LinkedIn Stories

2020 has been, for all concerned, dreadful. It’s been a shocker of a year, which has seen a deadly pandemic, lockdowns, huge political unrest and an overwhelming sense of ‘oh God, what next?’. Well, wonder no more – Linkedin has the answer: Linkedin Stories. As you can gather immediately from the name, this is a very familiar format to what we’ve already seen on other social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.

For those unfamiliar with a Story, it’s a full-screen portrait format which can be either an image or a short-form video, and is utilised to showcase key USPs and brand messages to a company’s desired audience. For those who are familiar with the format, they will be right at home using it on Linkedin, with the Stories banner at the top of the app for users to click into and view, as well as the easy option to create their own stories organically for their profile or business.

A key difference from the story format on other platforms is the max Stories length. On Snapchat it’s 10 seconds and on Facebook/ Instagram it’s 15 seconds, however LinkedIn have gone with a slightly longer 20-second max length, which means companies have more time to showcase their key messages. This is more in line with the length of video we’d recommend for standard newsfeed videos, meaning that there won’t need to be bespoke videos created specifically for the Stories format – just a change in ratio size.

The format is now available across the UK as an organic offering, with businesses able to create and share Stories with their followers through the mobile app. There isn’t any word on a native ad solution at this time, so we’d recommend testing the water with a few organic stories initially to judge the response and sentiment around the format. Hopefully as the new format gains traction Linkedin will explore ways to monetise their own Stories accordingly.

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