This blog is a direct response to a question I was asked on LinkedIn original names have been changed to protect the innocent :-)
So what the original question is asking is why aren't my videos getting as much attention as my regular posts .. I mean after all you are telling me they will do even better.
To understand why your stats look lower you have to understand how LinkedIN ( and other platforms like it ) register a VIEW
What is a view ?
A view means that the content, post, article or video was seen.
Posts For posts, this is simply a count of how many times your 1300 characters or less, with or without an image, pops up on someone's home feed. What that means is that the post does not have to have any interest what so ever, it does not have to have been read, stopped on or clicked .. it just needs to be shown and potentially passed by.
So if you are scrolling by with a cup of coffee in your hand at the speed of sound each of those posts are having a plus 1 added to the view even if it's so fast, blink and you miss it.
Some argue that because of that post views are not a great indicator of success of a post, and a reaction is better and comment best .. it means that someone has taken the time to read ands comment, so it's stopped them in their tracks.
Video
For clarity here video means videos shared directly on LinkedIN posts. These are termed native video posts. As opposed to 'external' links to a video on say YouTube. Either way they look the same in the feed.
LinkedIN's algorithm, like all social networks doesn't like external links, so it's better to post native.
For a video view to count it
a) needs to appear in the feed for over 3 sec
b) needs to take up at least 50% of the screen
This means a quick scroll just doesn't count and therefore a video view will almost always be lower than that of a post. That said the video view stat is more useful as it means that the viewer has stopped to look at it for a short while at least.
The jury is out about this next statement but I'll put it here anyway
Some LinkedIN experts say that a video view is worth somewhere in the region to the equivalent of 3x - 5x post views. In other words a video with 300 views is on a par with a post at 15k views.
The real world measure is anything in a few hundred is good over a thousand is fantastic, though of course there are other things at play here such as how many people follow you and maybe the hashtags you use.
Profile Views
This isn't just a vanity metric it means that your content is interesting enough for someone to check you out, see other content, make a connection. This is where the gold lies .. more profile views should add up to more business.
Ultimately if you are posting video and your profile views are climbing it's an indicator that you are grabbing enough attention to be investigated, friended maybe even DMd.
Conclusion
There is no exact science to measuring video, though if you have a company page you can dig into the stats of how long a video was viewed for, determine where people drop off and so forth.
What is absolute though is that matching views of posts against views of video is like matching apples with oranges and will lead to poor results.
My opinion for tracking success of a video
As a really rough indicator take the view number and multiply by 3 at least ..
For a better indicator look at the responses and comments ...these are the people who have committed to watching. You can get some ideas of how long people stayed for by the question they ask.
Check your profile views. If that's climbing, and if that's attracting new people, people you haven't connected with, and video is a part of your strategy then video is working.
If you get a DM request from a genuine lead then it's really working, more so if the request comes from some one you don't know.
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