Video is particularly powerful in the awareness phase of your customers buying journey, when you want to tell a story or evoke an emotional response. But for video to do its job properly, the story must be right too. The best brand videos – the ones made by Gillette, Airbnb or Nike, for example – don’t talk about products or services. They talk about how those products and services make you feel.

Strong visuals grab attention. There’s a lot of dull video on LinkedIn and corporate filmmakers learned years ago to avoid talking heads where possible. Make yours quirky, dynamic, exciting. If your subject makes this difficult, faces are great for grabbing attention. Close-ups work well, like this hugely popular Nike film.

For Linkedin get straight into the film and the interesting visuals. Don’t put logos or the film title at the start. A faster cutting pace generally grabs more attention. It depends on the visuals, but generally about one cut per second keeps people watching. Viewing duration is more generous on Linkedin than some other platforms, but 30-90 seconds generally works best for most films. Speeches and strong stories can keep people watching longer.

Vertical or square video works well on Linkedin. It takes up more screen space as people scroll down, so they’re likely to see it. More people are watching on their phones, so vertical video takes up their whole screen. This film about Game of Thrones from Business Insider got it right.

LinkedIn defaults to muting a video’s sound on first play and many people will leave it that way while they watch. Sub-titling films is one way to attract your audience, or even better incorporate graphic text into your film so the audience can understand even without sound. This World Economic Forum film works just as well with or without sound.

So now you’re all set to start filming. That means we’re half way there. But there’s still the critical question of posting your video effectively. We’ll look at this in Part 2.