specific creator tools as soon as possible!

Perhaps LinkedIn have got a plan up their sleeve - who knows? They are not the best at telling us about new features and services...

I want to hear from you

What are your views? Is LinkedIn a laggard? Are users here out of touch?

Do we need or want vertical video (short or medium) on LinkedIn? I think it's a 'must have' part of your content marketing strategy and I know for sure that video content has been a large part of my own growth here over the last 12months.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts though, please drop them in the comments below. ??

Follow my personal hashtag #ContentAngel to see more of my posts on #ContentMarketing, #VideoMarketing, #LinkedInTips and #Inclusion

?

?