On this page
Once considered a boring and buttoned-up social media network, LinkedIn has now established itself as the most important place for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and professionals.
With over 675 million monthly users, LinkedIn is now bigger, better, and more active than ever! But with more active users, people also get bombarded with an increasing amount of content. As a result, filtering through all of it and standing out among your followers can be incredibly challenging.
It’s not just enough to create a LinkedIn profile with your career information anymore. It’s not just enough to create a LinkedIn profile with your career information anymore. Now, you have to optimize your LinkedIn profile and be active on LinkedIn to connect with the right professionals and get the right opportunities in your career.
LinkedIn’s newly launched Stories features can be just the thing you need to cut through all the noise and improve personal branding as well as overall brand awareness.
What are LinkedIn Stories?
Here's another one to add to your video marketing strategy!
Stories are short videos of up to 20 seconds that disappear from your profile after 24 hours of going live. It was Snapchat that first came up with this content idea over 5 years ago and since then many other social media platforms have adopted the same content format including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and now – LinkedIn. The relatively short lifespan is what makes Stories more genuine and less marketing oriented. Since Stories are often simple posts aimed directly at their audience, they allow brands and professionals to offer a more authentic window into their business.
Pete Davies, the Senior Director of Product Management thinks that “the format will help kickstart conversations and nurture the relationships that are core to everything that happens on LinkedIn.
The head of marketing solutions UK, Ireland & Israel at LinkedIn, Tom Pepper says that “LinkedIn Stories offer an authentic and visual way for them to do so. We believe Stories can become an integral part of brands’ communication strategies. My advice to any brands looking to experiment with Stories is – just do it! The great thing about Stories is that they don't have to be slick or overproduced – as long as they are authentic and match your brand and audience.”
Are LinkedIn Stories Important for Personal and Employer Branding?
Increase engagement
LinkedIn Stories can provide a significant opportunity to improve engagement. On Instagram, over 25 percent of users swipe up on Stories posted by brands, and when you take the same kind of thought process to a platform like LinkedIn, there is a lot of potential to be explored.
Improve brand awareness
LinkedIn Stories are also a great way to improve brand awareness on the platform and showcase your company’s culture in a more unfiltered manner. LinkedIn’s newly launched Stories features can be just the thing you need to cut through the noise and improve overall brand awareness. You can share stories about your employees, pictures of work desks, interesting projects your team has recently worked on, or your brand’s recent marketing campaign. Focusing on brand awareness on LinkedIn can also help companies attract top talent and it can help professionals find more valuable connections in their network. In addition, using LinkedIn automation tools provides you a faster and more efficient way to empower your business growth and increase lead generation for sales.
A new distribution channel for content
LinkedIn Stories are now a new and extra way of sharing content on the networking site. If you open LinkedIn right now, you might already see a lot of your connections posting Stories. That means, if you are not utilizing this new distribution channel yet, you are essentially losing out on a potential audience.
Get more attention
While your LinkedIn posts can often get buried in other users’ feeds, your LinkedIn Stories will always stay on top of their homepage until they disappear 24 hours later. This in turn allows you to grab more eyeballs and get your content across to more people.
5 Interesting Ways to Use LinkedIn Stories Now
Real-time event updates
From seminars to award ceremonies and big company announcements, sharing video clips from live events can be a great way to create buzz and get people talking. You can also share soundbites of key speakers at the events or sneak peeks of an upcoming event. Remember that timing is very important for your LinkedIn posts.
Corporate Q&A
LinkedIn allows you to add Q/A tags to your Stories, just like Instagram, which can be a great way to directly connect with your followers, share valuable tips, talk about your brand story, and improve your LinkedIn personal branding. You can either answer the submitted questions as text-based Stories or answer them directly by shooting a selfie video.
Brand announcements/ product news
Whether you have an important brand announcement, a pending product launch, or a new job position available at your organization, LinkedIn Stories can help you reach more of your audience. You can also reshare your posts as Stories to increase engagement.
Behind-the-scenes
Apart from sharing the work that you have done, you can also take your followers behind the scenes and show how you have been working all along. The more relatable you are, the more you connect with your audience and the more helpful it is in building genuine connections.
Show your work desk at home, share the apps you use on an everyday basis to manage or work, or post pictures of your pets/ coworkers to give your followers a complete view of your working environment.
Share personal achievements
You can use LinkedIn Stories to share personal achievements, work updates, and any recent accolades you have received. If you have recently been given a new award or promotion at work, you can post selfie videos on LinkedIn Stories to talk about your new career achievement and what it means to you.
How to Post a LinkedIn Story
Before you post your LinkedIn Story, you should know the specifications needed for it.
Resolution: 1080 (w) x 1920 (h) px
Frame: 30 FPS, square pixels
Supported file types: H264, MP4
Aspect Ratio: 9:16
Here is the step by step process to post your first LinkedIn Story:
1. Open the LinkedIn mobile app
2. Tap on your profile picture present on the top left corner of your feed. You should be able to see a plus sign (+) near your profile picture.
3. Create a Story by uploading media from your camera roll or taking a video/ photo directly
4. Add text, filters, hashtags, and stickers to your Story
5. When you're done, hit the ‘Share your Story’ button
6. Once your Story is live, you will be able to see the list of all the users who have viewed your Story. LinkedIn allows you to see the total number of unique viewers for your Story, users’ name, job title, and current company.
Note: You can’t decide who can view your Stories and who can’t. People who can view your LinkedIn posts will also be able to view your Stories. In case you don’t want a particular user to view your Stories, you will have to block them completely from seeing any of your content. You won’t be able to see their content and they won’t be able to see yours either.
Create engaging LinkedIn Stories with Clipchamp
While LinkedIn Stories are great for professionals and small brands to reach out and connect with their followers, LinkedIn still has limited features when it comes to Stories. You can’t add filters, unique fonts, stickers, or color schemes to your videos. There is also no way to cut, trim, or edit the videos you upload on LinkedIn in any way. So how can you make your videos stand out from the crowd?
Make your LinkedIn Stories stand out and create customized videos with the help of a free video editor like Clipchamp.
Clipchamp offers customizable video templates and professional editing features in an easy-to-use interface that makes creating and editing videos as simple as clicking a few buttons. You can directly trim, split, combine, crop, or rotate videos all in Clipchamp. It's also possible to add filters, transitions, backgrounds, and media to your videos to ensure your Stories fit your brand identity.
Ready to create your first LinkedIn Story for Clipchamp? Sign up today.
