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Why you can no longer ignore video for your personal brand

Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 11.40.34 AM

If you are still wondering where the Pulse content went on your personal LinkedIn stream then the answer is here in my recent blog post.  There has been a lot of consternation, comments and complaining as to why LinkedIn has made it so difficult to find this now.

Publishers on the Pulse platform have also noticed and been wondering why their viewing figures disappeared and why engagement overall on Pulse seems to be dropping.

The answer is: It’s August!

Even Gary Vaynerchuk posted a video about the benefits and disadvantages of this month

[youtube id=”wr5ZpFLAS8Q”]

But there seems to be a much more logical answer.

This past week saw the announcement of the roll out of short 30-second video specific content from LinkedIn’s 500 or so Influencers.

As is typical with LinkedIn, rather than use an existing video platform they have developed their own app called Record. The app seems quite well designed and has several features, but I am sure the main reason is to maintain brand consistency and format once they start rolling this out to more people.

Are we going to see a separate Pulse Video Channel? Yes or No, do not hold your breath waiting to get access to this though, it has only just launched and it took quite some time for them to make publishing on Pulse available to all.

This was part of LinkedIn’s announcement on their blog – “When an Influencer you follow posts a video, that video will appear directly in your feed. From there, you can dive in to see what other Influencers have to say about that topic, weigh in with a comment, and respond to comments from other members.

While the ability to create video content is currently only available to Influencers, anyone can follow an Influencer at any time to engage with their content, either from their profile, the feed, or their video.” – There is some worthwhile advice there about raising your credibility and visibility on LinkedIn. you can read the full post by clicking here.

However technically they are not being correct when they say “While the ability to create video content is currently only available to Influencers”.

David Meerman-Scott, author of the excellent book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” popularized the phrase ‘newsjacking’ – which is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story so you and your ideas get noticed.

Well with the launch of LinkedIn video content you could be doing something similar in terms of ‘techjacking’ or ‘featurejacking’

3 Ways to Be Your Own LinkedIn Video Influencer & Boost Your Profile

  1. Follow the Influencers of your choice although for some strange reason, they also are getting harder to find so you need to be more purposefully seeking them and looking out for them in your connections updates.

Once you have started following some influencers watch for their videos appearing in your stream.

If there is a question posed that you can contribute an informative and valuable response to then ‘Like’ the video and add your comment. Watch for any responses so you can continue the discussion and engagement.

This is a screenshot of a question posed by Jeff Weiner – What is your personal vision statement? and in the comments my reaction and his personal reply.

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  1. Rather than only add comments in their feed you could also start your own conversation around the subject. Although LinkedIn are restricting access to the new Record app you could easily do the same as the Influencers with your own phone, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and then post the link in your updates.

    So I did just that with Jeff’s question with this video or click here to watch on You Tube

[youtube id=”7kKc8UTWork”]

  1. If you already have influence and interaction with your own followers ask them what questions they would like answered. Shoot a video of yourself answering that. Post it to your updates and then invite people to shoot their own video responses to the question.

So I plan to do that too

As an unknown commenter said “Visual is the new headline” so if you are looking to engage on LinkedIn as with many other networks, video is going to get more reaction than plain text and its going to be something that you literally will not be able to ignore.

Start practicing – or better yet start filming!!

This article was a bonus to a 3 part series of posts “How to Hog the LinkedIn Limelight” in reaction to this breaking news about publishing on LinkedIn.

Read:

“How to Hog the LinkedIn Limelight – Part 1 – 7 Visual Media to Use”

“How to Hog the LinkedIn Limelight – Part 2 – 5 Profiles Spots to Stand Out”

“How to Hog the LinkedIn Limelight – Part 3 – 6 Easy Ways to Publish Fast”

 

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