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Hi Community members,

 

In one of my first posts, I wrote extensively about the different types of thought leadership and why sellers should also be thought leaders. If you need a refresher on why you and your organization should have a Thought Leadership strategy, check out this presentation. To expand upon that, in today’s post, let’s explore the various forms of media that can be used for Thought Leadership content.

 

According to a survey conducted by Wyzowl in 2019, here is a breakdown of how 613 unique consumers wanted to learn about a new product in a B2B setting:

 

 

(Source: Finances Online)

 

As you can see, more than two-thirds of those surveyed prefer learning about a new product through video. The survey also noted that 94% of video marketers say that video has helped increase user understanding of their product/service. Furthermore, 51% of video marketers have used LinkedIn video as a medium and 84% of them have found it successful. 

 

What Makes Videos so Popular Today?

You’ve heard of the saying that a photo is worth a thousand words. Now, imagine what a video (even 10-seconds) can do! Because videos engage both our visual and auditory senses, they may be able to deliver the message across more effectively or in a more captivating way. Additionally, since many people are used to seeing still images while browsing the Internet or social media, a motion picture will be able to grab their attention and potentially keep them engaged longer.

 

Nowadays, the main type of video that businesses produce for video marketing is instruction-video, which is a short video explaining their products or services. For example, here is a 4-minute micro-learning video on Smart Links created by @Stephanie Pellegrino​, who used to be on our Customer Education team.

Smart Links microlearning 

 

Besides these common educational videos, there are also video interviews, tutorials, product reviews, live streams, vlogs, and more. It is no doubt that video has become both more widely consumed and more frequently used by marketers, content creators, and thought leaders.

 

Other Forms of Media

While video and video marketing may be the latest trend in media consumption, here are other forms of thought leadership content that we engage and interact with today:

  • Digital print, i.e. an article, a blog post, or the digital version of a publication
  • Webinar, live or recorded (on-demand)
  • Infographic: multiple charts and graphs in one image, usually presenting statistics or explaining something
  • Social media: any post or story shared on the company’s social network pages
  • Podcast: usually a series of episodes that feature guests on a particular topic important to the company
    • Example: LinkedIn’s “Hello Mondays” hosted by Jessi Hempel on our rapidly changing work lives
  • Interviews: video or audio recording or just the transcript/log
  • Live video: broadcasting live to your audience through a preferred platform (LinkedIn Live is one option)
  • Events, live or hosted virtually in today’s increasingly remote environment
    • Example: Our upcoming Community Live Sessions on building a successful Virtual Selling Program and best practices for our end-users
  • Physical print, i.e. the newspaper
  • Broadcast TV, live or streamed online

 

Some Food for Thought

Now that we’ve gone through the most popular forms of media used in thought leadership today, here are seven examples of powerful thought leadership that we’ve seen on LinkedIn. Additionally, the World Economic Forum made several infographics on how Covid-19 has impacted media consumption across four different age groups in the last few months based on a report by the Global Web Index. Both links provide great information and insights on how other businesses have developed their thought leadership strategy as well as how your audience is consuming media today.

 

What do you think? Has your organization adopted a video marketing strategy? Do you agree that video marketing is the new way to drive new business today? I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and any best practices you may have around creating video content and video marketing as well!

 

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Eva C. 

@Eva Chen​ this is great information! I am going to utilize the poll feature in LinkedIn to get the pulse of my connections. I will tag you so you can see.

I'm so glad you found these to be useful, @Tamika B​! I myself learned so much from curating this post and will definitely be revisiting it in the future to refresh myself or update with new information. 😊

 

Just saw your poll on LinkedIn – what a great idea! Would love for you to share with the Community the results and your insights once you know! Thank you and have a good weekend!

@Eva Chen (Linkedin)​ absolutely! Once I get the results, I will share here. I plan to post a follow up poll for whichever response is #1 to go deeper. More to come!

Fantastic combined summary thank you Eva @Eva Chen​ excellent overview and very muhc like Smart Link too. @Nadia Vieira​ @Jon Page​ Trust ok i have shared on the 3M LinkedIn chatter community, best regards, Chris.

And you did well, @Chris B​! This is the type of content that all 3M's SN users should read and learn from. Let us know in case they have any tips or questions. You can also invite them to leave a comment here! 😊

Thank you so much for that, @Chris B​! It's great to hear you found all these resources to be helpful!

 

Like Nádia said above, if you and your team have any tips on video marketing strategy and other content mediums for Thought Leadership, we'd love for you to share!

Great post @Eva Chen​ , is it ok if I share it with some of my colleagues? that list is just great!

Thank you so much, @Alejandro C​! I had a lot of fun writing this one and definitely learned many new media trends and stats myself. 😄

 

Of course, please free to share! Would love to hear if they have anything to add or what they think about video marketing (for Thought Leadership) as well. Keep us posted! 😊

Great topic Eva, here is an example on how I experienced OneToOne Video Communications With that, that approach can be practical when used only on high-priority customers as the time and energy invested are a lot to prepare and record one video for one customer but if done right it can be one of the most effective ways.

 

LinkedIn Video

 

In General in both use case you are looking into content that covers:

  • Catchy Insight/Question
  • Personal Intro (Who, Where With Whom)
  • Core Message (I want to connect with you, I want to tell you about my event, etc)
  • Call To Action (Click Here, Register, etc)

You can build different structures as well this one isn’t the only successful one but this can suite vast majority 

I will give you a short example here, in my last company, the CTO approached me saying that he was very interested in a sales approach he saw when a sales professional in a SaaS company that sells a marketing tool recorded a video for himself talking to my CTO and walking through this tool showcasing our public data that the tool can read and providing some consultation to him on some areas that we can improve so free consultation but made the CTO very interested in listening to more also to the special way of the approach.

 

Finally, there are some tools that can help you organize the internal efforts of leveraging video for sales, this can be tools like: https://www.vidyard.com/

Hi @Ahmed E​,

 

Wow! Thank you so much for your feedback + insights and welcome to the Sales Navigator Community! 😊(P.S. Oracle was previous my company before my current role at LinkedIn, and I was in sales development and product marketing at headquarters.)

 

Great call-out for one-to-one videos for high-priority customers. Your comment also reminded me of the personalized InMails and emails we send to prospects/customers, so why would we not approach it the same way in videos? It might take longer and more resources like you said, but I agree that if done right, we would be able to reap a lot of benefits not only now but also down the line!

 

Love the four key points for (video) content that you included and the Vidyard software/tool as well! Thank you again, and I look forward to further discussion on this topic!

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