LinkedIn stories are here to stay.
And, we couldn’t be more excited!
They’re fun, casual, and a great feature that you can use to leverage your brand.
In this guide, let’s explore how you can use LinkedIn stories to engage with prospects, create branded campaigns, and leverage them for maximum conversions.
Let’s dive right in!
What are LinkedIn Stories?
LinkedIn stories is a fairly new feature that was rolled out just last year.
And, it’s only available on the LinkedIn mobile app.
They resemble Instagram and Facebook stories, Twitter Fleets, or, who could forget the people who started it all, Snapchat Snaps.
Just like their counterparts on other platforms, you can post a graphic, photo, video, or a piece of text for 24 hours after which they disappear.
On LinkedIn the maximum length of a LinkedIn story is 20 seconds, so you can pretty much shoot a quick promotional clip or a behind-the-scenes video for your followers.
Here’s what.
The reason stories – on all platforms – have gained so much popularity is that they provide a quick glimpse into the lives of people, no matter how popular or professional they are.
This makes story posters more accessible, personal, and, more importantly, more human.
In turn, it also breaks the barrier between you and your followers, making you more approachable.
Stories are also easier to digest than traditional forms of content and it’s easy to get lost in them. In the social media space, it’s a battle to keep as many eyeballs hooked to the platform at any given time.
Here’s another feature of LinkedIn stories.
You don’t need to post stories yourself as you can get your page to post for you as well.
What Can You Do With LinkedIn Stories and How Does it Work?
There are two main types of media that you can post on LinkedIn stories, these can either be photos or videos.
Now, there’s an option for you to post live or access saved items from your mobile device.
You can make quick edits, type in text and add stickers to create your own flair. We won’t go through each of these edits because we’re sure they’ll be modified from time to time.
Once you post a story, it will be available to your followers for 24 hours.
However, you can’t edit anything that you put out via the feature.
If you need to do perform any edits, you’ll have to take down your post by deleting and reposting your story again with the edits.
It sounds like a hassle, but it seems as if it’s the trend across different platforms.
Can I Add Links to My LinkedIn Stories?
The short answer is, yes, you can.
It’s called the swipe up feature, and they can access your links by swiping up.
However, there is a catch.
First of all, you need to have at least 5,000 followers, and you need to have the follow button on your profile.
To find out how you can add a follow button on your profile instead of the usual “connect”, check out this guide!
If you can’t meet those criteria on your personal profile, you can alternatively use LinkedIn instead which has the feature on by default.
Naturally, LinkedIn wants to minimize the number of people spamming links on their platform, hence the rule.
This also means that having the option to add a link via swipe up on stories means that you’re on the way to becoming an influencer.
Who Can View My LinkedIn Stories?
Your stories are open to your followers and connections.
LinkedIn will also tell you who’s viewed your story, however, this is still dependent on the privacy settings of viewers.
As for sharing other people’s stories, you can only do so via LinkedIn messaging.
Make sure you connect with these people!
As for sharing other people’s stories, you can only do so via LinkedIn messaging.
LinkedIn Stories Guidelines and Specifications
Since you can only post stories from the LinkedIn mobile app, it does come with its own set of rules.
So, if you have specially made videos, make sure you format them properly before you send them over to your phone for posting.
According to LinkedIn, here are their technical specifications.
Specs for Videos
Resolution: 1080 (w) x 1920 (h) px
Frame: 30 FPS, square pixels
Supported file types: H264, MP4
Aspect Ratio: 9:16
Specs for Images
Resolution: 1080 (w) x 1920 (h) px,
Supported file type: PNG, JPG
Aspect Ratio: 9:16
LinkedIn Help
As usual, stick with LinkedIn community guidelines. Don’t post stuff that’s “evil”, not only will LinkedIn take down your story, but you could also end up getting banned.
What Types of LinkedIn Stories Work?
Behind the Scenes
The strongest appeal of stories is the ability to show another side of your professional life.
It makes you relatable.
You can truly connect with your audience and show them that you are human just like them.
Behind the scenes stories, are also a great form of storytelling because they can show prospects how a product is made, or give them another glimpse of what your organization does on a daily basis.
Here are a couple of things that you can show using behind scenes-type stories:
- Company or facility tour – since stories are only limited to 20 seconds per video, you can showcase each stage of your production process as quickly as possible and maybe set up a series that goes on for a week.
