Mastering LinkedIn Video: A Beginner's Guide. Guest: Gillian Whitney

Michelle J Raymond: Welcome to the Good for Business Show, and if you were just bopping away to my intro the very person that created that for me is sitting here live today. Gillian Whitney, welcome to the Good for Business Show. Hello.

Gillian Whitney: Hello. I'm excited to be here.

Michelle J Raymond: We've done this a couple of times and I keep bringing you back because you are the easy peasy video coach, and that's not just words because I have been a client of yours.

I reached out to you and we did some training together because I got stuck on a few things. So you really are true to your word, but there's gonna be some people here that may not have come across you before because I've gone and invited all kinds of people. Some are my clients, some are my friends.

Because so many people are scared of video. So tell me who are you, what do you do, and who do you help?

Gillian Whitney: Woo. Okay. So excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me back, and I hope I will live up to this wonderful introduction. So my name is Gillian Whitney. I am the LinkedIn video coach who makes video easy peasy.

That's what I love to do. I work with people all over the world. I'm based in Las Vegas, Nevada, but I work with everybody remotely, virtually. You name it. I go there and I got the four passports to prove it. I am a global digital nomad. I live everywhere and anywhere. I really believe that LinkedIn video is the thing we need to do.

I came kicking and screaming myself. So anybody who's sitting out there going, ah, video, I know what that's like and let's bust some myths today.

Michelle J Raymond: Gillian, most people think when they see me on LinkedIn lives on a weekly basis and guesting on other people's that there is no way that I could have ever been scared of doing videos on LinkedIn.

And I just cannot stop laughing and I'm gonna tell the same story I tell all the time. I signed up for a digital course. The first subject, the homework was to do a five minute video and I freaked. I never did that video. I never did the whole course because the thought of doing a five minute video petrified me, and look where I am now. And this is what I wanna talk to people. You had a similar experience. No one would probably believe that you didn't wanna do video way back when, right?

Gillian Whitney: No, I was kicking and screaming. I did not want to do video. And I remember them talking about, it was probably about, maybe three years ago, three or four years ago, that it's like I didn't wanna do any video and I thought, it's a fad, , I'll just wait it out.

It'll go away. And then I saw it wasn't going away. And This is what I did, and this is what I recommend to people, is I just leaned in a little bit. I started what I could do, which was just doing video where I taught something and I wasn't even on the screen. That's how we have to sometimes start is like just inch by inch, we get it.

You don't have to do a LinkedIn live tomorrow, folks. It's like, we can do this in baby steps, and I'm proof. I went from screen sharing to screen sharing plus webcam, then webcam, and then LinkedIn lives. And believe me, when you graduate to LinkedIn lives, you get over yourself so fast because everything and anything can go wrong on a live.

You just have to learn to roll with it. But it's a great analogy for life and it's a great analogy for doing video. Roll with it and just lean in.

Michelle J Raymond: I couldn't agree more. I've had, the Amazon delivery people, they know when you're doing a LinkedIn live, so when that doorbell rings, the dog goes crazy, just roll with it. Because it's gonna happen. All kinds of things happen.

Let's talk about video for a minute. I'm gonna jump into the practical stuff, but before we actually talk about this, so I've invited lots of beginners, right? So the people that have never done video, those people that are currently sitting there going, yeah, I'm a bit scared about all of this, and I know you pair are excited, but what are the benefits of video on LinkedIn, Gillian?

Why should people consider it as a format?

Gillian Whitney: First of all it's the first way to get your brand awareness out there. It allows people to get to know like, and trust you. And you could have the most awesome business in the world. You could have the most wonderful product in the world, a great service.

But if people don't know about you, it's like the best kept secret. So you wanna do videos so that people get to know you, get to like you, get to trust you so that when you kind of do get their ear and they see you and they learn about you. You've already built up some credibility. But more importantly, I like to think of it as it will attract people and repel people.

And I know that's a horrible thought, but it filters people out because we're not for everyone. We're only for the people that are looking for us. And that's what I like to think of doing video. Is that there's some people that would look at me and say " I don't wanna work with somebody that has that crazy global accent of four countries or something like that."

Or they might say, I wanna work with somebody who's more refined, or somebody who has a good sense of humor. I think I have a good sense of humor, so hopefully I would still qualify, but our personality comes out. You think about LinkedIn and you think about having that profile picture up there.

I could have a profile pitcher from 10 years ago and that's not me. This is who I am. And that's what happens with video. Your true self comes out. The way that you talk, your mannerisms, your accent, how you. Just your whole world perspective comes out on video, so I think it allows people to get a sense of who you are.

