Hey everyone I want to talk for a few minutes about making native videos for LinkedIn.
Why would you want to make a native video for LinkedIn? Well in my opinion I think these are really good for establishing a professional brand and letting people know just a little more about you, and kind of what makes you tick as a person. You can reveal more of your personality on video. So I’ve been using videos on my smartphone, recording videos on my smartphone on the fly and trying to create more video content since LinkedIn made this capability available.
1 – Choose Your Topic
Regarding your topic, give your topic a little bit of thought ahead of time. I like to keep a little notebook and write down ideas for different topics for different videos I want to make. Some of it involves content work that I’m doing from my company, Experian. But there could be other ideas like I’m doing today in these Social Tactics videos, sharing your knowledge of a particular field of expertise. So give some thought to your topic. Make sure it’s educational and helpful, and is not a salesy video. The worst kinds of videos I’ve seen on LinkedIn are the ones where you are just doing a pure product pitch. You want to try to avoid that.
2 – Keep It Short
Keep it short – videos that are less than three minutes work best. I actually like to do a 1 minute video and I can share that content on Linked In of course. But you can also do up to 1 minute on Instagram. 220 seconds I think it’s like 2 minutes on Twitter as well. So if you keep your videos short you’ll find that you can repurpose them on different platforms.
3 – Hold The Camera Still
Hold the camera still. That’s probably the biggest rule of thumb that you’re going to want to follow. I’ve got my little camera mount here. This is a little Joby tripod that I can set up. I can keep the camera perfectly still just by having it on a small tripod if I want. Or I could just hold it up.
4 – Keep at Eye Level
But the key is to make sure that it is kept at eye level. You don’t want to be that guy that’s peering down into the into the camera and looking down on your audience because it just really looks ominous if you do that. So try and make sure that you’ve got that smartphone held up, and also, if you have got a little bit of that chin fat, well that tends to disappear the higher up you hold the camera. I’m not sure if you realize that there is a trick to that.
5 – Use Natural Light
Lighting too – try and make use of good natural light. I’m actually standing next to a nice window here. If I wanted more natural light I could just open the window and film myself in front of the window. But you never want to be that guy that’s filming himself against the window with the window open behind you. That can actually give the appearance of a silhouette.
So, natural lighting. A good topic. Keep it short and helpful but also just reveal your personality. The world wants to know who you are. And keep making videos. That’s really the secret. There are people on LinkedIn like Keenan, and Alexander Low, and Mark Williams, lot of folks that create a lot of video content. They do it on a daily basis. The more you do it the more people get to know you and the more opportunities are going to open up. So don’t be afraid to push record.