- Candid company culture – take a video of what it’s like to work in your office and show off a little bit of your company culture.
- Excerpts from ongoing work – think of quick videos during a meeting or presentation to give people a glimpse of exciting things to come.
- Virtual meet and greet – you can introduce other people in your organization via these types of post and tell your audience why they mean so much to your organization.
But, here’s what.
You can’t be overly casual.
Although it might be tempting to address your followers in your sweatpants – unless that’s your startup’s vibe – I strongly advise that you don’t.
LinkedIn is still a professional platform. So, keep it business casual.
You don’t want to put people off with your stories.
As a quick guide, stick with this rule.
Post behind-the-scenes stories that you would be comfortable sharing with your business friends.
Q&A
Question and answer sessions are the bomb!
Why?
Because people are naturally inquisitive.
They always want to know what you’re up to or how you would react to a particular situation.
If you’re going to be posting regularly, make sure you pepper in a lot of Q&A posts in your strategy.
Another thing that we love the most about Q&A sessions in stories is the way they establish your role as an influencer.
Industry leaders and influencers answer questions, and in doing so you can give value to your audience.
Get a couple of questions ready and launch an AMA. You see “Ask Me Anything” sessions allow you to engage with your audience and help a lot with bringing in engagement.
LinkedIn also encourages has a feature called “Question of the day”.
The way it works is simple, you can access it through the stickers dropdown and you can post your answer on your stories feed.
However, there is a catch with all of this, you can’t create your own questions to answer with this feature. But, you can answer questions from other people.
Showcasing Other People
Stories are also a chance for you to showcase other people.
You can talk about your favorite client or organization and how they stood the test of time, get a hardworking teammate and tell your audience how they’ve helped change the company or even other influencers that you’ve interacted with.
By highlighting the lives of other people, you not only get to form more meaningful connections with them, but it also shows your audience the appreciation and gratitude that you have for other people.
However, don’t do it for the sake of doing it.
People know when you’re faking it, and they can smell it from a mile away.
Only do it if you’re genuine about your feelings.
Educational Stories
Whether it’s quick facts that you want to share or a growth hack. Educational stories are great because you can give your audience value in a quick and engaging manner.
Another great thing about stories is the fact that LinkedIn is a professional network with an audience that is focused on improving their connections and their own skills.
This makes educational stories naturally appealing to the LinkedIn crowd.
Here are a couple of ideas you can play around with:
- Quick tips
- Short how-to videos
- Quotes from other industry leaders
- Product tutorials
- Excerpts from speeches or seminars
Teaser Videos
If you’ve got a new product announcement, or webinar coming up, LinkedIn stories make for a great platform to post teaser videos on.
Since the maximum length of videos on LinkedIn is 20 seconds, that’s enough for you to tease your audience.
The main aim of a teaser video is not to convert but to pre-market to your followers.
Say you have a full-on trailer for your product, aim to create a teaser of that trailer to post on stories.
Storytelling
We already discussed that there’s a 20-second limit to video posts on LinkedIn, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t create short storytelling campaigns.
You can talk about a new product in a series of image posts or even create short video clips that deal with a particular project you and your team are currently working on.
We’ve seen a lot of organizations do this on Facebook and Instagram, so you can basically port the formula over to LinkedIn.
If you’re confident enough, you can also create monologues where you directly talk to your followers and encourage them to engage with you.
Announcements
If you’re going to put out an announcement on LinkedIn via a regular post, consider posting a story as well.
The announcement will help you increase your announcement’s surface area in case someone misses it on their feed.
If it’s a product announcement, make sure you take into account the principles of storytelling and spread out the announcement into a series of stories using graphics and CTAs.
You can also use video, where you can narrate what the announcement is and invite people to take action.
Takeaways
LinkedIn stories are effective because of two main reasons:
- They’re short and easy to digest
- And, they’re humanizing
These two main traits allow you to properly connect with your audience without taking too much of their time.
What we love the most about them is the number of things that you can do with them creatively.
They might not be lead magnets like engineered viral posts, but they can do you wonders in increasing engagement and showing people another side of your organization.
But, here’s what.
Don’t try too hard with your stories.
You want them to complement the campaigns that you are currently running and not use them exclusively.
Growth hacking on LinkedIn still involves you exploring a multidimensional approach to getting things done.
Think of them as a powerful add-on to your strategy.
So, start posting today!
