LinkedIn’s Videos Just Got Way More Animated (Here’s what it means to marketers)

The year 2018 has been the year of video for LinkedIn. The business social network finally caught up to the video-first trend at all the other major social networks. While they still don’t have a live video feature, LinkedIn has rolled out an impressive suite of features for individuals and brands to market themselves throughout the year.

Brands now have the ability to do video advertising with sponsored video posts on their company pages. Individuals can record and upload native videos to their personal pages.

It’s safe to say that the response from users to video content on LinkedIn has exceeded all expectations. LinkedIn’s data shows that video content is hands down the most popular on the platform. In fact, video content is shared 20x more often than other types of content on LinkedIn and users spend almost three times more time viewing video ads compared to time spent engaging with all other types of ads.

Today, LinkedIn announced a strategic partnership that shows the platform will be continuing to be video-centric in 2019 and beyond. LinkedIn is releasing six video templates to create video content using an online video creator, Animoto.

The integration between LinkedIn and Animoto will make it easier for marketers to create thought leadership videos, videos ads, and product videos using the built-in storyboards. No matter what your brand is passionate about, you will now be able to create and customize powerful videos in minutes to fit your business. LinkedIn’s research indicates that 80% of LinkedIn’s videos are watched with sound off (presumably due to people watching in an office setting). Marketers will now be able to add text to their videos quickly and efficiently.

The six templates offer the everyday marketer the power of making professional videos without putting a significant dent in their marketing budget or sucking up hours of time out of their week.

Check out the example video I created and shared to LinkedIn. I used a 45-second video as a video preview for a blog post I wrote last week and used a call to action letting viewers of the video know that they can read the entire post by clicking on the link.

After checking my web analytics, I can see a nice spike in traffic coming in from LinkedIn to my blog.

The power of video marketing on LinkedIn is evident. Marketers have taken advantage of the new feature in 2018 to roll out smart promotions aimed at making a human connection with their audience. With integrations such as this one with Animoto, LinkedIn is showing all signs that it will be doubling down on its suite of video features.

If your company is looking for a way to up your LinkedIn game in 2019, I highly recommend you take a long hard look at using these new video features.

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