Today’s top candidates are social. Many of them are scrolling through social media feeds to see what their friends are doing. Take the opportunity to share compelling native videos to draw them into you and your company.

What LinkedIn’s Native Video Means for You

Native video impacts our ability to position ourselves and our company because the content appears on the LinkedIn home feed of users – many of whom are part of our extended network after likes, comments, and shares. It is realistic to expect that many of your 2^nd and 3^rd level connections will view the videos that you post.

Instead of relying on visitors to your career sites, the native video takes your employer branding to the home feed on LinkedIn.

Additionally, video content will appear on your personal activity center which links to your profile. This is a nice addition to the rich media we have been able to post on our profiles for the last three to four years. The native video can be up to 10 minutes in length and is being rolled out now on mobile first.

Here are the basics on how to find, activate, position, recruit/ brand and measure your results with LinkedIn’s native video:

Find:

Find a small video icon – on your mobile device – right next to the status box where it shows: “Share an article, photo, video or idea.”

Activate:

• Select Video icon
• Choose from 2 options: A. Shoot a video from this app or B. Select a video to upload from your phone into LinkedIn.
• Add a text description with any appropriate #hashtags or @mentions

Your video will automatically play in the news feed without the sound as users scroll down.  The users need to switch the audio on for the sound.

Position:

Always add a text description so the viewers can decide whether to click on the audio segment. Consider adding a hashtag and mentioning people who are either in the video or interested parties. Be careful though because some people do not want to be tagged, so be sensitive when deploying this strategy.

Recruit/ Brand:

Use native video to capture the attention of candidates that are browsing LinkedIn. Consider these ideas for videos:

• Employee “Day in the Life.”
• Office “walk through” – Experience the Culture
• Career Events, presentations or fairs
• Community or volunteering activities involving employees
• Projects with employee testimonials or statements
• Intern or Departmental events

 Just as with all videos or images, always be sure to gain appropriate approvals before posting.

Analyze:

LinkedIn will show you the number of views of your video, which is the total of people who watched it for 3 seconds or more.  LinkedIn will display where your viewers work and their level of seniority.  You will see the impact of views in your network (1^st, 2^nd level for example)

The new native video is a great opportunity for all LinkedIn users. The rollout started about three weeks ago and is coming your way soon if you don’t already have it.  How do you plan to use native video for your recruiting and employer branding?