But this to me is the most important thing. While you are not doing video, your competitors may already be doing video, and there's nothing worse than seeing somebody and you go. They're saying the wrong thing. They're giving the wrong message. I could do it better. This is your chance to do it is video. It allows you to be you and give the message that somebody out there needs to hear.

Michelle J Raymond: I had Juma Banister on the show a few episodes ago, and one of the things that he gave as a tip, if you can conquer video, you conquer your self development. And that just went off like a light bulb for me because if I look at where I've started at, and I did those weird videos where you look into your iPhone, it looks like you're looking over to the side because you haven't worked out where you need to look.

So I had that one. I've also had to go through the, oh, Gillian, I hate the sound of my voice. I do not think that anyone out there would like to listen to it. I also go through the parts where I think, oh, why would anyone wanna come and watch a video? I don't look like some particular stereotype. I've been through all of those kind of things myself.

And you told me before the show you've done exactly the same. So we are all humans. But the switch for me, this is my advice and we're going cover this so much more is you need to get out of your own head and you need to start thinking about who are you doing the video for and the impact that you can make.

Just like Gillian just said, when you focus on others. I can tell you all that other stuff goes away. I don't even hear my crazy voice anymore when I'm editing, which is a blessing. I'll give everyone the handy tip. Let's talk about what kind of different video types do we have on LinkedIn?

Gillian Whitney: Okay, so first of all, we can start with, we can talk about talking heads. That's the typical video that you see where somebody's sharing a story, a thought leadership piece. Maybe they're talking about here's a, a situation that my customers have had. Here's how I solved it. That's your typical talking head video.

Then we have what's called a screen share video where maybe you're showing something, maybe it's like a tip where I wanna show you, here's how you customize your LinkedIn url. Sitting and doing that in an article, that's gonna be really hard for me to follow, but if I'm seeing it on the screen, it's easy and bonus if I could have a little picture of me there, then you're getting to know the voice behind the lens. That's a screen share plus a little webcam video, even if it's just a picture, it's good. So that's another type of video. And then the third type of video is, and this is really good for the true camera shy people that need that warm up time before they're ready to really get in front of the lens.

Would be stock video where you can be talking about things and then just have pictures of people. So if you're talking about four outta five people in business, then you have pictures of people sitting at their desk typing on computers. That's a way to go. We also love those kind of drawing videos where you see a sketch and people drawing something out.

There's software tools that you can do that with. So there's lots out there. You can even have a PowerPoint presentation that's a form of video where you're talking in the background. So video can be many different things.

Michelle J Raymond: It sure can. We always have people at different stages. And there's never a one size fits all that Gillian and I could tell you, except you need to get started. That's the only piece of advice that we can give across the board. Start with something that you think you can manage and then work your way up. This is a step by step kind of thing. And so for me, those people that are sitting there going I don't have the best microphone, I don't have the best ring light. I don't have all the tech. Yep, no deal. That's not an excuse either, because you really don't need a lot to get started. Especially if we all have smartphones these days, that will get you out of trouble for a lot of things.

We're gonna push the tech aside today cause I can send people the link for our previous show where we talked a bit more about that. But I wanna talk about, I think one of the tips for success on video is planning. So when it comes to video, I think planning is one of the ways that you set yourself up for success.

What do you think people should do in this space?

Gillian Whitney: There's a lot to planning first of. Know who you wanna talk to. We're not talking to the whole 850 million, billion, trillion people on LinkedIn these days. We're talking to our ideal client, and if you're a job hunter, you're talking to a recruiter, you're talking to the person that you want to do business with, whatever that form of business is for you.

So narrow it down and begin to have an image of who's on the other side of that camera lens, because again, that will alleviate your fear. And I always laugh and tell people. I always talk to Lenny. Lenny is my little ideal client. And I have a cute little post-it note with a smiley face. And that's Lenny.

And when I envision Lenny on the other side of the camera lens, it just alleviates that sort of black pit of, I'm talking into nothingness. So know who you're talking to and know what you're talking about. What are your goals? What do you really want to do? You don't wanna hop on a video and sell your $10,000 course because that's gonna repel people.

What you want to do is you either want to educate people, you want to entertain people, or maybe you want to inspire people with some of your stories. And I talk a lot about my mistakes because crazy as it sounds, that helps people if they know that I mess up when I do LinkedIn lives and then they go and mess up when they do LinkedIn lives, they'll just say what would Gillian do in this situation? That will go through their heads.

So there's many ways that you can help people but know what your client, what are they looking for, and answer that question. Think about what are they staying up all night worrying with? Try to address that in your videos. So you wanna plan. You know what equipment you're going to use and I tell people, do not use equipment as the thing that's gonna hold you back.

