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What does LinkedIn Live mean for you and your business?

LinkedIn, everyone’s favourite tool for building a strong professional company and personal image, has announced they’re developing a new livestream tool called LinkedIn Live. Read on to find out about when it’s coming and why we’re excited about it (and why you should be too!).

When to Expect LinkedIn Live:

Initially LinkedIn Live will only be launching in the U.S. for selected users that sign up (invite to be sent out to select users in a couple weeks), but you can expect it to become a mainstay of LinkedIn relatively soon. It’s hardly surprising, and frankly, it’s hard to imagine why LinkedIn hadn’t introduced this feature earlier.

UPDATE: Most of our clients and people within our network now have the LinkedIn Live feature, please remember you need to apply for it!

Pete Davies, Product Management Director at LinkedIn, says that livestreaming has been the most requested feature, adding that, “video is the fastest growing format on our platform right now, and the one most likely to get people talking.”

Why Use LinkedIn Live:

Live videos are hugely popular across all social media channels and have been for years. A huge amount of LinkedIn content posted today is video, and while Facebook Live has always been an option, it’s not always the most relevant platform for your business content – especially if you are a B2B brand.

If you’re trying to live stream on Facebook, it can be almost alienating to engage with prospective clients and fellow professionals on their personal accounts. With LinkedIn, everyone on the platform is there for a similar premise and is in the right frame of mind to hear your business-related messages.

Facebook does have the benefit of more active traffic being likely to stumble upon your content but because LinkedIn Live is likely to be used for more formal/professional messages, scheduling a live stream might prove useful. Trying to moderate a livestream chat feed can be a pain when you’ve got a large audience. You can expect there to be less disruptive and disrespectful comments coming from professional accounts, and a lot less ‘trolls’ or fake accounts commenting or engaging with your LinkedIn Live content.

Here’s just some of the potential use cases:

  • Q&A sessions
  • Conference streams
  • Award ceremonies
  • Product launches
  • Live tutorials

Given some of the legendary internet personalities that have arisen out of other livestreamed content, do you think LinkedIn Live is likely to spawn the same kind of brand name industry professionals? We certainly think it’ll be another great medium for spreading knowledge and building your personal professional image.

What to Expect:

We should note that LinkedIn does allow for embedded YouTube videos, but this is an underutilised feature. Since this is LinkedIn, where users are accustomed to content that’s a little bit more professional than what they see on Facebook or YouTube, expect there to be options for more ‘polished’ livestream content. LinkedIn is reportedly working with Wirecast, Switcher Studio and other streaming software developers before the release of LinkedIn Live to provide the best native livestreaming experience possible.

Beyond the behind-the-scenes stuff to make video flow as smoothly as possible, you might have access to video overlays for better engagement with viewers, as well as more live video editing functionality than what you get with say, Facebook Live. We’re personally hoping we’ll be able to have ‘conference-style’ livestreams, where you’ve got multiple people streaming together for more engaging content. LinkedIn, we hope you’re reading this!

We’ll be keeping an eye out for any additional LinkedIn Live announcements especially any involving the rollout in Australia. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date!

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