It's a common belief that the answer to poor (and getting worse) organic content reach from a company page is employee advocacy. So why are so many organisations getting it horribly wrong? That plus; The new video feed and how it impacts the videos we post.Multiple image posts - new dimensionsImages on external links are shrinking and it really doesn't matter!An outrageous post of the week The New Video Feed I was chatting recently with Lynnaire Johnston about this new feed (she doesn't yet have it) and she made the valuable point that this new style of delivery might necessitate a change in the way a video is produced. Because the scroll has audio enabled (unlike in the normal feed) it puts more emphasis on the opening few seconds of the video and less emphasis on the words you type to accompany the post - these appear at the bottom of the video in this feed. This doesn't mean that you should worry less about the words because they still play an important role in the normal feed on both mobile and desktop (see image below). In addition, the new video feed appears to zoom in somewhat which creates an issue with text on the video or even captions if you add them yourself. How a video is displayed in 3 different feeds As a reminder, this video feed is only enabled once you tap on some video posst you see on the main mobile feed, at the moment this is only for about 40% of the videos I see in my feed. Once you are in this feed you can the scroll to see more videos and those videos all autoplay with sound. I suspect that LinkedIn will fix the zooming issue but that will probably take some time so it's worth ensuring your text does not go near the edges of your video for now. Multiple Image Posts The way images are displayed in a multi-image post is beginning to change as you can see here in these example of 2 and 3 image posts; LinkedIn™️ have provided this helpful document which can be downloaded here. I've had this change for a while but apparently more the majority of users are now seeing this in their feeds. Images On External Links LinkedIn™️ have announced that images on posts with external links are shrinking unless you sponsor (advertise) that post, in which case the image stays the same size as it has always been. Lots of people are up in arms about this! Why? External link posts are seen by very few people anyway so not seeing a larger or small image results in the same...it's not seen! OK I'm being a bit cynical there but honestly guys, have you not learnt yet?....don't post external links, unless you really have to. Employee Advocacy Earlier this year I was a panel member on stage at UpLift Live when a question about employee advocacy on LinkedIn was asked. My slightly cynical response was to state that asking employees to Repost or Like a company page post was not employee advocacy in any sense yet that is as far as most organisations go. I stand by that answer but it did occur to me that it was worth trying to explain what a more productive method would be. Firstly I am not a fan of the phrase 'employee advocacy'. To my understanding an 'advocate' is someone who promotes someone or something. This leads to a belief that employee advocacy is all about encouraging employees to promote the company that they work for. And for the most part, that is what happens. Employees either repost company page content or directly promote the organisation that they work for either to other potential employees or customers. This is highly ineffective. Below is a classic example. Robert Half have published an article (ironically about employee advocacy) and then asked their employees to post it...so they do! This is merely a distribution mechanism and, as you can see by the lack of engagement, not a very effective one! Whilst this might be employee advocacy for some organisations, others 'ask' their employees to post about the amazing work environment or how they are so happy working for them or how impressed they are with the products or customer service etc etc. It just comes across as forced and hollow...frankly nobody is buying it! We all know that promotional content does not do well on LinkedIn, it is difficult to attract engagement and so typically achieves poor reach. So why do companies do it? It strikes me as being nothing more than a 'ticking the box' exercise. "employee advocacy...done!" ✔️ All that said, we know that company page content has extremely limited reach and this reach seems to be getting worse so it does make sense for organisations to use their employees personal accounts for their benefit. If however the objective is promotion, it simply won't work. The problem is that the objective is wrong, if the objective was greater visibility then employee advocacy could work, if done the right way. When an employee of an organisation becomes influential on LinkedIn then the organisation will benefit from their greater visibility. To become influential on ...