There's many different ways to get started with videos, so don't make it complicated. Just keep it simple, keep it easy peasy. I also tell people, start off with a small goal.

The first goal I think everybody on LinkedIn needs to do is the profile video. Start that as your first goal. You don't have to have a whole, now I've got my 2023 video strategy plan of, how many videos I'm gonna make and what's this and my seven buckets of content. We don't have to do that.

Start small and say I wanna do a profile video and it's under 30 seconds, and think of it as a welcome mat so that when people get to your profile, they just get a taste of who you are. So that's a really simple goal. Another thing for planning with your video is, use it for building relationships. I like to do videos in the dms to people because that's a small fruit. That's that low hanging fruit of I don't need to build up and do my first. Hi everyone. Here I am on LinkedIn. Let me introduce myself. That's a lot of stress. Better off that I just say, you know what I know it's Michelle's birthday, so I'm gonna send her a personal video and I'm gonna send it in the dm.

Sending one video to someone is a lot easier than making a video for 850 million, billion, trillion people. It just goes to show you. So those are the things I recommend. Keep it simple. There's lots and lots of stuff. If anybody wants to know tools and all that, like you said, they can watch our live from last year or just DM me, I'll tell you everything you need to know cuz it, it depends, video, if we're talking about your camera, on your phone or webcam, software.

There's so many different things and just know LinkedIn is supporting us. They just released or are rolling out autogenerated captions. They're doing stuff to support us guys to have a video on your profile. It's something we were all asking for years, and yet so many people aren't taking advantage of it.

Michelle J Raymond: It's kinda ironic that we want it until we've got it, and then all of a sudden we've got these tools and people are like, whoa, keep that away from me. For me, it's been really interesting. It's not the people that you'll always expect, and I don't care what level you are in a business or how much education you've got, how much experience, what title you've got. The fear of video really impacts all kinds of walks of life. It's not an age group thing, it's not a sexist thing. It's not a race thing. No. It's so common everywhere. And this is again why I keep having this conversation with Gillian. Every few months we come back around to hopefully, as you said, educate, inspire, get people out there.

I had an experience just this week with someone that I've been connected to for I'm gonna guess, probably the last 18 months and they happened to be presenting on a webinar and I had no idea what they sounded like, and as it turns out, they're a bit of a global citizen like you, and had a mix of different accents, which then led me to ask where is that from? And I learned a whole bunch more about where they'd lived, where they'd worked. And it was such an amazing story, that I never knew in the last 18 months because I couldn't hear them. I had no idea how, they spoke. I didn't know how they moved. The energy and it just made us closer, I believe, because all of a sudden you become real and you become three dimensional and you're not just some words, and again, I love words.

They're my favorite form of content, but there are just some things that you cannot do unless you are, connecting with people. The ultimate is face to face. For someone like me that's working globally, not really practical, although I'm planning my global tour to get to Vegas, Florida, anywhere else in the US if anyone wants to sponsor me I'm all, on board for that one. But I just want people to know the advantages. When we look forward for the next five, 10 years, it's not just about content marketing anymore, it's gonna be community marketing. So how do you build a community? People have to know who you are. They have to like you.

They have to resonate with you. That's more important to me. You have to be relatable. So these are the kinds of things that you can achieve in video. I think in probably that 30 second video, more than six months worth of posts sometimes.

Gillian Whitney: And it doesn't go away. It doesn't. That's a nice thing. I know so many people that they start off with doing videos for the newsfeed and they're setting the bar for themselves and then they really complicate it. They make 'em too long, but they might not have very many connections. So they post the video and they don't get a lot of feedback.

And I'm gonna just be absolutely honest with you. You don't necessarily get a lot of engagement on video, but it doesn't matter. You do it anyway. But the danger is that video disappears unless it's on a company page. And that's why you wanna do company pages cuz there's a video tab. We need this for personal profiles, but that's why you want a company page, because that video lasts, it stays there.

But newsfeed videos, I do a newsfeed video. It's gone unless I bring it up again. I repurpose it, I put it somewhere else, but my profile video. Boom. It's on my profile and hey, guess what's happening this month. Actually, it's this month for you. It's not this month for me yet. You're in December. I'm still in November.

Whereever you are in the world today, the holidays are right around the corner. So what if we took this as a challenge? Could you do a holiday profile video. Why don't you start with that? Make it fun. Start with something that's creative and fun. Get yourself out one for the holidays.

Think of it as your sort of online video holiday card. It's a wonderful thing. So these are some of the things you can take video that you've done in the newsfeed. You can save it to your featured section. So then all of a sudden it is on your profile. So there are some ways that you can work around it, but like you.

