2023 👉 The year of VIDEO on LinkedIn 🐯

Before I was a social nerd I was a video nerd!

Yep I love movies and been obsessed with stories since before I could crawl!

It’s no wonder I fell into video somehow.

25 years man and boy I’ve been making them and I’ve picked up a few things along the way.

One seismic shift we have seen happen in the internet age though is the WAY media is consumed. Old school media never stood a chance. I had to relearn a lot of what I knew and thought about video in a very short space of time.

I predict 2023 for LinkedIn will be the year of video!

Todays generation want it all day, 24/7 firehose content 🔥

Which means you're fighting for attention in a crowded marketplace. 

This requires a mindset shift in not only HOW people consume but how you should be delivering for this new form of consumption.

In the era of YouTube video is data driven.

No longer does it require guesswork and no longer should you be creating content YOU think is good or that you think your audience WANT to see.

That’s not good enough anymore.

Now you have to ask them, refine, test and deliver what they ACTUALLY want.

Things like dwell time (how long a user stays on a video after it’s played) 

Audience retention (when people get bored of your content)

Rewatches (what certain parts of a video your audience rewatches)

Unique views (estimated number of individuals who watch your videos over a certain period of time).

All create data sets that are invaluable to us content creators.

But what happens when we don't have access to this data? 

(PS DEAR LINKEDIN)

Please, please, please for the love of all that’s holy Linkedin when are we going to get these on video content on the platform? Your biggest fan. Nick.

Since we don't have access to these tools there are some basics we can cover which will let us side step these to a degree!

The two biggies are ATTENTION and RETENTION

ATTENTION

How do we get eyeballs interacting with our content in the first place?

Copy Hooks 🪝

The hook - don’t think about just the hook with your video think about the copy that’s enticing people to look as well! This is bigger picture thinking.

The copy is JUST as important as the content in the video.

Thumbnails 👍

I’ll say it time and again, thumbnails are one of the easiest ways to grab attention, they don't take long to make (knock one up in canva, for most content in the feed I recommend vertical video so 1080x1920 for LinkedIn). Try and use faces and supporting text, then when you're ready upload them through desktop.

Here are some ideas to get your started.

And this is how you upload it! 👇

The VIDEO hook 🎥🪝

Those first 3 seconds are crucial to making sure your viewer WANTS to see what’s coming next.

How do we do that? Create a little curiosity.

Curiosity moves you from an ADULT STATE (where we know everything) to a CHILD STATE (where we know nothing) back to an ADULT STATE (where we know everything). 

The longer we can keep our audience in the curiosity zone the better, but we also need payoff. Just throwing up more conundrums for them with no payoff is a recipe for disaster.

So an example hook could be these are my top three tips for video and we could show them on screen as supporting text.

The first one could be the words use a good hook and the other two could be blurred out. This would create enough tension and intrigue to entice the viewer to continue watching.

RETENTION

Okay now you've got your audience watching how do we KEEP them watching till the end? Hmmmm.

Show don’t tell 👁️

Video is a visual medium right?

So show people what you mean (or at least support that you're saying with visuals) it's much easier for the human brain to process.

Showing rather than telling is the ideal way to make it more engaging to your audience. Instead of listing features or telling your readers what to think or do, showing helps plant the idea in your reader's head through description or visuals.

An old trick of Alfred Hitchcocks was simple, the more important something was in the scene the bigger it would be in the frame!

Curiosity 🐈

Yep this one again, little hints of curiosity and pay offs down the line keep our audience invested.

Story 📖

Where are you taking them? What’s the pay off, how do you want your audience to change once they have watched the content? 

Is is part of a series? How does one episode lead onto the next?

Emotion 😭

Make your audience feel something, whats the genre? Is it a comedy, romance or horror (what feeling do you want to convey in the content). In the internet age genre mashups work really well as well.

Are you trying to entertain, educate or inform? Why not try edutainment? Educate people and share knowledge but do it in an entertaining way (my secret sauce).

Humour is great and can help humanise your brand even more. It levels the playing field and gets people feeling young again.

Editing ✂️

All of these things above are controlled in the edit. It's time to learn or let someone else who’s skill set it is to handle this stuff. Learning to edit will enable you to to understand how story is constructed at the back end so that when you come to shoot the story is already fully formed.

It sounds counterintuitive but I would encourage anyone that wants to create good video content to understand how editing works. It will make you a better creator. It’s exactly how I learnt. I started as an editor then moved up to a camera op, then director and producer.

Things like 

L and J cuts

An L Cut is when the audio from clip 1 carries onto clip 2, even though the video from clip 1 has finished. This means that while you can no longer see what’s happening in clip 1, you can still hear it in clip 2.

A J Cut plays clip 2’s audio over clip 1, before clip 2 has even come on screen. This means you hear what’s happening in clip 2 before you see it.

Jump cuts - A cut that completely jumps to a new scene (useful as a pattern interrupt to keep people guessing what will happen next)

Match on action - A match on action cut (also referred to as cutting on action) is a type of film transition that cuts from one shot to a closer shot in order to emphasize an action. Match on action cuts are used by filmmakers to generate seamless flow in editing. Match on action cuts are also an important part of continuity editing.

Cut-ins: Cut-ins emphasize a particular part of a scene, offering a close-up or detailed view of a specific point-of-focus. Cut-ins can enhance the mood or understanding of a moment, and add to the smoothness and continuity of the scene.

Montage: Is a series of short shots or clips into one sequence, often set to music. Montage sequences often imply the passage of time or multiple simultaneous events, and are a vehicle to present the audience with a lot of information at once.

The cutaway: A cutaway shot inserts another scene into the existing continuous cut, occasionally cutting back to the original scene afterward. Cutaways allow the viewer to see what is happening outside of the current scene

Think about how all of these things help support the story you're trying to tell. Think of them all as distinct ingredients and you have to get the balance right between them all to create the perfect cake (mmmm, cake).

If you want to learn, I recommend diving into cap cut! 

Hope that little peek behind the video curtain has been enlightening kids!

See you next week for more electric dreams!

And remember kids, to be a good creator you need to be a good consumer. Watch as MUCH video as your eyeballs can stand and you’ll begin to see the story code behind the matrix!

Now GO CREATE! 🤘