Unarguably, the video industry has been attracting us since its beginnings. From babies to elders, everyone is attracted by the moving images. It's the most common way of consuming information in the era we're living in. As a feature for mobile apps, or software projects in general, implementing a video service is not the biggest breakthrough a company could achieve. But people enjoy videos so much, that no matter where implemented, the video service has always proven that it brings more excitement to the table, engaging the viewers in new ways, involving more senses than written text.
LinkedIn are changing the way we are consuming the information, adopting a more engaging way of delivering that information to their audience. The video feature has been made available only for the LinkedIn Influencers, who have been addressed questions and they are answering them in short, no longer than 30 seconds videos. If you are following an Influencer, his recorded videos will automatically be displayed on your feed, where you can post your comments and read what others say about that video.
It looks like the LinkedIn guys are seeing the benefits of having a video service, but they are making rather small steps in implementing the video service to their business platform. It's not like we haven't seen videos on LinkedIn, but those videos were hosted on different platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, or even on social media like Facebook.
The guys who sell on LinkedIn or who at least prospect, spend a great amount of time on their platform. I remember like 5 years ago, I was spending about 30 minutes per week on LinkedIn and now I'm investing at least one hour per day. I do my work on LinkedIn, I'm actually using the service as it was meant to be used. I'm networking, commenting, reading interesting stuff, see what's trending in my targeted industries and not the least, I'm connecting to people with the targeted job titles and interests and I'm trying to raise awareness towards the Webdilio brand. I could very easily add videos to my LinkedIn routine, it's interesting to watch short videos from my followed influencers on a platform I'm spending so much time on.
The fact that LinkedIn have implemented the video service only to influencers is to educate their users on the quality they are expecting, to set the standards and best practices. It's like they're saying - this is how we want our videos to look like, watch and learn!
If they would have added the video functionality to all users, the overall quality of the posted videos would have dropped big time. More than five hundred influencers are enough to have different opinions on trending topics, to present their points of view and to generate enough valuable content, growing their personal brands and the overall quality of the LinkedIn networking platform.
It's a good thing LinkedIn haven't implemented the video feature to all users yet. I'm not saying I wouldn't love to use the new feature; I'm quite fond of the Q&A system used, it helps you to be structured and say interesting stuff, as you only have 30 seconds to do it. But if you really want to use video on LinkedIn, there's always the old way - you can use other platforms to record 30 seconds style videos and link them on LinkedIn afterwards.