That 20 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever it is, it's short. It's short, and it's just to allow people to get to know you.

Michelle J Raymond: I sometimes think those shorter videos, I don't know about you, but they take me about 50 takes and I go back onto my phone and I go, oh my God, did it take me that many times?

But when you nail it, you can be really happy and proud. And these are the kinds of things that if you persist one of the things for me why I love video and all of those kind of examples that you share is, when you're creating content on LinkedIn, for me as a salesperson at heart, that is all about B2B business growth.

When you're creating content, I have that goal in mind, you wanna sell more, right? So if you're someone that's out there that wants to grow a business or sell more, then listen up. Selling more on LinkedIn doesn't just take doing posts, it's also about nurturing relationships. How do you nurture relationships?

You come alive, you care about people. You tell them what you like and what's important to you. Share your knowledge. All of these videos that Gillian's described, you can do, and that is gonna nurture relationships. So it can be the dm. And if you wanna know, does Gillian really send birthday messages to people on video?

I've got my hands up. Her and her dog wish me a happy birthday. So yes, she does walk the talk. When you are at her profile and you wanna check out the profile video, when you go there, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to look underneath the banner, top right hand corner, and there's a bell.

If you wanna get confident and you wanna get better at video, you are gonna wanna ring that bell so you get notified of all Gillian's posts. So there's another way that you can get better, attend her events. Watch how she runs them. You don't have to invent the wheel, go and copy someone that's good at it.

She is good at it. I said at the top of the show, she is my video coach. I can't speak highly enough about how easy she makes things. So do yourself a favor, ring that bell and you are just going to, advance light years. But we're gonna talk about another topic, which we haven't spoken about before from my memory and that's making content accessible for people. So let's talk about what is making content accessible and how can we do that on LinkedIn?.

Gillian Whitney: I would think the number one accessibility is having your videos to be captioned. And the reason you want to do this is that, number one, the default for video on LinkedIn is sound off.

And so when somebody sees your newsfeed videos, they're not gonna hear what you're talking about. So you're just a silent movie. If you have captions along the bottom of the video, number one, people know what you're talking about immediately, but number two, if they are in a place that they cannot listen to sound, they'll know what's going on, and if they're deaf or hard of hearing you're being kind. You're allowing them to understand what your video's about. They can read along. So this is really an important thing.

And it's so important because there are many of us out here, and I know you're one of them, Michelle, that we just hammered on and on to LinkedIn. Please bring us auto captioning and auto captioning is when you upload a video to LinkedIn, it goes ahead and puts those captions on for you, and you can even go in there and clean them up because chances are they're gonna get my name wrong. It's a British name, it's always gonna be spelled wrong.

I have to go in and tidy it. But LinkedIn has made this available to us. So this is a feature that's rolling out. It is only in English, so if your native language is not English it's not gonna hit you just yet, but it is rolling out across the world in all continents, but it's slowly rolling out.

So if you don't have it, you don't have. It is coming and it's also available on mobile and desktop, which is really nice. So it doesn't matter which way you do video content. If you don't wanna use auto captioning, there are so many different services out there, and again, please just connect with me. I will give you all the recommendations on which ones are free, which ones are minimal, there's pay As you Go captions. There's so many different ways that you can do it. You can even have your video. With the captions burned right in. So that's another alternative in using your branding colors and all sorts of stuff. But that to me is accessibility, is making sure that your videos are captioned.

So important.

Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. And I've even read stats. It's like something like 80% of people watch videos with the sound off anyway, even if they're not hard of hearing, it's crazy not to put that on there. So yes, people read videos because they might be doing something where they're meant to be working and this. Sneaking in a video. They could be on a , they could be at late at night looking after a baby. Like any kinds of things, you know, we're sneaking in,

Gillian Whitney: You don't wanna wake up your spouse you're just, are you on LinkedIn? Again?

Michelle J Raymond: Don't tell Lil she would just go, oh my God, Michelle, is that you on LinkedIn again?

So sometimes you gotta sneak it in. But yeah, these are the kinds of things that I want people to consider. We've talked about making sure that we get over those fears, get over ourself, get ourself outta the way. We've talked about how we can bring ourselves to life and really build those relationships and community with other people.

We've got some planning tips, like everything you need to get started and think about Gillian's actually stepped us through on that. So if you didn't write it down, go back, listen from the beginning and start again. But the final point that I wanna talk about is my favorite reason for doing LinkedIn videos.

And I think if there are people out there and you're in a small business, maybe even a solopreneur business or maybe a business of one or

two, you don't have a team that's out there creating all your content, you're doing it yourself. You need to pay attention to this next point. And the next point that we're gonna talk about is repurposing LinkedIn video content.

