Social media websites brought native video into the equation less than a decade ago, after observing the way users kept migrating towards areas featuring video content, such as YouTube or Vimeo. Vines (short-videos) assaulted the market in 2012. Facebook added timeline videos in 2013, after tying knots with Skype two years earlier for video chat.

It was therefore, only a matter of time until LinkedIn, the business social-network bringing companies and potential employees together, would embrace video content. Although professional by its very nature, LinkedIn partially failed at creating a real bond between people.

Some of the major issues:

• Broken communication between companies and employees
• Companies’ rigid, unreachable appearance
• Individuals’ lack of good projects
• General disinterest towards the brands
• Low advertisement potential

Due to the situation, a change had to be made and fast.

“We’ve seen countless examples of how conversations help [LinkedIn] members get ahead in their careers”, Pete Davies, LinkedIn’s Director explained at the video release. “This is why we continue to invest in new ways for you to discover great content and contribute to the conversations that matter most to you”.

Thanks for being so thoughtful, Pete!

As expected, once the feature was implemented, users improved their job hunting and enhanced their brand. Native video proved to be really helpful, to both companies and future employees.

This is how you can use LinkedIn videos to increase efficiency:

If you’re a company:

Make LinkedIn Videos Your Brand’s Ally

By uploading a short video on LinkedIn, companies can prove their branding and also their engagement with potential collaborators.

By watching a short video about your activity – whether it’s an advertisement or a clip featuring co-workers – the interest towards your brand would increase and you become more approachable.

Advertise Your Services and Products

Videos are great for attracting customers. There’s probably a reason why they make video commercials and not picture commercials on TV! Instead of listing your services and your products in your profile, sharing them in your network, paying for premium tools to boost your sales and silently praying for someone to contact you, you can just periodically publish a video. It gets attention and saves money.

If you’re an individual:

Come Up With Amazing Visual Resumes

The era of .pdf’s and .doc’s resumes is long gone. But who is to say that they’re not effective anymore? If you’re one of those people who has enlisted the help of somewhere like this resume service Georgia to spice up your resume to ensure that it stands out amongst the rest, it can still be a benefit. This is because there are still many businesses that accept the old-fashioned ways of doing things. However, if you wanted to do something different, there is also a recent generation of people using their creativity to come up with some of the most ingenious ideas of CV’s – from slide presentation resumes to web portfolios. Innovative? For sure. Up-to-date? Not so much. Video CV’s are actually a big thing right now. They’re catchy, easily shared and you have 50% more chances to convince the employers to hit the play button and have a look at your skills and experience (the video itself proves already you have skills).

Keep Track of Your Projects

If you’re currently working on a project, you may find yourself in the situation of wanting to share your progress. It’s totally normal – we’re humans in search of general validation. On a serious note, sharing a video, once in a while, with your project progress allows people to give you feedback, contribute ideas and become more enthusiastic about the project.

Here are some tricks to make your LinkedIn videos better:

• Keep videos short and interactive
• Focus on delivering an honest “performance”
• Don’t turn videos into spam
• Use real, relevant and up-to-date information
• Feature facts that users can relate to
• Keep them short- up to 60 seconds is great
• Share them out from LinkedIn to attract more views
• Make sure you know the basics of video-editing (otherwise, outsource)

How do you use Linkedin videos? Comment below and share your thoughts.

Charlotte is a British writer and content marketing thought leader specialising in dynamic branding, social media marketing and content engagement. Responsible for a number of high profile brands and with 1000 + articles published, her success lies within her originality, humour and hands on experience of the digital marketing world. Charli lives by the Mediterranean and loves Starbucks, popcorn flavoured jellybeans and writing poetry.

Owner of www.charlisays.com and director at www.contentworks.agency