Getting Your Cover Story Right

I first announced the introduction of the cover story at the beginning of April but at that stage, very few had access to the feature. It now seems that the roll-out is happening and so I thought it made sense to now cover my tips on how to make the best use of this feature. Don’t worry if you don’t have it yet, you will soon and you can always get making your video now in advance.

Before we get to that though…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Transparency Report: Second Half of 2020 – It looks like fake accounts are on the decrease and LinkedIn are now catching over 98% of them. This figure is, of course, somewhat misleading in that their definition of a fake account is one they have identified…how many others successfully get through their defences? Could it just be that the bad actors are just getting better at producing fake profiles?

Sales Navigator search filters have changed. This is a small but useful improvement to SN Lead search allowing you to add filters that were traditionally ‘secondary’ at the initial stage of a search.

They have also added two ‘Spotlight’ filters to an Account search.

A couple of new advertising features were also announced this week. It is now easier to sponsor an update with a new ‘boost’ button shown above each update. In addition, they are also introducing the ability to sponsor your events by advertising them directly (rather than through a separate sponsored post). You can read more about this here

Custom Streaming: LinkedIn now lets you easily broadcast LinkedIn Live streams with tools like Zoom, WebEx, or OBS. Soon, you will also be able to go live with Microsoft Teams. This was apparently introduced about 2 months ago but it’s the first I have heard of it. I was under the impression that you were restricted to using preferred partners such as Restream, Streamyard, Social Live and Switcher studio but apparently, they have a longer list of ‘certified partners’ you can use and you can also use the above listed tools via their custom stream (RTMP Ingest) tool. More here.

The 100/week Invitation restrictions rumor seems to be gathering pace. I suspect not as simple as 100 a week, it’s more likely to also be influenced by outstanding invites and how many are rejected. One way to avoid issues is to withdraw outstanding invitations but it wouldn’t surprise me if LinkedIn either remove or restrict this feature as it’s a common tactic that spammers use to avoid issues.

The general consensus is that 50 ‘actions’ per day is the limit on LinkedIn (inc premium), this includes profile views, direct messages and connection requests – the limit is higher for Sales Navigator users (and Recruiter most likely) at 250 actions per day. These numbers are of course an educated estimate and are subject to change at any time.

Personally, I think LinkedIn have got these limits about right – 100 invites per week is still way more than any normal user would require. If someone is finding that number an issue, I would question how they are using LinkedIn…it’s not an invitation spam machine!

Posts are getting longer! Some people are finding that the 1300 character limit has been more than doubled to 3000!

I have no idea why LinkedIn have done this. Posts are short-form…even 1300 is too much in a world where our attention spans are getting shorter. I guess there is no harm in having a greater limit but my advice is to get your posts succinct.

Cover Story Tips

Have you made your cover story video yet? Don’t tell me you haven’t got the feature yet…so what? You can still make your video in preparation for getting it soon.

This week I’m going to give you my tips on how to put together a great cover story video with the help of some great examples. The great thing about features like this is that it starts to get really interesting when you see the creativity of users come into play. A feature is merely a platform for creative content and people are really starting to come up with some great videos. In this video, I talk you through a few of my favourites. Unfortunately due to YouTube copyright rules, I’ve had to mute the background tracks on a couple of them.

Cover Story videos can be created on desktop or mobile but they can only be uploaded and edited via the mobile app. You can only see another cover story if you have the feature yourself and you can only tell someone has one by viewing their profile.

You will notice an orange border to their profile picture and you will briefly see a 3-second preview of their video. With this in mind, you might want to consider adding typing some words at the start of your video to encourage the viewer to click/tap on your photo. At the moment this is probably unnecessary but once the masses have this feature, the vast majority of users won’t even know it exists so a prompt like this may become more important. Below is a screenshot of the first few seconds of my cover story.

My advice is to spend some time thinking about what you want to say but also how you are going to create something that uniquely you and that stands out from the crowd – remember this feature will be mainstream soon and you want to stand out from the crowd.

Avoid any form of scripting. I have seen so many awful videos where they are clearly reading from a script. It’s only 30 seconds so just know what you want to say and deliver your message in a relaxed manner. It doesn’t have to be pitch-perfect, just a good authentic introduction.

Consider adding branding, background music, and captions to your video. Gillian Whitney published this post this week on the subject of adding captions to your cover story.

Clipchamp looks like a good option, you could also consider using the Clips app.

Try to avoid starting your video with “My name is…” The viewer can see your name already and this approach creates a very formal, less relaxed feel to your cover story.

You can edit or replace your video on mobile only and this is also where you need to change your visibility setting. The default is that only your connections see it but you will want all LinkedIn members to see it.

Post of the week

I love this image post from Daisy and it clearly hits the mark for LinkedIn.

• It’s a personal story
• Positive message
• Nicely constructed with good use of emojis
• It’s a story most of us can relate to

That’s it for this week. I hope you found that helpful and I look forward to seeing your cover story soon.