People ask me, Gillian, how the hell do I do so much? How do I appear like I'm everywhere? This is my secret. This is why I do a weekly LinkedIn live. But tell me, how do you repurpose the video content that you create?

Gillian Whitney: I'd have to tell you that the best kept secret is LinkedIn Live because you think of a LinkedIn Live, and to me this is like the golden child of video, and I actually tell people it's actually a wonderful way to start, and you think, oh, isn't that something I should graduate up to?

But in reality, You don't have to do a million takes with a LinkedIn live. You can't. So if you have an idea of what you're gonna talk about and then you go live with a guest, or even by yourself, that is creating content in the moment. And if you have a plan, I'm gonna talk about X, Y, Z, and then you get on or X, Y, Z, and then you get on and you do your thing.

Think of a 30 minute live, what you could repurpose out of that. So we could just say, we could take a bunch of video snippets from what we're doing today. We could turn around and make them look different so that it's got, maybe just you, maybe just me. We could make it vertically stacked. So now all of a sudden we've got like YouTube shorts, TikTok, that sort of thing, so you can even change the dimensions of how your video looks as well. But just keeping it simple, what I do is every week I have a 30 minute live. From my 30 minute live. I create snippets for myself and video snippets for my guests. I publish a podcast, so now it goes out on a podcast as well, which is just the audio part.

So I do an audio podcast on five different platforms. Then on top of that, I do what's called an audiogram, which is a video where, not my picture not my face, just a photograph and then the words and the little sound waves. So that's another form of video that you can do. If I got my act together, I could turn around and I have it transcribed.

I could turn it into a blog article, so you begin to see all the different things. I also push my stuff out to YouTube, just like you do, Michelle. So there's another social media platform. But if you were on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or all these other different places, you can take the same content and just play within their rules.

So you wanna make sure what kind of canvas size does that platform want? So how I would make something look for YouTube versus Instagram, that's gonna be a little bit different, but it makes you realize that. But even within LinkedIn, I will have my LinkedIn lives, as a live, then I have newsfeed videos, which are just the snippets, and then I put it in articles and my newsletters, and I have those sitting on YouTube or Vimeo.

So there's so many different ways that we can repurpose video. And you know what? Nobody remembers if you take a video from a year ago and post it again, so it, you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel folks. If you did a really good video about, here's how I work with my customers, keep posting it, post it every six months, there's no time limit, there's no expiration date. It's not milk. It's a video.

Michelle J Raymond: I love that it's not milk. And one of the things that I would say if you're struggling for what would I make those kind of videos for? What works well? Think of the top 10 questions that you get asked. Start with that. You can record them in your sleep. They are the things that you answer day after day, and often what you can do is, post it, and then you can refer people back to it so you become more efficient. It frees up some of the time for you. So there's so many advantages, and it might sound like what Gillian just covered, how many options there are is crazy. I do very similar. We've got the Good for Business Show LinkedIn Live, that turns into Good for Business Show podcast.

I have a YouTube channel where it goes over to, I chop those up into smaller pieces. I used to send it to Twitter, but I've just, put that to sleep for a little while. I'm not into it. My year for 2023 that I'm looking at is how do I simplify things, and one of the ways I simplify things is by repurposing what I've already created.

I don't need to always create from scratch. Now, Gillian, this is my favorite part of the show cause I never know what's coming. Every show I always ask my guests, what is one last tip that if you wanted a beginner out there that's listening to get started with video, what's the tip that you would love to share.

Gillian Whitney: I would have to say, if you can write, you can do a video today. If you go to Lumen 5, you can take any blog post on your website or just copy and paste it in, and it will make a video for you, with images and music and text on screen so you don't have to record anything. So if you are a writer, that's the quickest way to make a video and never have to be on camera. That's a great first step.

Michelle J Raymond: That is an amazing first step, and again, how much we've covered in this short period of time. Don't worry, I'll be repurposing it so that you get to see it again and again because it's really so important. There is a reason that Gillian and I keep encouraging people. So if you are someone that's never made a video before and you're listening in, here's what I want you to do.

You're gonna go into the direct messaging on LinkedIn and you're gonna record a short video and tell Gillian and I send it to one or either of us, or both of us, and you're gonna tell us what you got out of listening in today because that first one is gonna be the hardest and we love you. We supporting you, we are encouraging you.

From there you'll be like, oh, is that all? We look forward to receiving those. Gillian Whitney, thank you so much. As always, I love you. I appreciate you. And thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Love it. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

No problems at all. Cheers.