This week I’m sharing with you the results of a little video experiment I’ve been doing. I have written recently about using video to be more human at scale, and how video was being favored in social media algorithms. Over the last five weeks I have been doing a Facebook live video on Friday’s to tell about the content that would be coming out in the weekend newsletter. The videos were then posted as LinkedIn native video on that channel. Later in the week, I have posted the content to my blog and continued to promote it with both the video and posts on both platforms. Since Facebook organic reach has gone down dramatically, even impacting the reach of live video, I was curious to see how it would hold up to the organic reach on LinkedIn.
The results were pretty impressive for LinkedIn, so much so that I will continue to make this a major part of my strategy going forward. Here’s what I discovered.
Organic reach is higher. Organic reach for video views was 4 – 6 times more on LinkedIn compared to Facebook. Two of the weekly videos were seen by almost half of all my LinkedIn connections.
More interactions. There were 2 – 3 times more interactions (likes, comments, shares) on LinkedIn compared to Facebook. And those interactions were either thoughtful comments or shares in addition to likes. Overall the quality of interactions was stronger.
The content reached decision makers. The quality of those views on LinkedIn was impressive. I was able to view basic profile info (company, industry) where those views came from. Since I have built my 750+ LinkedIn connections as quality senior contacts that I for the most part personally know, the video is reaching decision makers and those that could either hire or refer.
Video reach continues to grow. Organic views seem to continue to grow for several weeks on LinkedIn, rather than dropping off as they do on Facebook.
Video drove business. I have closed one large contract that was the direct result of a contact on LinkedIn being in touch after viewing a video. The video had served as a reminder about what I do that prompted further discussions. There were also two other smaller consulting meetings that were a direct result of interactions we had had on LinkedIn related to one of the videos.
Videos drove website traffic and newsletter sign up. Placing links in posts apparently can decrease organic reach, but placing them in comments limits the impact. I was able to track on the back end with Google analytics, traffic which had gone to my website directly from a video post as well as an increase in newsletter sign ups. The traffic was also quality traffic, since the time spent and pages viewed was impressive for LinkedIn origin traffic.
These observations are anecdotal at best, but it’s interesting tracking, and the results over five weeks are consistent enough to convince me of the value to continue playing in the LinkedIn native video space. Currently native video is only available on personal accounts rather then LinkedIn pages, so there is no ability to buy and promote to audiences there. And it’s recorded video, not live. (Which is actually a relief to some, since you can get a practice run or edit something). But so far I’ve just been re-purposing my saved Facebook Live video over there. It’s not slick, but the “being human at scale” approach seems to resonate. Depending on how you have built your LinkedIn contacts, and the type of business and service you offer, LinkedIn native could be a great positioning tool. I’d love to hear if you’ve used it and what your experience has been!