Allen Gannett Shares His Secrets to Racking Up Millions of LinkedIn Video Views #CMWorld

And with that, Allen was in. To capture your audience’s interest, create videos about topics that are at the same time novel and familiar. You want to provoke those #video comments, so people get in there and have a conversation, then #LinkedIn starts sending them more of your content. @Allen #CMWorld Click To Tweet In addition, these sharing tactics have helped Allen drive the tremendous traction of his LinkedIn video series: Post From Personal Accounts One might be compelled to post B2B videos from a Company Page, but such updates inherently get less reach than those coming from a personal profile. “The reality is that if someone’s going and liking your content within the first five minutes, they probably want to be your LinkedIn friend.” Don’t Post Too Frequently LinkedIn’s feed only displays one piece of content from a creator at a time, so make sure to space yours out. Post When LinkedIn is Less Busy You’ll have a harder time appearing on feeds if you’re posting at the same time as everyone else. Allen has found that the LinkedIn algorithm can ding you for posting too much of the same content type, so be sure to mix in images and text-based posts as well. Since people are often viewing at work, it’s all the more likely they’ll be doing so with the sound turned off. Allen offers up a few options for adding subtitles to your video content: Use an online service like Rev (costs only $1/minute) Use YouTube’s auto-caption tool Don’t Wait to Get Rolling Allen’s parting advice came with an especially strong emphasis: Don’t hold off on applying these recommendations and putting your LinkedIn video strategy into motion. Thanks, Allen!

Author: Nick Nelson / Source: Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®

This statistic, via HubSpot, conveys all you need to know about the opportunity that LinkedIn video presents: Only 38% of marketers are sharing video content on the platform, even though three-quarters rate it as a successful tactic.

TrackMaven CEO Allen Gannett is a prime example of what success looks like with this relatively nascent feature. The name of his session at Content Marketing World, “How To: 0 To 1 Million LinkedIn Video Views in 6 Months,” understates achievement, as his videos have now amassed around 3.5 million views – all organic.

Fortunately, Allen delivered on the “How To” part, serving up a bounty of practical tips that marketers can apply right now.

Any time you see a new platform emerge, there’s usually a lot of opportunity very early on. – @Allen on #LinkedIn video at #CMWorld Click To Tweet

It Began with a Dream

As LinkedIn was gearing up to unveil its in-stream video functionality last year, Allen posted on his personal page about a (fairly weird) dream he’d experienced the previous night:

As it happened, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner took notice of the post.

And with that, Allen was in. He’s spent the last 14 months or so building his #AllenAsks series into a big hit. Each video features very brief interviews that he’s conducted with fellow executives and prominent thought leaders. And he’s experienced very real business benefits including: Direct awareness and leads for his company, social proof for prospects, authentic recruitment of talent, speaking invites for him, and free promotion for his new book The Creative Curve.

In his CMWorld session on Wednesday, Allen shared the inside scoop on his formula.

Understanding the LinkedIn Algorithm

The inner workings of LinkedIn’s feed algorithm can seem mysterious, but you may not be aware (I wasn’t) that the company shares details about it quite openly. By perusing this post on the LinkedIn Engineering Blog, you can learn a great deal about how and why certain posts are prioritized on user feeds.

The LinkedIn algorithm evaluates content on these factors, among others:

How many times was it viewed?
How many times was it liked?
What is the update about?
How old is it?
What language is it written in?
What companies, people, or topics are mentioned?
What have you, as an individual, liked or shared in the past?
Who do you interact with most frequently?

These influences are important to understand, but obviously they’re not secrets, and are largely intuitive. The real meat of this presentation came from Allen’s own personal findings.